Pride and Sacrifice

Sometimes, I look at the lack of articles that we have coming up, I see I haven't tweeted anything in the past couple days, I haven't been keeping up in the zoo group chats that I'm in, and I just think "why am I doing this?" Sometimes I think about the future of the magazine and I think "two articles a week every week until... what? Just forever? Am I going to be running this magazine until I die?" Sometimes a game comes out that I just can't wait to play, and I don't want to put time into being a zoo. Sometimes I can't help but think about how much easier my life would be if I just loved my dog and that was the extent of my zoosexuality. The amount of time that it would save. The amount of stress that it would take off my back. No more worrying about keeping up a content schedule, or trying to keep the community growing. No more arguments or drama or people telling me to kill myself. No more constant nagging fear about the threat of getting doxxed and having my whole life irrevocably changed forever. Sometimes I think about just deleting my accounts, my Telegram, my Discord, and just disappearing. 

Maybe I could step away from this movement, and decide I just want to live my life for me. The great folks over at Zooier Than Thou are doing amazingly on their own. It's not like a magazine is a particularly tough format to copy, I'm sure someone else could do their own thing. Maybe if Tarro goes away, we end up getting to the same results anyway. I certainly don't think I'm anything special. I've got some skills here and there, but compared to the amazing zoos that I have the privledge of working with, I don't really know if I do all that much, other than tweet too much and type a lot of words. 

But then I see a gay couple share a quick kiss in a restaurant. I'll see a trans person working at a store. I'll talk with my coworkers and they'll share their queerness as part of their lived experience. And I think that's amazing. I grew up somewhere where none of those things were really possible. To be queer was seen as something that was wrong, a flaw in your character that needed to be fixed. And as someone bisexual myself, I see these representations of queerness all around me, and they make me happy. My zoosexuality helps me realize just how fragile social support can be. It helps me not take it for granted that I could date either a man, a woman, or someone in between, and that's not something I would need to feel all the same anxiety about as I do dating a dog. 

Those rights didn't come from nowhere. It's not as though one day everyone woke up and said "We actually shouldn't hate the gays." It came through a struggle. It was something that wasn't given, it was earned. It was demanded. 

I think of Marsha P. Johnson, an early queer activist in New York city that was not only gay and trans, but also Black. She lived her best life, and stood up for what she believed in, fought with her whole heart for it, and she paid a high price. She lived on the streets for a long time, she was arrested more times than she could count. She lived through the AIDS epidemic. And in the end, she was killed and her body was dumped in a river.

I think of Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay people to be elected to public office. He wasn't like a lot of politicians who ran on good Christian values, just to be hooking up with office aids on the side. His platform heavily featured his sexuality. He was just a normal guy, not with a background in money or in politics. In a time when gay rights were really at a tipping point, he decided to step up and do something about it. He wanted to do something for his community. And he did. He made the world a better place for gay people. And then, he was assassinated by another politician that didn't like him.

I think of David Kato. A Ugandan man who lived somewhere much more hostile to queer folks than I ever have. He was a teacher who had the audacity to come out as gay, and was arrested for it. He faced constant real social repercussions for choosing to be open about his sexuality. He spoke to a nation that had nothing but hatred in their hearts for people like him, and asked them to show compassion instead. His work got him in a tabloid newspaper where they published the names and faces of 100 gay or suspected gay people living in the country with the title "Hang Them". Even after that, he continued the fight for gay rights up until the day someone broke into his house and caved his head in with a hammer.

Those people all fought and died so that I can wear a pin on my backpack with a bisexual flag, and not have to worry that I'm going to get assaulted on the street. They all gave their lives to a cause greater than them, because they knew that they couldn't just sit back and let others like them suffer. Any one of them could have chosen to stay quiet. To just be themselves in private. It probably would have saved their lives. I'm privileged to be able to be myself. A proud bisexual person who can love who they choose to love.

But I'm more than just bisexual. I'm also zoosexual. I have this canine partner that I love more than the world, that I would do anything for. And I'm not the only one. There have been millions of zoosexuals before me, and there'll hopefully be millions of zoos after I'm gone, so long as the world doesn't blow up or something. And I want to be able to share my zoosexuality with the world in the same way that I can my bisexuality. Not just for me, but for everyone else like me. 

I'm so grateful for the countless people that have helped paved the road to this point. And when I think about that, I know that I have a moral responsibility to keep the road going for everyone else to come. I refuse to be someone who lets others do all the work while I just appreciate it from the sidelines. I know a lot of those same queer people walking with me might not see my zoosexuality the same way I do, but every movement starts somewhere.

This article is about pride. And this year is a particularly important year when it comes to pride. There are challenges to queer rights threatening to tear down so much of the work that we've put in to get here. I plan on doing my part to fight for my rights, because in the end I owe it to the people who helped us get here not to let their work go to waste. And, I owe it to them to fight for the things I believe in as well. I'm bisexual. I'm zoosexual. And I'm really fucking proud.