Thinking about Pride

Or how you wave your rainbow flag is increasingly complex

Happy Pride…ok a little late. It’s been….busy.

I truly don’t flatter myself that anyone notices if or when I post here, but for anyone who might click on the last post to here, it’s been a minute. A month. A Pride month’s worth.

Turns out doing 15 Pride talks in June on top of editing someone else’s book, on top of trying to finish two of your own (ok let’s be real I only worked on one) is…a lot. But we’re mostly out the other side now, and just under the wire to talk about Pride.

I’ll be honest I’m not sure what Pride month means (other than minor exhaustion). Both more broadly in *Gestures Wildly* all this, and for me personally. But I guess let’s start with the big issues…I mean why not.

For me given the utter dumpster fire that we seem to live in, specifically here in relation to LGBTQ+ rights, because on monumental world crisis at a time please, for me Pride means education. Not least because it’s what I do, but it’s what I do because as a child of Section 28 it’s what I know we must do.

Now with rights under threat more than ever, across too many countries to name, education is key. If we stop talking about our past, our culture, ourselves, we become easier to erase. I’ve talked a lot this Pride about how ‘Oscar Wilde wasn’t gay when I was at school’. That’s an easy shorthand for all I didn’t learn about Queer history, Queer culture or just…LGBTQ+ folks existing.I speak often on having a history degree but first learning what happened to Gay folks in the Holocaust from a play years later (Martin Sherman’s Bent, for the curious, watch the film, read the text).

Oscar and the Holocaust are two easy reference points to speak to the bigger issue. No we didn’t talk about the Queerness of The Color Purple, or war poets, or Ivor Novello or…any long list of Queer history and Queer people. But with it too we simply didn’t talk about Queer people…and that erased our sense of selves but also for us younger folks our ability to do the standing up for ourselves and our people we needed to.

I genuinely think that a lot of the gap between Millenials and younger Gen Z who accuse us of apathy or not being ‘woke’ enough is because they don’t understand the years of silence forced on us and the catching up we had to do.

But it’s also because of how I grew up that I believe education is key. And that Pride can be found in knowledge of our community, our history.

That too, is how you enact change, fight back. Making sure people are educated. Because if they have the knowledge of what has gone before they can join in a fight to ensure things don’t happen again.

I also believe in showing up, to Queer events, to yes the marches and remembering Pride is a protest. Because visibility, for those of us able to be so is also key. For those who cannot show up.

I don’t think it matters who you show up with. Those waving on the sidelines in support are as valid as those leading the march and those with a political group chanting political slogans are as valid as those turning up with their gay running group, or the leathermen. All of us existing is political and all of us at Pride makes its own statement. The LGBTQ+ politics groups make their statements for us. The Leathermen and other subcultures make statements about Queerness in all it’s forms. And the sportsclubs make a statement that we are here, being Queer in our day to day lives, and that joy is as important as politics as resistance.

I don’t believe in censoring joy in Pride because there is suffering in the world. There is resistancein joy- more indeed than perhaps marching and slogans. Showing the world joy in the LGBTQ+ community, enduring joy despite what anyone tries to do is in fact more subversive and more powerful than many a chant.

For a controversial one, I don’t believe the existence of other suffering in the world should take away from Pride in any shape or form. Pride is a much-needed protest, as well as a much-needed celebration of the community. We, as a community, regularly show up for other causes. We support those minority groups and persecuted individuals as a community. However, we also deserve and need our own day of protest and celebration, separate from the rest of the world. There is space and capacity for rage and empathy for all, but ending one minority group’s protest and celebration does not ultimately directly benefit another. Halting Pride because you feel another cause is more ‘worthy’ does nothing to support that cause truly, and it risks turning individuals who are less engaged in the nuances against that cause. Plus as people, we contain multitudes; we can march for more than one thing, support and condemn at once.

To continue to be controversial, people who work for organisations you don’t morally agree with deserve Pride too. An employee at a bank might not have the luxury of choosing where they work. It might be that or homelessness. They also might not be as politically educated or engaged as some. But as a young (or old!) Queer person they don’t deserve to be screamed at by counter protesters at Pride, it could be their first Pride, they could have just come out…screaming at them or threatening them for the crimes of their employer is not in the spirit of the community.

