I spent the eve of pride month in a holding cell in the Oklahoma County Jail…
by Solas Evans, he/him/his
Content note: this personal narrative contains descriptions of suicidality, forced institutionalization, incarceration, police violence, transmisia, and queerphobia. It also includes a call to action for cis gay folks and allies.
I’m writing this on the 5th day of pride month. A Thursday, which is also my shot day (in which I give myself a weekly injection of testosterone). As if being trans isn’t painful enough in *gestures about* this timeline, it also involves psyching myself out to stick a needle in my body 4x a month. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I have the privilege to receive gender affirming care, when so many of my trans siblings don’t have the access because of financial barriers, policy barriers, medical transmisia, fatphobia, or other socio-normative barriers, is not lost on me. And, I remind myself weekly, metamorphosis often involves some layer of pain. The shedding of skins, of beliefs, of yourself, while a beautiful ending, is a death of sorts. I’m struggling this week, to give myself my shot. I feel more of a shell of myself than I have in awhile. Which is saying something in a year that has tested my emotional, mental, and physical endurance time and time again.
I think about the jokes about “during pride month?!”-ing our way through every inconvenience, and I can laugh, and also sit in the irony of how far removed my experience of a pride month feels from the colorful, white-washed, joy-centered, worry-free spaces that I see show up time and time again at prides across the country. And I think, abandoning community for personal joy? During pride month? During a genocide? During ongoing attacks on 2STGNC+ community that leave us struggling to stay alive? As fellow servicemembers are forced from the military simply for being trans? While so many of us need money invested in survival? While we’re regularly waiting for the next SCOTUS opinion? While our community members are being stolen and disappeared? A party? During pride month? Is that what we’ve made of the legacy of violent and courageous rebellion against policing at Stonewall that supposedly is at the root of this month?
I spent the eve of pride month in a holding cell in the Oklahoma County Jail.
Deadnamed, detained, stuck with so many other folks whose circumstances landed us side by side in one of the worst places we could possibly put people. My alleged crime? Riding my bike through the park where OKC will celebrate pride later this month, before it was technically open (didn’t imagine the park with no fence or gates had hours in which people couldn’t spend in the space) and not complying with the officers who violently attacked me as a trans and queer person, welcoming me into pride front with a less than creative slew of transphobic and homophobic remarks. I know to some extent I am lucky, to be out of the cage now, to be surrounded by folks who are committed to living our shared values, in making community a practice, and in navigating the criminal punishment system. But real luck, would be never having been put in a cage to begin with. Never having that be a risk for just existing as a trans person out in the world.
So now on my shot day, I’m thinking about my court date tomorrow. I’m worried about preparing how much more transphobia and queerphobia I am going to have to endure. The deadnaming and misgendering seem to be a guaranteed part of it? Will I have to encounter those officers again? Will they spew the same hate in the glaring lights of the court on the record? I’m not gonna lie, the entire experience, broke something inside of me. Happy pride, I guess.
I have been transitioning for two years, and ever since I started I couldn’t wait to have facial hair, to pass, finally. But how naive I was about what that would also cost me. I have been having issues with my ID for the last 6 months, being denied entry, refused to be sold things that require IDs because I do not resemble, any longer, the dead name on my ID or the gender I was assigned at birth, a blessing and a curse. One that I really felt the repercussions of as the police started to interrogate me about my sex, with questions like “what the hell are you, are these fake IDs, you must be homeless, are you a part of that letter group?”
I was in Oklahoma City in the first place, because the week prior I had been hospitalized at a crisis care center for a failed attempt to die by suicide. I spent that week being held by the state (“for my protection”), in a facility where doctors and therapists blamed my mental health issues on having my gender affirmed, the doctors literally said they wanted the treatment plan to be that I stop taking testosterone, and that they refused to adjust any of mental health medications, because they believed the issue was that I was taking testosterone and I wouldn’t be dealing with suicidality if they could deny me the one piece of gender affirming medical care I was receiving. Because it has to be the care, and not the crushing weight of trying to survive as a trans person? I went into the hospital knowing the reasons for my depression, for my anxiety, for my PTSD, knowing as a trans man and a military veteran that I sit at a disproportionately high risk of dying by suicide, and instead of using the time I was in the facility to safely test medication changes or provide me with coping mechanisms and resources to stay alive, they wanted to focus on something that was not only not the problem, but one of the things keeping me alive.
And so when cops found me on my bike and decided to attack the same pieces of me holding me together…it all broke. Because in an orange jumpsuit, with my dead name under my picture, waiting in the glaring lights of holding and no clue about how long until I could see the sunshine again, I thought about what it would mean if pride wasn't treated as a party, but instead as a community-centered response to get folks most excluded and harmed resources to keep us alive in a hostile environment.
I don’t need to see a fucking rainbow in a window, I need mental health care. I don’t care that your business took the day off to walk in a parade, I need affordable housing. I don’t want hundreds of thousands of dollars from the community going to a park that hired the security guards who detained me harassed me, then furthered that harm by calling the cops. I need protection. I need the safety to thrive.
