YOUR PRIDE: WHAT IS IT FOR?
When i say thay it is the first pride month after i came out of the closet some reacts with: weren't you a proud loud fagot for over 20 years? Well - both things can be true.
Until October 2025 i did not come out of the closet.
When I was 15-16ish, my rabbi caught me with a man and i was sent to conversion therapy + forced to write and read out loud on my high school a text explaining that what i did is terrible and will never do it again (spoiler: i did).
After getting kicked out of home and after finishing my homlesness period, i went back to the closet. I was confused and afraid and needed my time. Things happened and i found work in the israeli parliament and when my colleague and flatmate "caught" me kissing a boy, she convinced me to come with her to my first pride as a "straight supporter" and then left me at the house of her faggots friends to what became my first drugs experience and more important - my first orgy.
Around the same time, i opened an anonymus internet forum (remember those years? Circa 2002) for people like me, from ultra religious background and LGBT tendencies and them my second KICKED OUT OF THE CLOSET HAPPENED.
in the morning, many messages appeared in the forum, revealing my full name and claiming i started it to turn religious minors gays by fucking them. By lunch time at work, many colleagues started to come to my office saying that they received a strange pager message from me flirting with them but nothing prepared me to 16:00 when a parliament member from a religious party took the podium in the assembly room and screamed at my boss that he has "homoist" in the office and it is disgusting because i am worst than an animal. Lovely.
I collapsed with what i can now describe as a panic attack. My sweet boss that understood the all picture of an organised attack on me called his sweet gay son that lived in London. He called 2 other friends and they came to take me to a hotel paid by my boss and make sure i am safe from myself and from others. They also got me a lawyer as we learned that the claim of me fucking minors was sent to the police (they investigated it as they should, and found it wasn't true and we didnt even have minors in our group and forum).
[News article and google translation in images. Transcription and translation on alt]
So yes, I learned to be proud and at some point very loud but i never had the chance to come out of the closet on my own terms, until last year.
The rediscovery of myself as a trans woman and the permission i gave to myself to live it, also heal that old trauma and the theft i felt when could not come of the closet myself.
In the first night of the jewish holiday of passover, there is a part for the family to read before dinner about different versions of the question THIS CELEBRATION: WHAT IS IT FOR? and they get a detailed answer so here i am answering as well:
THIS PRIDE: WHAT IS IT FOR?
For the fact that u tried to change me, to chase me out my mind, to humiliate me, to lie about me and to kill me but nothing worked and i am still here. I cant find a better reason to be proud for.
HAPPY FUCKING PRIDE MONTH! GO CHOCK ON YOUR HATE!!!
