What Pride Means to Me
Happy Pride Month from my heart to yours! I hope you’re spending some time this month honoring yourself and/or your LGBTQ+ loved ones, as well as practicing gratitude for the courageous Black and brown transgender women who brought us Pride in the first place. These activists’ rebellion against oppression sparked the beginning of Pride, now a tradition that has become a global phenomenon. Pride reaches every continent and empowers self-acceptance and self-love among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning people, who have for too long been culturally ostracized and oppressed for no reason other than being.
Pride to me is about being honored to be in the body I am in. But unfortunately, this wasn't always the case. I grew up in India, where I didn't have the words to identify myself — and did not even know that there was a word for what I felt within — until I immigrated to the U.S. When I was about 10 years old, I started to realize that my feelings made me different, and that being different was not a good thing for an Indian kid trying to assimilate in a new country and new culture.
Pride to me is about being honored to be in the body I am in.
In elementary and middle school, I only heard the word “gay” used as a slur. But this was deeply confusing to me, as someone who was trained in British English. I had only ever known “gay” to mean “happy”! My classmates would frivolously throw around the word as an insult, telling one another, “that's so gay” and “you're so gay.” I was confused, but didn’t say much for fear of further alienating myself in a new environment.
It was only in 7th grade that a fellow classmate, a boy named Erik, took pity on me and asked me to go look up the word “gay” in the dictionary. That's when I knew that my feelings were a big deal, and that I was right to sense that something was weird about tossing this word around. I was quickly relieved that I wasn't crazy, nor was I the only one who felt like this, but soon realized that being "gay" was not okay. It became clear that being gay merited being publicly shunned, often risking physical, emotional, and psychological safety for no reason other than being.
It became clear that being gay merited being publicly shunned, often risking physical, emotional, and psychological safety for no reason other than being.
Over the next several years, I was verbally, emotionally, and physically abused for being perceived as gay — for living in a way that felt authentic and right to me. I was made to feel less than others simply for being myself. And in my immigrant town, it was other South Asian-American kids who were the most cruel to me. This is the nature of internalized bias: we create hierarchies within our own marginalized groups to feel superior to one another. In this case, bullying me for being perceived as gay made other kids feel less marginalized by their own racial, ethnic, class, or gender identities.
According to GLSEN, 86% of LGBTQ+ students have been harassed or assaulted at school, and 2 in 5 LGBTQ+ students of color were bullied or harassed for their race or ethnicity. It’s shocking and disappointing that these statistics prevail even today, when it feels like so much progress has been made for LGBTQ+ rights. The continued violence queer and trans kids face — especially queer and trans kids of color — shows that we have not done enough to dismantle the caste system that makes some kids feel superior to others. It wouldn’t surprise me if, in many cases, students are bullied from members of their own social groups, like I was.
86% of LGBTQ+ students have been harassed or assaulted at school, and 2 in 5 LGBTQ+ students of color were bullied or harassed for their race or ethnicity.
Surely enough, at 22, when I began to contemplate coming out, it was racism that threw me back in the closet. I was at a gay community event and another person of the dominant racial caste looked at me with hatred and contempt. It was clear that I wasn’t being targeted for being gay — it was obvious that we were all there for that reason — but for being, in his opinion, “a dirty Indian.” This was in 2008 in New York City, a supposed liberal haven. (Clearly we have much work to do.) That experience threw me in a tailspin for years. I didn’t feel safe in my body because of how I felt inside of it, what it looked like on the outside, and simply because it was.
I didn’t feel safe in my body because of how I felt inside of it, what it looked like on the outside, and simply because it was.
These experiences operated at the intersection of my racial identity, my immigration status, my masculinity, and my sexual orientation. They led me down a path of self-hatred and depression that culminated in a suicide attempt. Sadly, I am not alone. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults are more than twice as likely as heterosexual adults to experience a mental health condition, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the rates are even higher for transgender people. LGBTQ+ people are also more likely to attempt suicide than their straight and cisgender peers, due largely to the stigma around LGBTQ+ identity and the difficulty of finding support.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults are more than twice as likely as heterosexual adults to experience a mental health condition
I share this story not to invite pity or sympathy, but in hopes of stirring the part in each one of us that is deeply caring and compassionate. Just as I was hurt by some people, I was also saved by many others — people who came in the form of mentors, peers, friends, coaches, ministers, meditation teachers, yoga instructors, therapists, and somatic healers. Their ability to listen, to hold, and be with my pain allowed me to unburden myself of all the self-hatred I was carrying.
And I remember that unburdening clearly. It was Pride of 2013, and I was trying to figure out how to come out to my family. As I often do, I sat to meditate and pray, giving myself the opportunity to move from my head to my heart. The answer was clear. For me, Pride was not just about being proud of what I am, but the honor of being chosen to be in this body.
Pride was not just about being proud of what I am, but the honor of being chosen to be in this body.
Being publicly reviled for the color of my skin forced me to do exactly the opposite of what the dominant culture wanted me to do: it forced me to honor myself, to love myself, and to celebrate my difference. I was no longer going to let other people’s perceptions of me — including my family’s — determine my self-worth based on what I looked like or who I loved. My teacher the Dalai Lama often says this: we always have to remember that first, we are human beings. His words have long reverberated in my ears.
I am a human being. And I am going to honor my being. All this time later, this is a value I still cherish, and one that keeps me moving forward in this difficult work of ending racial and gender bias. I do it for anyone who has ever been targeted for being different in the face of the mainstream. And I do it for me.
Honoring Pride Month is important to me because I live at the intersection of so many identities, queerness included. I am gay. I am a man of color. I am an immigrant. I am Asian. I am Indian. I am a person of faith. I am able-bodied. I am a scientist. I am a teacher. And so on. When I say I am honored to take up space and celebrate Pride, that includes all aspects of what my body is and everything it does in this world. None of my identities stand on their own; they intersect and uplift each other to create the person I am.
In mindfulness practice, the body is known as the first foundation of mindfulness. This Pride, I honor this body, my body, this human form in its entirety. I honor the way it looks, feels, moves, dreams, grows, imagines, and merely is — because just being here is a wonder in itself. I honor all other LGBTQ+ people for the way their authentic selves look, feel, move, and are adorned by the possibilities of our being. And I honor and have deep gratitude for the LGBTQ+ people before me who honored, loved, and celebrated their own being despite culture, religion, family, and laws. Regardless of your sexual orientation or gender identity, I hope you too will join me in honoring all the ways your body makes you who you are. Happy Pride!