Pride Month: In conversation with The 19th's LGBTQ+ reporters

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Kate Sosin, Orion Rummler, Karen Hawkins

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To kick off Pride Month, LGBTQ+ reporters Kate Sosin and Orion Rummler joined story editor Karen Hawkins to discuss The 19th's newsroom themes for Pride this year: resistance, resilience, recreation and rest.

They discussed what Pride, self-care and allyship mean when the world is on fire — and reminisce about their first Pride celebrations. And yes, it really will cost $5 to wish one of them happy Pride this year.

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This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Kate Sosin: I don't know about you, but I just remember covering Pride for Windy City Times, way back in like 2009, 2010 and feeling like this is so corporate and overblown and just never expecting to be in a situation where corporations would be backing out again and it would have the significance of a big protest event where people's safety would be on the line. I naively did not anticipate this. So it's weird for Pride to mean what it does this year. And I’m curious how you all feel about that.

Orion Rummler: Yeah, I think that kind of speaks to one of our Pride themes this year that Karen helped us tease out, the resistance one. I haven't been covering this as long as you, Kate, but to me it's shocking to see what's unfolded with Target after Bud Light. I think resistance this year is a big theme for us.

And the other part of our theme that's most exciting to me is the rest part. A lot of queer and trans people I know are just tired. I feel like I spend so much energy at work covering everything else, and when something like Target pulls their Pride merch, I really just feel tired. I don't even have the bandwidth to have an emotional response to it other than like, "OK, OK, like, thanks for wasting our time. I am tired now, of this."

Karen Hawkins: Yeah, I have a couple reactions to it. One, Kate, to your point, I definitely covered Pride for Windy City Times in like 2000, and I 1,000 percent took for granted that these corporations were going to be in the parade, were going to be trying to court our money … while maybe not supporting their queer employees. It was always very clear to me that Pride in Chicago, at least, was a very corporate and very political event.

I did not think we’d get to a point in this country where corporations felt like it was not safe any longer to have Pride merch in their stores. And to your point, Orion, I feel like for me, what's more dangerous than sadness and disappointment and tragedy is going numb. I think the numbness is a little bit of what you’re describing. Like, I’m so tired of this, I can't even, I don't even have an emotional reaction to this anymore, it's just awful.

Kate Sosin: I hear that you have a plan to charge people $5 who wish you a happy Pride, Orion. What's that about?

Karen Hawkins: (laughs)

Orion Rummler: It's about me being tired. It's hard for me to get excited about Pride Month as a concept this month, because we are in that place where … it feels to a lot of trans people like we are being threatened to the point of genocide, which is what we saw with a couple of the lawmakers being threatened with censorship earlier this spring.

And so that's why it feels hard for me to, as a concept, to be like "Happy Pride." I’m not sure how to celebrate in general. Though I’m looking forward to individual events. So anyway, if you wish me happy Pride, that’ll be $5, thank you.

Kate Sosin: Please let me just tag along so that we can see you charge people. I think my mom would owe you a lot of money.

Karen Hawkins: I just imagine you walking around with your Venmo up, like as soon as people say it, just like, "Here's my Venmo to scan, you owe me $5."

Kate Sosin: What do you feel like allyship should look like at this moment?

Orion Rummler: They actually have to pay attention to what's happening, which is a really low bar, but it's really bad. Back like last October, I wrote a story about how trans adults were worried about their health care being taken away. And now that is the case again in states like Florida, and Texas and Missouri.

It felt like some friends didn't believe me or they didn't grasp the concept that that wasn't like a speculative story. Real allyship should be paying attention to what's happening.

Karen Hawkins: Thank you for that, Orion. What that question reminds me of is like, in May, June, July of 2020, suddenly every White person I knew was like, "Are you OK? Is everything OK? How are you doing?" It's like, "No, of course I’m not OK. …. This is horrible. This is a nightmare."

I feel like, for me, the way that shows up sometimes is like checking on people the way you’re describing and being like, "The news is really hard right now, for your community. Are you OK? Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to go get a drink about it? Do you want to go have ice cream about it?"

I feel like you asked us this question, and we didn't ask you: How would allyship show up for you in a way that actually felt genuine or supportive to you?

