June 28, 2020

pride in the time of covid

Manila, 28 June—This weekend marks this year’s Pride festivities, which were mostly done online because of the pandemic. It’s bittersweet, seeing how the community came together to still celebrate Pride, despite the bleak times.

Last year, we were among the 70,000 people who joined the Pride march in Marikina—it was raining, it was so traffic, it was utterly nuts. It was such an experience. It was my first pride with C, and at the time we were hopeful it would be the first of many. We wondered where we would hold the 2020 Pride, because the crowd could only get bigger. There were talks about holding it elsewhere. In my head, I was giddily excited because if that venue was able to host 70k, I could imagine how much bigger the crowd could get given a bigger venue—80k? 100k? And so we dreamed.

And then earlier this year, Covid broke. In the early days, I was naive enough to hope that maybe by end-June, it would be a bit better. Of course, as the days wore on, it became more apparent to me that Covid is changing a lot of things for us for the long-term, including travel and mass gatherings. The parade itself was canceled, but the team running the Metro Manila Pride Org made sure that the work continued where it could—online.

To further dampen everyone’s spirits, LGBTQIA+ activists who staged a peaceful rally in the City of Manila on Friday, the day before Pride’s culminating celebrations, were arrested by policemen. No charges could immediately be cited, but they were still violently taken to the police station. Now, they have to post bail to be released. This government has been exhausting us from all ends, and this is just another incident to be furious about, in a long array of abuses and instances of incompetence and show of gross abuse of power that we have been subjected to since this administration came to power.

But Pride must go on. If, like me, you’re feeling a bit helpless in the face of things, please consider donating to #FreePride20’s bail fund. Details for donating here.

On a lighter note: a friend shared this lifestyle article about hoping, dating and landi in the time of Covid—wlw style. I’m just so happy to read about wlw dating in the news—it’s about damn time. And while I’m more than happy to be quarantined with C (aptly, we marked 30 months together while in quarantine, too!) I can only imagine how much more difficult it must be to be quarantined away from your loved one. I’m one of the lucky ones, but the author of the article above seems to be navigating the dating scene just right! I’m rooting for their happy ending.

While we’re at this: I found myself complaining to C again about the lack of Filipino-written wlw content. I always seem to lose this argument, since it always ends with, You gotta write what you want to read (and for the record: I am never not trying!) but please! I need more wlw stories in my life. I want to not just read them but buy their books, their art, review them, promote them, and form a community around obsessing about them. And I know they’re out there! I just feel bad about not finding them, considering I spent over a decade working as someone who finds things.

Anyway, speaking of things to support, here’s one:

A lot of good things from a lot of young creators—the world is theirs for the taking. I guess at this point, the best we could do as older queer people is to support them. That’s going to be my thing from hereon out.

Speaking of old things: This New York Times article spoke to me: Mourning the letters that will no longer be written and remembering the great ones that were.

There are a lot of books there about the personal letters that great writers wrote back in the day. The one I’ve been itching to pore through is Emily Dickinson’s Open me carefully, which is a collection of her letters to childhood friend Susan Huntington Dickinson (also her brother’s wife—I know right!) and Eleanor Roosevelt’s letters to journalist Lorena Hickok. Let us not forget Virginia Woolf’s letters to Vita Sackville-West.

Indeed, handwritten letters are inherently romantic—they entail a lot of effort and a bit of anticipation. And, at a time before the Internet and the telephone, there was literally no other way to correspond. To reach out to someone at length, you gotta sit down and then send it via courier.

These days, we are connected via several channels—social media and email, for example, allow for multimedia correspondence even. But as anyone who’s had their Yahoo inboxes of yore cleared out without warning would tell you, nothing on the internet stays forever. tldr—Nothing beats print. I mean, this guy’s love letters were found in the ceiling.

Sure, letters are perhaps a dying art—but it still doesn’t stop any of us from trying. I mean, you’re still here reading this letter. :)

Thanks for making it this far.

Xo,

K