Notes From My First Pride as a Trans Man

By Theo Bennett, community contributor

The week before my first Pride as Theo, I had convinced myself I wasn’t going to go. I had a list of reasons. It would be crowded. I didn’t know anyone. I wasn’t sure I deserved to be there yet, which is a thought I have since identified as completely ridiculous but which felt very logical at the time.

My flatmate, who has the energy of someone who takes no nonsense at all, listened to my list of reasons and said: “You’re going. I’m coming with you. We’re leaving at noon.”

We left at noon.

Getting There

I had started my physical transition eight months before that Pride. I was on hormones, my voice had shifted, and on most days I passed without a second glance. But passing is not the same as feeling certain about yourself. And Pride felt big. It felt like showing up as something I was still learning to be.

On the Tube, there were people in sequins at 11am. Someone had a flag the size of a small country. A group of older gay men were singing something I didn’t recognise but joined in anyway because the vibe demanded it.

Something in me started to relax before I even got there.

What It Felt Like

Here is what nobody prepared me for: how much I was going to cry. Not sad crying. The other kind. The kind that comes when something you thought you’d never have turns out to be real and right in front of you.

I cried watching the trans contingent march. I cried when a little kid waved at me from their parent’s shoulders and I waved back and their parent smiled in this knowing way. I cried at a stall selling handmade trans pride pins where the person running it called me “brother” and meant it.

Main character energy? Sure. But honestly it felt like the opposite. For the first time I felt like a supporting character in something much bigger than me. It was the best feeling I have ever had.

The Hard Bits

I won’t pretend it was uncomplicated. There were moments that were loud and overwhelming and a couple of moments that felt like being erased, conversations where trans men specifically felt invisible in a way I hadn’t expected from a space that was supposed to be ours too.

I talked to someone about it later, an older trans man who had been going to Pride for twenty years. He said it gets better and also that the erasure is real and also that we keep showing up anyway. “The alternative is letting them have the space,” he said. “We don’t do that.”

The Part I Keep Coming Back To

At some point in the afternoon, I found myself standing in a crowd of thousands of people, most of whom I would never know, all of whom had in some way fought for the right to be there. Some had fought longer than I’d been alive. Some were fighting harder than I’d ever had to.

I thought about the version of me from five years ago, certain he would never be comfortable anywhere, least of all in his own body. I wished I could have told him about this afternoon. I think he would have cried too.

I’m going again this year. I might even have my own flag.