Pride Month offers countless festivities for LGBTQ+ Seattleites to proudly celebrate authenticity, inclusivity and community. While these parades and parties bring together thousands of people across backgrounds, still not everyone sees themselves fully reflected in the flurry of rainbow flags and floats. LGBTQ+ people from all kinds of lived experiences celebrate Pride in a diversity of ways. Because of this, some Seattleites seek out Pride events geared toward people who share and celebrate similar cultural and gender identities to their own.
This year, we checked in with some of Seattle’s alternative Pride organizers and advocates to see how they hold space differently for their community’s unique identities.
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Blaire Sebren wasn’t out as transgender when they attended their first Trans Pride Seattle event. They knew only one trans person, the friend with whom they tagged along to the party in Cal Anderson Park that summer of 2014.
Growing up in conservative Ellensburg and Yakima, Sebren hadn’t even known trans people existed. Caitlyn Jenner hadn’t yet come out in a bombshell Vanity Fair cover story. Laverne Cox had just made her breakout turn in “Orange Is the New Black.” In their early 20s, Sebren was only just starting to question the gender binary prescribed to them, clicking through YouTube videos in pursuit of something they felt in their bones but didn’t have the words for.
Sitting cross-legged on a blanket in the grass that June afternoon, Sebren became aware of a whole new world populated by folks living true to who they were. Tables around the perimeter offered information on hormone therapy and trans-friendly doctors. Performers danced joyfully on stage, and attendees danced along, clapping and laughing.
“I didn’t have any exposure to that world before then,” said Sebren, an artist and educator now living in Bellingham. “It was my first time seeing so many trans people in one space, just living and being. It was kind of my foot in the door to being able to come out, to seeing a future and what living life as a trans person can look like in community.”
Years later, after they’d come out as trans, Sebren began volunteering for trans causes. They now serve on the board of Seattle nonprofit Gender Justice League, which produces the city’s annual Trans Pride event.
Now in its 10th year, attendees and organizers say Trans Pride, taking place this year from 6 to 9:30 p.m. June 23 in Volunteer Park, is a place for community; for safety in numbers; for the rare, life-affirming experience of being one among hundreds of trans people together in one place. In the face of widespread transphobic legislation and rhetoric across the country, it’s a haven where the Seattle trans community can be themselves.
Kai Aprill-Tomlin, communications manager for Gender Justice League, believes the Seattle event is likely the longest-running Trans Pride event in the country. While trans people and groups almost always have a presence at larger Pride Month events, it’s rare they have a dedicated space, Aprill-Tomlin said.
This year’s event will feature music, performers, food trucks and educators. Past events have included a march through Capitol Hill’s streets, but after the 2022 march was canceled due to COVID-related scheduling snags, organizers decided against reviving the practice in 2023.
The city of Seattle requires marches to include a police presence, and Aprill-Tomlin said many attendees felt safer doing their own thing without police in attendance. In their place, GJL works with community-based groups, often members of the trans community themselves, who are trained to maintain security in ways that reflect the diversity of attendees, Aprill-Tomlin said.
“Safety looks different for everyone,” Aprill-Tomlin said. “It’s something you tend to be aware of. I’m a white trans man, and what feels like safety to me is going to be different from what a Black trans woman may need.”
Like Sebren, Aprill-Tomlin remembers his first Trans Pride, before joining GJL staff, as a revelatory experience. He was in the midst of coming out and transitioning, an often lonely and isolating process. But he remembers warm welcomes from fellow trans folks in bright, sequined outfits, hugs from strangers, talking with elders who shared what Seattle was like for trans folks in the 1980s and ’90s. He remembers suddenly feeling he wasn’t alone.
“It was just a beautiful feeling to feel like I was part of something,” Aprill-Tomlin said.
Now that he’s helping to organize the event, the lead-up to Trans Pride is undeniably a little more stressful, Aprill-Tomlin admits, what with all the moving pieces needed to make it a memorable day for everyone. But he now sees just how valuable the event is in a new light. It’s a powerful force for mobilizing folks toward important causes, for spreading the word on safety, health care and community support.
This story has been edited to remove comments and a photo from a source following a disagreement about Seattle Times editorial guidelines.