Pride As a Celebration Is De Facto a Protest, But… LOP092

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07/04/19 • 24 min

If there was no prejudice against LGBTQ people, we wouldn’t need to hold Pride parades all over the world during Pride month in June.

We would be part of every day “straight pride”, which is the freedom to walk out and about without ever having the concern about your gender or sexual identity coming into question.

Protests change in size, meaning, and voracity.

To celebrate Pride – to revel openly as who we are, in public out on the streets, holding hands with the person we love, kissing our same-sex partner, making out with our trans lover, dancing in the ecstasy of the freedom of a single day surrounded by our “people” – is not only an act of celebration, but a public display and affirmation that we are here, we are queer, and we require/desire the same rights and freedoms as everyone else.

That in itself is a powerful statement, and while most large North American Pride celebrations might not look like a protest, I argue that they are – albeit for the most part peaceful and celebratory. Pride make a statement about the state of LGBTQ people because of its very existence.

How do we reclaim what Pride originally stood for?

The Reclaim Pride Coalition answered that vital question with an alternative march to this year’s Stonewall50 and World Pride Parade in New York City, June 2019. According to their “Why We March” statement,

“We March in our communities’ tradition of resistance against police, state, and societal oppression, a tradition that is epitomized and symbolized by the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.”

In episode 89, I shared Why Black Lives Matters was right, that uniformed police have no place at Pride, because of the history of violence and oppression by police forces against our community that is visually represented and triggered by the uniform.

On the question of the commercialization of Pride – something I discussed with Jeffry Iovannone in, “Deconstructing the Myth of Stonewall and its Influence on Mainstream Society – LOP091” – the Reclaim Pride Coalition continues with,

“We March against the exploitation of our communities for profit and against corporate and state pinkwashing, as displayed in Pride celebrations worldwide, including the NYC Pride Parade.”

“Denial of equality is immoral.”

As queer people we need to work together for the rights of all – against ideologies, restrictive and fundamentalist religions, racism, sexism, and all forms of prejudice. What hurts us, hurts other, and vice versa. Equality for some is not equality at all.

When we celebrate, we marginalize.

There will always be someone left our of our Pride celebrations. When we celebrate, without historical memory of where Pride came from, we risk marginalizing members of our LGTBQ collective. As much freedom as we feel we may have gained, we still don’t have humane rights for all – we only have human rights, which can be taken away by whoever is in power.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”Wayne dyer

Know your history. Know why you chose to celebrate or party. Is it time for you to stand up and reclaim your pride?

Resources

Pride parade brings 'electric' vibe to Toronto's streets SundayChief says police would have deployed differently if they were welcome at PrideCommunity over hate: We must all stand up for our shared valuesStonewall 50: The Revolution, a four-episode documentary centred on the historic 1969 Stonewall uprising, which explores the past, present and future of the LGBTQ rights movement. I Don’t Need Your Queer Litmus TestFinding God in Pride50 Years of Stonewall: Pride and VigilanceAn American Blueprint or How to Achieve Flying Pride in Your CityWhat is a “Pride Body”?

Image credit: Mary Crandall

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If there was no prejudice against LGBTQ people, we wouldn’t need to hold Pride parades all over the world during Pride month in June.

We would be part of every day “straight pride”, which is the freedom to walk out and about without ever having the concern about your gender or sexual identity coming into question.

Protests change in size, meaning, and voracity.

How do we reclaim what Pride originally stood for?

“We March in our communities’ tradition of resistance against police, state, and societal oppression, a tradition that is epitomized and symbolized by the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.”

“We March against the exploitation of our communities for profit and against corporate and state pinkwashing, as displayed in Pride celebrations worldwide, including the NYC Pride Parade.”

“Denial of equality is immoral.”

When we celebrate, we marginalize.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”Wayne dyer

Know your history. Know why you chose to celebrate or party. Is it time for you to stand up and reclaim your pride?

Resources

Image credit: Mary Crandall

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Deconstructing the Myth of Stonewall and its Influence on Mainstream Society – LOP091

A Living OUT Leadership Interview with Jeff Iovannone and Ken Gault

In this special "Pride" episode, we discuss the “Stonewall origin myth” and why the mainstream assumption that “gay liberation” started with Stonewall is both problematic and harmful.

According to Jeffry Iovannone, one of the two commentators on this episode,

“The danger of the Stonewall myth [...] lies in the fact that it has become not only one story LGBTQ people tell about themselves, but the story we tell about ourselves. Stonewall is not just a narrative, but a meta-narrative: a totalizing account regarded as a universal truth that excludes other narrative threads and possibilities.”Source

Ken Gault – our "Gay Elder" commentator this episode – was born in 1951 and has the lived experience of growing up in the time preceding the singular event known as the Stonewall riots. He remembers going out to the bars before 1969 and seeing people who were happy to be among others like themselves. Surprisingly, Gault didn’t hear about the riots until five years after the event. So what does that tell us about how Stonewall has been configured in our collective psyche as a “tipping point” in our LGBTQ history?