This also applies to the community attending corporate Prides or those sponsored by organisations with questionable morals. This is down to each person and the decision to dance in a field to an X Factor reject and some Drag Queens does not make a person in favour of murder, or bombs or any other factor. It may mean that they wanted to go to Pride. Maybe they needed that Pride. Perhaps their employer also requested that they go. Maybe they were working or volunteering. Maybe yes, they did just want to get drunk in a field with Drag Queens. And it’s ok if their moral compass isn’t the same as yours. We all draw our lines in the sand differently, and we can educate, but we should condemn the organisations that fund wars. We should ask the organisers of Prides to seek alternative funding yes. But screaming at those individuals who make the choice to attend simply ends up feeling like an attack on our own community, and lord knows we have enough other people doing that. Choose your battles, direct your hate to where it counts. A 22-year-old at their first Pride won’t change the issue; they aren’t the thing you have an issue with. Don’t make them regret coming to Pride.

I think too we can’t expect every person at Pride to be as chronically engaged with the mirco-poltics of hyper local Queer politics. Many people at Pride as allies, as first timers as people who just aren’t regularly part of our local ‘scenes’ won’t know if x or y Pride organisaion, or Queer venue is ‘problematic’ or if someone has been ‘cancelled’ and yes people might just want to dance with Drag Queens once a year. But again, we never know if this is someone’s first time tiptoeing into the community, so I ask, again, in these trying times, we treat people with grace for however they participate in Pride.

Which leads me to my own, confusing, sometimes turbulent relationship with Pride. I love to celebrate our community all month long. I adore the opportunity Pride gives me to educate and be part of various events and activities.

And sue me I do enjoy a sliver of Rainbow Capitalism. Regrettably, slapping a rainbow on something will quite often make me want to buy it…and I think again in moderation that’s ok. I do try to seek out things that donate to worthwhile causes, but yes, I love a bit of Rainbow Tats, and if that makes me a bad Queer, so sue me.

But in terms of Pride events, in the traditional sense, they are not for me. I have in recent years found a good balance- I enjoy the march, soak up a bit of Rainbow atmosphere in town after that, and then slink off into the…well, not quite night, mid-afternoon for a well-earned sit down.

Because traditional Pride, with its emphasis on large crowds, loud music, and drinking, is, alas, not for me. And I truly appreciate the importance of club culture to Pride and wholeheartedly support those Prides that engage with it, as well as the people who enjoy it (but also drink water and go home earlier than you think you need to - you’re all too old for that, really). But it’s not for me. It doesn’t reflect my experience of Queerness.

And this extends to many ‘alternative’ Prides too, for some of us we sit in a weird limbo; not mainstream enough for the mainstream Pride but don’t feel ‘alternative’ enough for the alternative spaces. This could be due to age, our personal labels, when we came out, our background any number of things. The thing is there are so many types of Queer human that it’s not as simple as ‘don’t like this Pride do this’ no one size fits all and that’s ok. But as ever really you’ve met one Queer person, you’ve met one Queer person, and we don’t all fit neatly into Pride.

And that’s the nuance that gets missed: for some drinking and club culture or Drag Queens or even yes drugs are all formative important parts of Queer culture, experience. And that’s ok (obviously in moderation for some element). See also the sexual elements of Pride the Kink elements, all of it belongs at Pride should be celebrated at Pride as part of Queer culture.

However, there are many ways to be Queer, and while our community, I think, has gradually grown and adapted to include elements of that. For the sober Queers, those who simply don’t enjoy clubbing, the Asexuals or those who don’t wish to engage in the sexual elements…there are pockets of Queer community for those people. Not enough, but we’re learning. But at Prid,e we fall back on the old ways. It’s drinking, sex and late nights or nothing. And I understand why, and it’s mostly fine to be part of the fringe Pride events instead, with the talks and add-ons that populate the month, rather than just doing that big weekend.

But also it sends a message too, that ‘Pride’ the community is still focused only on the drink, the clubs, the sex…even the Drag (and I am not knocking any Drag Queen you slay girls). However, it feels like there are still many of us who don’t belong in the Pride community's definition, leaving us with no space.

And it’s just about evolution, we can and will carve out new ways to do Pride. It’s happening all the time, but the wheels move slowly, and frankly, right now we should focus on the protest in June; we have the rest of the year to find our people. But as we do focus on the protest in years to come (as sadly I feel we will have to) it’s important to look inwards and make sure we are taking our community along with us, not leaving anyone behind.