Kate Sosin: That's something I think about a lot because when I was an undergrad, at this very expensive, private liberal arts school in New England, one of the things that I read about and talked about was just to think about the fact that I was White, like in every situation and how that informed how I would navigate a situation and how I would take up space. I feel like I need to challenge myself to do that all the time. When I enter any space, reminding myself, as silly as it sounds, that I’m White helps ground me in the fact that my experience is not normal. It's not everyone's experience, and it informs both how I’m going to navigate through a situation and also it's going to change the lens that I have in a way that is not always going to be appropriate or right for a situation.

I think in terms of thinking about this for cisgender or heterosexual people, it’d be so helpful if folks just remember, "I am straight, I am not transgender, and I have a privilege when I enter the space. The world is built for me." Every time that you enter a bathroom, you go clothing shopping, you go to join a sports team, you go to get health care, the world is built for you in a way that it's not built for everyone. And it doesn't mean you need to feel guilty about it, because that doesn't help anyone or it doesn't mean you’re bad. It just means that you’re navigating this in a very different way.

Karen Hawkins: I think it's really such a good frame for it because of course, I think about being Black all day long. All day, every day. Every time I see a Black person, and there's only two in my neighborhood, every time one of them walks by I’m like, "Ah!" There's one guy who's got a fancy dog, and every time I see him I feel like, "Is today the day I run outside and I’m like, ‘Hey!’?"

But yes, being an "other" identity for which the world was not built for is something I think about all time.

Kate Sosin: Do you all remember your first big Pride event? And will you take us there? What did you wear?

Karen Hawkins: I think I had this gray tank with red and white piping. I do believe it was either 1998 or 1999. I marched with my friend Urooj.

Kate Sosin: Who were you marching for?

Karen Hawkins: I think that was the year I marched with Asians and Friends. I somehow ended up in the front, holding the banner that said "Asians and Friends," and the entire parade route people were, like, "Wait, what?"

Kate Sosin: That's very Chicago Pride. You’re like, "Which float am I part of? This random one."

Karen Hawkins: (laughing) I feel like when I was younger, it was much more fun to be in the parade than to watch it, and now I would never be out there for five hours.

Kate Sosin: Totally.

Orion Rummler: Funny enough, my first Pride, I was also in the parade. So I think that's the only way to do Pride for the first time.

Kate Sosin: Who did you march with?

Orion Rummler: It was Atlanta Pride, and I was 14 and I went with my high school GSA and also my mom. I brought a rainbow flag that I still have because I cried and I got mascara on it. My mom was in theater, and she loves to craft, and she made these huge silver wings and she was having a great time. Whenever the Westboro Baptist Church people were there, she used her wings to block the children.

I also came out as bi to my mom, like, as we were in the parking garage on the way to the Pride parade, and she was like, "Yeah, we’re literally going to the Pride parade."

Karen Hawkins: I love her reaction was like, "Yeah …"

Orion Rummler: "… big shocker. Thanks."

Orion Rummler: Kate, what was your first Pride?

Kate Sosin: The first one that stands out to me really in Chicago, I was on a float for the sex toy store that I worked at.

Orion Rummler: Iconic.

Kate Sosin: My mom had asked to attend that parade. And I was like, "No, you haven't done anything for the queer community this year. You’re not an ally yet. And you have to do more."

But really, it was just that I didn't want my mom to know that I worked in a sex toy store and was going to be on this float. So my mom, sweet lady that she is, spent that whole next year, joining PFLAG and getting involved so she could go to the Pride parade. She got really involved and has become like an amazing queer ally.

Karen Hawkins: Oh my god, does she know this story or is she about to find it out?

Kate Sosin: Oh no, my mom knows the story. She knows the story of, like, a giant rolling bed down Halsted Street.

But that was my first major Pride. And then my last because after that I got a job reporting and could not do that. But you know, my mom never stopped. A few years ago, my mom barged into the office of Kelly Cassidy, who's an Illinois state representative who's gay. She demanded gender marker Xs on IDs because Illinois didn't have them yet. And I had to text this source of mine and apologize and tell my mom to get out of Kelly Cassidy's office.

Orion Rummler: Oh my god, you interrupted her sit-in.

Karen Hawkins: I will say, so as not to leave Jessie Mary, my mother, out of this, she's also an ally and may or may not have tricked her United Methodist congregation into becoming a reconciling congregation by describing it vaguely at the end of a very long meeting. She was like, just one last agenda item and presented it like, "It means that we support all people," and like all these old White people are like, "That's fine. Of course we do." And then she's, of course, slapping rainbows on everything.

Kate Sosin: Bless our mothers.

Orion Rummler: Happy Pride to our moms.

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