All images in this post are screencaps of a Facebook conversation. In lieu of alt text (which is character limited), text will be reproduced in the body of this post. Some names have been redacted to protect innocent bystanders. Also, a content warning: I make a flippant remark about religious CSA, and there’s some lazy fatphobia.
Pride month 2024 was a shit show online. Every social media platform invented their own version of the evil, probably lying for attention bisexual woman who brings her straight boyfriend, Chad, a hardcore white supremacist and violent homophobe, to Pride celebrations, and debated why this imaginary woman shouldn’t be allowed to do that. And when bisexuals and transgender people pushed back with questions like, “How do you know Chad is straight and cis?” they were accused of centering themselves and inserting unsafe people into the community.
Literally, this started on June 1st.
Another great feature of Pride month was the phenomenon of local news stations reporting on Pride festivities… after they happened. I didn’t see a lot of visibility for local Pride festivals, to be honest. Any of them I knew about, I knew from LGBTQA+ people who specifically mentioned them to me. The rest of them, I found out after the fact, when a local news outlet reported on them, then sat back and let the rage engagement commence. They knew exactly what they were doing when they posted their stories.
Maybe I should be ashamed of myself for taking the bait, but I’m wracked with an awful summer cold and tired and cranky and my interaction with one Kristy Marie on Facebook was the only joy I really got out of Pride month.
Redacted: Hastings DID IT!! Organizers created such a wonderful family-friendly space and it was BEAUTIFUL. The vendors, the drag queens, Spencer Lajoye….it was all perfect. I hope next year is somehow even bigger and better (although it’s always hard to beat the inaugral event!) What a great way to close out Pride Month 2024. *hands in a heard shape emoji* *ASL I love you emoji* *fistbump emoji* I hope everyone felt LOVED and SAFE and SEEN today! My family loves you!
Kristy Marie: [Redacted] drag queens and family friends don’t go together.
Redacted: Kristy Marie Huh, were you there? Went perfectly fine!
Kristy Marie: [Redacted] keep your babies close.
Jenny Erwine (that’s my private FB name): Kristie Marie “Mamas, keep your babies close! I was at Target, trying to avoid the Pride merchandise section and a man walked past us, pretending to be shopping. He even had milk and eggs in his cart, as if that would fool me. I knew in my heart that he was a drag queen trying to groom and traffick my DD! I grabbed my DD and fled to my car. I’m literally shaking right now.”
That’s you.
Kristy Marie: Jenny Erwine eat another donut.
Jenny Erwine: Kristy Marie “Hey there, Warrior Mamas! Today I was on FB and a DELUSIONAL alphabet person MOCKED MY CHRISTIAN BELIEFS after I tried to protect the children out there from their depravity. I was so mad, I was SHAKING. I had to step away from my computer and pray to Jesus. I asked him with an open heart, ‘Jesus, what should I do? Your followers are under constant attack. How do I respond to this minion of the devil making fun of my innocent FB post?’ And I had a moment of spiritual clarity. I know that His grace compelled me to make a lazy fat insult. He knows my heart. He knows that I’m prettier than everybody else, because that’s what my youth pastor would say when he was letting me drink Boone’s Farm in his RV (so I would be safe when I blacked out). God is good. Stay safe, mamas!”
That’s you.
Kristy Marie: Jenny Erwine do you have kids or are you just fat?
Jenny Erwine: Kristy Marie “PRAYER WARRIORS! You will never BELIEVE what a fat person said to me on the internet. Not only did they suggest that drag performers DO NOT harm children (which we all know is a LIE), they also mocked my Christian beliefs. I laugh reacted as hard as I could, and I called them fat more than once, but they refused to back down in the face of my very clever retorts. DH says I’m very, very funny, and he would know, because he has some of the funniest friends (like Kevin, who does this hilarious gay guy voice whenever he and DH go on their boys’s weekend fishing trips to Saugatuck). I have never been so ANGRY in my life. I’m LITERALLY SHAKING. I almost threw up. Please pray for me, because I’m not sure I can handle much more of this BULLYING.”
That’s you.
Kristy Marie: Jenny Erwine cry harder
Jenny Erwine: Kristy Marie “Okay, usually, I don’t make posts like this. Positivity is power and through Him all things are possible! But sometimes, ooh, people on the internet can burn. me. up. First of all, this FAT PERSON who doesn’t’ even care about children starts talking about gay things to me OUT OF NOWHERE. I told her she was messing with the wrong mama bear and she would NEVER be taking my kids to get GROOMED at a drag show. Do you know what she did? She mocked my faith and refused to engage me directly! All she did was write these posts pretending to be me on Facebook. As if I would ever let a FAT HAG like her see my posts. I don’t understand how people can be such BULLIES just because someone is a strong Christian who lives faithfully by His word! I can’t even get DH to put her in her place, because he’s at The General Wood Shop up in GR right now, buying lumber to build DD a playhouse. Pray for me to have grace and patience with this sinner, because this mama bear needs it!”