I am far from the first trans person to demand this. I think about Sylvia Rivera in 1973, who took the stage at Pride in New York to a round of boos, as she dared to disrupt the cis gay revelry with reminders of the need for safety and liberation and resources. She tried to die by suicide later that day.
Rivera walked on that stage and famously said, “Y’all better quiet down. I’ve been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help and you all don’t do a goddamn thing for them….I will not put up with this shit. I have been beaten. I have had my nose broken. I have been thrown in jail. I have lost my job. I have lost my apartment for gay liberation and you all treat me this way? What the fuck’s wrong with you all? Think about that!”
I wish, 52 years later, that outrage didn't resonate so much. I wish that Rivera’s revolution would have been carried through generations, rather than sit largely unattended, while folks sold out for campaigns about normalcy and access to rights under the law of a system that was never going to include most of us. I want to leave a movement legacy of freedom, not one of suicidality and incarceration and festering resentment and rage.
On my best days, I can almost believe it when my friends tell me I am a miracle and a joy. But I deserve liberation and life free from the harms of policing and incarceration, even on my worst days.
I was riding my bike through the park that is home to OKC pride. I was having a suicidal episode. And in both of these instances the institutions couldn’t see past my transness and recognize the human being underneath.
So here I am on the 5th day of pride month, on my shot day, a day that should be celebratory, a ritual of me being closer to myself, and I am struggling to shake the trauma off of me, I am struggling to see to feel lucky to have walked away, to have my life, to not have been beaten more, to not have been forced into solitary confinement the entire time I was held. And I know so many of trans siblings, so many people of color, so many undocumented people have had a far worse fate than mine. I sit here on the 5th day of pride month, and I don't feel happy or proud or celebrated. I feel largely forgotten. I feel like one of the many people whose existence and safety is the expense at which you have your parties and fun.
I don't need you to save me. But I need you to listen to me. To listen to my trans, Two Spirit, and gender non-conforming siblings. To center us this pride. By the people, for the people most marginalized and excluded, rather than at our expense. Joy isn't resistance when it happens to the detriment of those most harmed, when it further feeds into the systems that police and attack and cage our bodies.
This isn't a pity party, or a way to shame you, this is a call to action that pride month should be so much more.
How am I to feel pride when I’m scared to go for a walk, wondering if at any moment are the cops going to show up and start harassing me? How can I show up to pride in the place where security guards called on cops to join in harassing me? What is there to be proud about when my friends have to think twice about what they are wearing before they step out their door, worrying if what they're wearing might make them more likely to be subjected to harm. How can I feel pride when I am not sure if any of the nearby venues will allow me to pee without policing my gender. How are we to feel pride when we are fighting off panic attacks, during our work day, merely just trying to exist and do the work, when we need rest, but how can we rest when we're under attack and we don't have the basic resources we need to survive.
So this year, I am asking, who is pride for? At what or whose expense? How are you allowing pride to numb you to the immediate harms of the world? How are you celebrating pride while a genocide continues, while trans folks like me are locked up blocks away at one of the deadliest jails in the country? How is your joy resistance when it is not grounded in organizing? How is your joy resistance when families are being torn apart and folks are being disappeared by ICE? Pride wasn't some nonviolent, permitted protest. It was a violent, anti-cop demand for revolution. So, what's pride going to be for you, for us, this season? Is it the fight to keep folks like me alive? Or is a party removed from the context of our current conditions? You get to decide. We get to decide together.
In the words of Sylvia Rivera, REVOLUTION NOW! Happy Pride.
Photo of Solas with colleagues and friends Mauree and Cole, photo by Alexandrea Delgado. ID: three people stand smiling and laughing together in front of a backdrop of rainbow colored paper rings.
Solas (he/him), is a trans man, a community organizer, a veteran, and a member of the Freedom Oklahoma team. 2SLGBTQ+ liberation is personal for him, because it's a matter of staying alive. And it’s personal for Freedom Oklahoma, because we want Solas and every other 2STGNC+ person to stay alive, and have the resources, community, and safety to thrive, everywhere we call home.
We know hearing, holding, and processing this information is heavy. We also acknowledge community spaces may be hard to find and that we live in a state and society without adequate mental health resources, especially those that are affirming to 2STGNC+ people. And to that end, some possible resources include warmline Trans Lifeline & Thrive Lifeline are trans led and operated - Thrive specializes in serving 2SLGBTQ+ adults. BlackLine operates through unapologetic Black LGBTQ and Black femme lenses. The LGBT National Help Center handles all calls in-house with trained LGBTQ+ volunteers. 2SLGBTQ+ crisis hotlines that may (with or without consent) engage police, include The Trevor Project (youth focused) and 988 (though their 2SLGBTQ+ youth specific option will shutter mid-July).