Kansas City Pride Festival

 

This year’s pride celebrations take place at a time when the rights and dignity of transgender people are under constant attack by Republicans and conservatives in the United States.

Republican lawmakers have passed an avalanche of anti-trans legislation in red states across the country. Republicans have made rolling back transgender rights one of the cornerstones of their legislative agenda at both the state and federal level.

In March, Michael Knowles, a host for the conservative publication The Daily Wire, gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference where he called for “transgenderism” to be entirely eradicated from public life.

In April, Webster Barnaby, a Republican state legislator in Florida, compared transgender people to demons during debate on a bill that would make it illegal for trans people to use a bathroom or changing room that doesn't match the gender they were assigned at birth.

 

 

Celebrating diversity remains as important as ever.

But it’s worth remembering the political environment this year has been particularly hostile towards transgender people, who are constantly under rhetorical attack by hateful bigots.

 

 

Videos

With that in mind, I enjoyed attending this year’s pride festival in Kansas City on June 9-11.

I created four videos from photos and footage I recorded at the festival, including two medleys of music and dance performances.

The first video includes performances by Zava and Public Universal Friend. The medley features entertainment from Friday and Saturday. 

 

 

The second music medley includes performances by Frenchie Davis, Doobie V, and Ty Herndon. The performances in the second music video took place Saturday and Sunday. 

 

 

 

Herndon, a country singer who came out as gay in 2014, performed a version of his popular song, “What Mattered Most,” a sad love song.

The original lyrics concerned a straight relationship, but the version Herndon performed reflected a gay one. 

Herndon released the original song in 1995. He released the new version in 2019.

  

I created a video using photos of merchandise at the festival, including several shirts with amusing pro-LGBT messages.

 

 

 

 

 

I created a compilation video of the pride parade that was held on Saturday. 

The parade, which was gigantic, lasted about an hour and a half. 

 

 

 

Justin Short, a candidate for City Council in Kansas City, Missouri, participated in the KC Pride Parade.

Short’s procession starts soon after 18 minutes and 15 seconds into the video.

Short and his supporters chanted, “Trans Rights are Human Rights,” during the parade.

Two of Short’s supporters gave me a supportive look. They must have noticed my trans pride gear.

I made eye contact with one of them, but I only observed the other after watching my footage of the parade.

The person I noticed during the parade carried a sign that read, “My EXISTENCE is now a form of RESISTANCE. PLEASE VOTE.” 

 

 

Experiences

Before the parade, I talked with an older KC-area lesbian and her adult son. She reflected on just how much KC’s pride celebration has grown since the early 1990s.

Later on Saturday, I helped another trans person find Theis Park, where the pride festival took place.

Afterward, I enjoyed spending time with them and their brother as we visited various booths set up by merchants and organizations.

At one of the booths, I purchased a fan in the colors of the transgender pride flag, which I held for a photo in front of a butterfly background. 

 

 

KC’s Pride Festival was diverse in many ways. 

The festival included representatives from LGBT-inclusive churches, members of an atheist organization, and Satanists (who are really just confrontational atheists). 

 

On Sunday, I played a role-playing game similar to Dungeons and Dragons at the gaming tent.

Specifically, I played the character Bottlespeaker, a Druid Leshy in, “A Fistful of Flowers” using Pathfinder, Second Edition.

My scroll of enlargement proved to be very useful during the first battle.

I thoroughly enjoyed the campaign, as did the other role players in my adventuring party.

 

 

Pride flags

I paid close attention to how common, or rare, various pride flags were during the celebration.

The most common pride flags were the Progress Pride and traditional Rainbow flags.

The Lesbian flag was also commonly displayed.

Next were Bisexual and Pansexual flags, followed by the Transgender and Nonbinary flags.

There were several Genderfluid flags, but it was the rarest of the still somewhat common flags.

There were several flags which I only noticed once. I will discuss those flags in my next blog post.

I didn’t see any Genderqueer or Intersex pride flags.

This means the Intersex pride flag made an appearance this year in the Manhattan, Kansas, pride celebration, but not the much larger one in Kansas City, Missouri. 

It's also worth noting that transgender and nonbinary flags and symbols were far more commonly displayed by younger people. 

More younger people attended the festival on Sunday, which was promoted as family day. Transgender and nonbinary symbols were more common at the park on Sunday compared to the previous days.

My pride symbols

I took several selfies of myself displaying the various pride symbols I wore to the celebration, a few of which I will share here. 

 

 

I painted my fingernails in the colors of the Transgender pride flag. 

 

 

At the festival, I noticed two other transgender people had also painted their nails in the colors of the Transgender flag.

Last year, I painted my fingernails in the colors of the Genderfluid pride flag.

 

I was inspired to paint my nails in the colors of the Transgender pride flag based on the wonderful art of Pas, a trans woman who creates original drawings, some of which relate to her personal experiences.

These two drawings show her character’s nails quite well. 

In the second drawing, her character wears earrings in the colors of the Nonbinary pride flag.

 

 

I wore clip-on earrings with the design of the Genderfluid pride flag. I received a fair number of compliments about my earrings.

 

 

During the parade, I wore a rainbow heart necklace.

I received both the earrings and the rainbow necklace as gifts from my former girlfriend, who is transgender, back when we dated in 2015.

 

I also wore a beautiful necklace that features a transgender symbol. I recently purchased the necklace from Heads or Tails Designs on Etsy.

 

 

 

I wore the following buttons at pride.

 

·        Trans Pride/Trans Power

·        Genderqueer

·        Be a voice, not an echo

·        A transgender symbol in rainbow colors

 

You can see a high-quality photo of these buttons in a blog post I wrote about my pride buttons last year. 

I also wore a rainbow heart button I received for free at one of the festival booths.

 

Happy Pride, everyone.