That’s you.
Kristy Marie: Jenny Erwine you got a lot of time on your hands doncha miss piggy? I’m sure you can find one last pride event to go to. I’m sure they have lots of
ho-hos *peace sign emoji*
Jenny Erwine: Kristy Marie “You’ll never believe what I said to this FAT COW who was trying to lure my children away from Jesus’s light! I called her Miss Piggy and said she could get ho-hos at the pride festival! And then I said she must have a lot of time on her hands because she kept replying to me. *sideways crying laughing emoji* I have time to reply because we’re at T-Mobile waiting for DH to get his phone fixed. It kept making this weird little noise that was like a thump and then a xylophone? I know it’s from the game Grindr, because he plays that all the time, but it’s not supposed to be sending notifications constantly, so I know he got hacked. Pray this doesn’t end up costing too much to fix, because we just tithed AND we have our trip to Branson coming up.”
That’s you.
Kristy Marie: *six of the over eleven replies Kristy Marie sent in two minutes with just my name tagged and no other text*
Jenny Erwine: Holy shit I broke her.
[End Screencaps]
Obviously, I hit a little too close to home with that Grindr comment.
The thing is, Pride Month news stories from mainstream outlets are never about lifting up LGBTQA+ people and spaces. They’re always about giving the bigots a platform to scream and call us child molester.
If local news outlets care about anything other than clicks and engagement, they would be reporting on these things before they happened, so that people could attend them. They could interview organizers, so that people could see that it’s not the local government spending hard earned tax dollars on Pride, but dedicated individuals running everything on donations. Hey, wouldn’t that make a great story? The fact that in most places in the U.S., Pride festivals need donations, sometimes from corporations who aren’t squeaky clean when it comes to social issues in the first place, to keep running? Exposing that might, I don’t know, encourage people to donate.
Maybe someone could report on the fact that some cities require Pride festivals to pay the police to be in attendance, and then insist the festival be over-policed, so that the organizers can’t afford to stage the festival at all. Or they could cover why a Pride festival would even need to be policed in the first place.
Spoiler alert: it’s because of the behavior exhibited in those local news story comment sections.
Pride doesn’t need visibility after the fact, and it shouldn’t focus entirely on the elements that guarantee to provoke outrage. But social media engagement is paramount to local media these days. Anything to get laugh reacts and angry diatribes. And it doesn’t matter where they’re from; Kristy Marie might not even be from Michigan. There were several posts made by people very concerned about grooming and child molestation at Hastings Pride who weren’t even from the United States, including a man from Canada who spoke endlessly about “carnal lust,” even in conversations that weren’t about sex.
I’m convinced that straight men think about two men having sex more than gay men think about it.
I’m so glad it’s Canada Day and people like Kristy Marie won’t have as many Pride news stories to bother them. I’m glad straight men around the world will no longer be plagued by relentless thoughts of brawny, leather clad bears, their muscles rippling under a sheen of sweat illuminated by throbbing disco lights.
But mostly, I’m glad Pride month is over because it’s just another battleground, even within the community. And it’s so god damn tiring.
Look, Kristy Marie is a horrible person. She should have been called out. But why was it okay to make a joke about her being raped? How do you think that might make survivors feel?
That’s why I put a content warning specifically about that comment. Because I’m a survivor and I like to have a heads up, myself.
I’m not going to argue about whether it was appropriate, because everyone has a threshold for what is and isn’t off-limits, but if you did want added context, the comment was made specifically after she continually accused other people in the comments of being child molestors and spouting religious nonsense. My threshold is just different from yours in terms of what remains off-limits once someone brings it into the conversation, themselves.
Yesterday we took our toddler on the ferry to Seattle, along with many, many people of various ages and shapes and sizes and orientations dressed for Pride. (We’ve been promising him a trip on a sailboat for a while, so that’s where we were going.) You know what happened? NOT A GODDAMN THING. All I did was point out to the boy that a lot of people were wearing rainbows.
I’m very sorry, but your toddler is gay now. I hope you have a lot of support from your parish at this time, mama bear!
I need you to know, deeply, deeply know, how fucking thrilled I am that someone left a comment about the ferry to Seattle on my blog. Because I’m a diehard Grey’s Anatomy fan and ferry boats are, if you’re not familiar with the show, a THING.
We’re Reform Jews. I’ve had two LGBTQ rabbis. The poor kid was doomed from birth. And, yes, there’s often very dense fog on Puget Sound, and sometimes the ferries and the container ships will cross paths, but I’m pretty sure we all have equipment to prevent collisions of that magnitude. But given the condition of our fleet, who knows what could go wrong next?
Rainbows are a natural occurrence, are they screaming at God every time one graces us with their presence in the sky?