Views
I Was A Gay High School Student
Keeping It Up For Pride
Keeping It Up For Pride
by Ernie McLeod
Thirty-plus years after the first Gay Freedom Day Parade and Pride Festival was held to commemorate the year-anniversary of Stonewall, is it time to move on? Or is Pride essential to our self-definition and here to stay?
Some within our community argue that Gay Pride is, at its core, a mistaken concept. If being gay is an unalterable given – like eye color – should it necessarily make us proud? Shouldn’t pride be reserved for those who actually accomplish things, which, the argument goes, would eliminate many who turn out for Pride parties but who do nothing constructive towards securing full LGBT rights?
Then there’s the PR argument. We’ve all seen the slick anti-gay videos the Religious Right has compiled from Pride celebrations: guys in leather chaps and microscopic underwear, lip-locked topless lesbians, drag queens galore. Why provide our enemies ammunition by putting our fringe elements on prominent display every June? Even straight allies and some gay people are offended by these shenanigans. If we expect equality, we need to demonstrate that we’re just like them, not sex-crazed freaks.
Finally, there’s the argument that Pride is simply tired, the embarrassing antithesis of postgay chic. Given the progress we’ve made since Stonewall, we shouldn’t need to prove that we’re proud. The constant rainbow flag waving seems desperately outdated, overcompensation for residual shame. Whatever Pride originally symbolized, it’s now about kitsch marketing and empty feel-good clichés. We show up, Pride naysayers claim, because it’s an addiction – time for Pride detox, the sooner the better.
For someone in the process of coming out, marching for the first time alongside hundreds or thousands of LGBT brothers, sisters, and allies can be a powerful action. At least it was for me when I made my Pride debut in Burlington eleven years ago. Though I wore a baseball cap and shades to protect me less from the sun’s rays than from the public’s gaze (what if mine was the gay face selected for the 11 o’clock news?!), by the end of the march I did feel genuinely proud: proud of my newly brave self, of my fellow-marchers, of those who applauded along the way.
Since then, I’ve participated in several more Vermont Prides and in larger events like the 1993 March on Washington, Stonewall 25, and a San Francisco Pride. Last year, I attended Montréal’s Divers/Cité Parade and Celebration. Each was memorable in some way, but the further that first Pride fades into my past, the harder it is to reclaim the exhilarating sense of solidarity and discovery it inspired. A Pride that offers no surprises inevitably gets a bit old hat. I can no longer wear the clever slogan T-shirt/pink-triangle buttons/rainbow-beads uniform with conviction; it’s like trying to squeeze into clothes I’ve outgrown. I now look at Pride less for what it means to me personally than for what it means, period.
As a tool to effect change on specific issues, I’ll venture that Pride doesn’t mean much beyond showing our strength in numbers. Not that that’s insignificant: politicians, for instance, pay attention to numbers. I doubt more and more of them are marching with us just cause we’re fabulous.
Increasingly, however, the political point of Pride rallies is overshadowed by the party, or muddied by an unfocused agenda. It’s difficult to speak to everyone at an event that attracts thousands. Even more difficult when the message you’re trying to convey has to compete with blaring music, festive floats, and lotsa flesh. Pit politics against sex, guess which wins?
Let’s face it, while victories on the road to equality are exciting, the lengthy practicalities of achieving those victories are pretty boring. Filing legal briefs, attending legislative hearings, lobbying, voting: these are not inherently theatrical endeavors. And the one thing Pride must be to survive is a good show. A boring Pride is a dead Pride.
What makes for a good show is, of course, open to debate. As much as I enjoy balloons, boas, boys in bikinis, badassed bulldykes, and bitchin’ babes of all genders, seeing minor variations on these same themes year after year gets tedious. Oh, but how easy it is to criticize from the sidelines. Those of us who do nothing to push the theatrical envelope have little right to complain. We’re all co-producing this show, even if corporate sponsors are playing a greater and greater role in determining the look of Pride, a look that’s skewed towards – surprise, surprise – young, buff, white, and male.
One thing I don’t get is the call for Pride to be more “discreet” lest we offend the straight people, be they allies or foes. Like our foes would just back off if we toned down our parades. In fact – using Kirk and Madsen’s assimilationist manual After the Ball as their guide – anti-gay websites are quick to suggest that a cleaned-up Pride would only redirect their outrage towards exposing our hypocrisy in pretending our sexuality isn’t about sex.
The Right’s right here: our sexuality is undeniably about sex. Wouldn’t it be odd if, within the carnivalesque atmosphere of a Pride parade, we didn’t express that? Allies who wish to avoid having their support for gay rights tarnished by the sight of assless pants and exposed breasts can do so fairly easily. Heterosexuals unthinkingly challenge my tolerance level daily. Should challenging theirs on occasion – even if they are PFLAG Parents – automatically be considered taboo?
Pride is an opportunity to challenge both ourselves and the majority. For a brief moment each year, we control a growing number of streets. What better time to temporarily and creatively invert the social hierarchy? The fear is that if we continue down that road, Pride (if it hasn’t already) will become one big orgy. Somehow I doubt it. I’ve not witnessed much gratuitous nudity or uncontrolled public sex at the Prides I’ve attended, and trust me, I’ve kept my eyes peeled.
Montréal’s Divers/Cité Festival (July 29 through August 4 in 2002) provides one hint of where Pride’s been and where it might be heading. In last year’s parade, 105 contingents marched, from Mères Lesbiennes to the Urban Aboriginal Aids Awareness Project to Gruppo Italiano Gay e Lesbico to go-go boys and leather daddies advertising bars and clothing stores. The week’s other major events included Latin jazz, modern dance, a drag extravaganza, street T-dances, and a Community Day with group information kiosks and curiosities like a dog show in which prizes were awarded to the pets who most resembled their queer owners.
Interestingly, on the Divers/Cité website (www.diverscite.org) one finds scant mention of the fact that it’s an LGBT celebration, though a quick peek around makes it obvious. The emphasis, as the festival’s title suggests, is on diversity and community. This could be viewed as an objectionable dequeering of the event, a marketing strategy, or an effort to be as broadly inclusive as possible without compromising queer content. I prefer to believe it’s the latter. The 2001 Divers/Cité – which attracted 1.2 million overall, 750,000 for the parade alone – reminded me of a gigantic ethnic festival crossed with, say, St. Patrick’s Day. Only instead of playing Irish for the day, everyone (not lucky enough to be born naturally under the rainbow) played gay.
Whether Pride, large-scale or small, will remain eternally relevant is anybody’s guess. I personally hope that it will bend with the times, yet remain a place where those at every level of LGBTQ-ness can come together in relative harmony and find their own place – weather gods permitting – under the sun.
Ernie McLeod, a native Vermonter, will once again sample the delights of Divers/Cité in Montréal this year and perhaps pop in for our quaint celebration, too.