We move through history, not to discuss the events of Stonewall themselves, but to better understand all the other layers of history that have brought us to this point in time. We consider the origins of what we call Pride today, the examples of bravery, empathy, and the human strength of those who fought, gave care, and died during the AIDS crisis, what we have fought for over the past 50 years, the commodification and commercialization of LGBTQ Pride, the issues of privilege, visibility, the ignorance of history, and police at Pride.

Speaker Bios

For over 50 years, Ken Gault has been an active participant, observer and raconteur in the gay communities of Montreal, Baltimore and New York: the turmoil of the ’60s and Stonewall, the excesses of the 70s, the harsh realities of the 80s, miracles of the 90s. And this millennium: a new beginning or business as usual, political power or personal growth? Stay tuned, “GUncle” Ken explains it all for you. Follow Ken on Medium where he pens his “On This Day” series at Th-Ink Queerly and on Facebook.

Jeff Iovannone is an activist-scholar, writer, educator, and researcher from Buffalo, New York who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and specializes in gender and LGBTQ studies. He is the creator of the blog Queer History for the People, a columnist for Th-Ink Queerly, a member of the Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project, and is a founding member of Body Liberated Buffalo, a volunteer-run activist and advocacy group that works for body liberation in Western New York. He first appeared on the Living OUT Podcast in, Jeffry Iovannone: Deconstructing the Ideal Gay Male Body – LOP077.

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References

Stonewall Was Not the Beginning of the Gay Rights MovementThe Participation of Uniformed Police at Toronto Pride in 2019 – LOP089Pride: Party, Protest, Or Both? – LOP004Pride: Should We Party, Protest Or Both?Gay Men and The New Way Forward by Raymond Rigoglioso

Image credit: yosoynuts

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Next Episode

The Prejudice of PrEP: You’re Fucked if You Don’t Bareback – LOP093

Bareback Privilege and the Demise of Risk-Aversion

There's a new kind of gay male sexual privilege, one that’s entering dangerous areas of health, disease control, and prejudice: gay men who are on PrEP and only have bareback sex.

There Is Risk in Everything We Do

“As renowned PrEP educator and marriage and family therapist, Damon Jacobs, thoughtfully pointed out in a piece for The Advocate titled, “Sex With PrEP, Like Life, Is Never Without Risk,” 133 pedestrians are killed in New York City each year by cars. Just walking out on the street is dangerous. There’s risk in everything we do.”Source

This period in history – the use of PrEP – reminds me of HIV shaming that happened in the 80s and 90s. Gay men who were negative (or thought they were) would shame HIV+ men by shunning them, which was most visible in online dating profile. You could read ads that said, “HIV- only”, or “Only safe and clean”, etc.. The truth is that anyone could lie and say they were HIV- or simply not disclose if not asked.

I remember having sex with a guy I met sometime early 2000s. I was fucking him with a condom and I noticed he had a tattoo of an AIDS ribbon. It was in an innocuous place that I only saw because of the position of his legs in sex. It took me out of the moment and confronted me with my own prejudice, but we keep playing and the sex ended well. It was a reminder to me that if I was protecting myself, I could relax. I hadn’t asked him prior to meeting about his status, probably because HIV had been around for over 20 years and the routine of asking, or being freaked out about someone having HIV had diminished – but clearly my fears and prejudice had not.

Human Behaviour and Unconscious Choices

We often make choices that are not in alignment with our best judgement, let alone our values, when we are denied something we want. In this case, the denial of affection and sex based on prejudice can lead to unhealthy choices and behaviours. In the late 90’s I witnessed the rise of so-called “bug-chasers”; individuals who actively sought HIV+ partners to agree to fuck them raw in the hope of seroconversion. Their desire was to have what they felt was denied them, the freedom to have sex “the way nature intended”.

Basic Human Needs

These choices – that of the bug-chaser to seek seroconversion – were psychological, based in human need and self-worth. Add onto these choices the social fabric of exclusion, being “othered”, not feeling accepted for who you are as a gay or trans man, and so on. Many of us took a self-righteous approach, assuming a higher moral ground, when in fact, there were many of us who secretly longed to ditch condoms and just “get it over with.” This is part of what lead to the term, “condom fatigue”, which sadly misses the real and deeper human truth entirely. As an already oppressed and marginalized group, now you’ve taken away our freedom to have sex however, and with whomever we want. The golden age of free, uninhibited gay sex was over. We had lost, what felt like, our only privilege.

What is this universe we live in now?

For the longest time you were taught to ask about your partner’s status, and many HIV- men had to face rejection on an all-too-regular basis. Then dating apps allowed users to select HIV status, sexual preferences, last testing date, and options like “negative on PrEP”, etc.

While those options are useful for making choices – having too many choices is problematic. Psychologically, when we are faced with too many choices, we have a hard time making a decision. We see this in supermarket research on consumers buying behaviours. If you have a shelf for jams and you have 10 flavours, with five companies offering the same 10 flavours, how do you choose? What if three of the brands are all on sale? Now make the comparison to the list of labels on a profile on Grindr or Scruff. Sometimes there are so many variables, not including the personal description that may be see...

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