Curran Butcher Shares the Power of Being True to Yourself and Finding Community

Curran Butcher: Pride is really about finding solidarity and common ground with other people who don't fit within society's traditional conceptions of gender and gender expression and sexual identity. The parties and parades and all that are great, but really pride is not just about the visibility and acceptance of people in the community, but it's about celebrating the diversity of human experience generally and honoring folks who have fought and continue to fight against social and legal prejudice and discrimination. At the end of the day, pride is and always has been a protest. Yeah, it's an act of defiance directed at the law and social structures that punish people for being different and limiting people's liberty. So that's to me really at the heart of it. If you, someone who wants to be an ally, a great place to start is just education. Reading stuff. There's plenty of reading lists you can find online, you know, there's everything from Stone Butch Blues to The Stonewall Reader, The Lavender Scare, are all good ones. You know, there's, there's novels, there's memoirs, there's history books, there's reference material, biographies. Like any, any category, fiction, nonfiction. You know, there's good material out there that you can read to learn more about the community and learn how to be a good ally. I'd say the most important thing that someone can do right now is to pay attention to what's going on in state legislatures, because we're currently witnessing the biggest backsliding in LGBTQ rights in decades, for sure, you know, and bearing that in mind, be thoughtful about what you can do to support LGBTQ people in your life. The beauty of affinity groups is that even if an organization only has so many people from a certain background, having an affinity group makes it easier for them to find each other. Like for me, I'm a bisexual man in a committed polyamorous relationship with two partners. In a lot of ways that kind of puts me out on an island, but thanks to the LGBTQ Affinity Group, I have found other lawyers in the firm who aren't straight. I found other lawyers in the firm who aren't monogamous. It's been really valuable to have, you know, those people that I can reach out to and lean on for their support and their experience. Definitely keep your eyes and ears peeled in terms of the people who are around you. You never know where you're going to find some of your strongest allies, so be open minded and, and be alert for that. To me, it's really important to as much as possible just unapologetically be yourself. You know, those who matter won't mind and those who mind don't matter. I think there's a lot of value in just being yourself.