Pride, 365, 2.0

 - by Dustin Woods
  Visionary Columnist

Last year, for Pride month, I wrote about being as authentically your gay self as you possibly can without concern for what other people might think.

As with all my columns, I practice what I preach and spend most of my year scantily clad in my mostly Andrew Christian-designed wardrobe. I’m not sure where I will get more items to add to my wardrobe now that Andrew has retired and closed down his website, but I know that I don’t intend to stop wearing outfits that represent my true self.

What I have found in my time practicing this fashion experiment is that I feel more comfortable in my own skin, I get compliments from wonderful allies, and I find out who the overt bigots are very quickly.

I am certain that we can all use a little more love in our lives, so I thank every ally who saw my outfits and complimented me on them. I hope we all continue to practice freely sharing compliments with each other. It’s a trait I am mindful of exhibiting, given that compliments are easy, especially when true.

The positive reinforcement I received from the public helped me understand that I am worthy of attention, and even of affection. Growing comfortable with one’s body may not be a linear process, especially given the extreme focus our community places on weight and fitness. A focus I myself feel inexorably drawn to. However, I have found that I can degrade the direct reverse relationship that my weight has on my body image by not trying to hide my body when it isn’t as skinny as I wish it were.

What we don’t need, however, are people with negative opinions who wish to share them even though they haven’t been prompted to do so. If you don’t like my outfit, I don’t need you to yell “F*(&%ing faggot” out the window of your beat-up truck as you drive by. I may be as queer as anyone you have ever encountered, but what does it gain you by announcing that fact other than a reputation for being ignorant?  

With that, I can only assume this person was motivated by deeply held beliefs and that calling out anything different from their own was a defense mechanism. Fear is the strongest motivator, and we’ve seen that the group of people willing to take such clearly bigoted positions is the same group of people who use fear of minority groups to motivate their members into action.

For example, “A gay man exists in short shorts and a tank top rollerblading on a trail, therefore I am in danger of being led astray from my deeply held (probably religiously based) belief system and may fall deeply in love with a man.” That must have been the impetus for such vitriol to spill from this person’s mouth: fear that my being authentically me would lead them to the same conclusion about themselves. 

I could only assume that this cat-caller is a local community member based on their license plate, that they are some form of elected official, or a strong supporter of a certain political party, given their vitriolic hatred for the LGBTQ+ community.

Seems to me as though that Venn diagram forms an almost perfectly overlapping two circles. Maybe they were an aspiring politician making their first political waves by finding a minority to target in their own backyard.

Regardless, I know they were watching me for the maximum amount of time that they could, soaking up every image of me that they could for retention in some mental bank of images in which they could recall later during coital activities.

So I say to my fellow LGBTQ+ brethren that our power may be stronger than we realize. We may elicit more responses than we expected from people with foul mouths and small minds. Still, perhaps we are providing them with the light they need to find their way out of the deepest darkest corners of their own homophobia closet through our simple action of unabashed faggotry.

P.S. On the “F” word, like the “N” word, you don’t get to say it unless the term can describe you yourself. I particularly loathe the term, hurled at me throughout my life like a heat-seeking missile meant to force me to retreat into the closet lest I be found out for who I am. It’s a hateful term that I don’t prefer to say, but sometimes will use a variant of it for a rhetorical flourish.

The Gayly online. 6/1/2026 @ 2:55 p.m. CST.