What does Pride Week mean to you?
Your Honest Opinion
What does Pride Week mean to you?
Dead Robot
The space between gay and straight, stupid and smart.
What does Pride Week mean to you?
10 thoughts on “Your Honest Opinion”
For me, Pride Week means desperately trying to line up a place outside the city to escape to. I’m not kidding. I’ve had it with the crowds, sticky people, porta-potties, sunstroke, projectile vomiting, and soundstage that literally shakes my windows for 72 hours. Get me the fuck outta Dodge.
ah, but i don’t expect television to push beyond stereotypes. well, maybe tvo and cbc used to more (and still do on occasion). but,while tv does just offer us up as neatly-packaged, easily-understood cultural flotsam, everyone with a functioning brain knows this anyway.
women on tv are decorative and braindead (or cunning, manipulative demons. gay men are effeminate, sexless jewellery for hip women with romantic problems, or victims of disease and their (our) own debased appetites. lesbians? butch monsters or delicate wisps who could easily be converted by the right man. aboriginal people are noble and suffer when trees are cut or are hopeless drunks. asians are smart but inept socially. blacks are tough, criminals, tough criminals or tough crime victims. older people are sexless clowns, very wise or very stupid. even non-human animals are stereotyped on tv, so what the talking heads portray us as isn’t worth frothing about.
tv? it’s an artifact now. i’m more concerned with threatening haircuts. and, for real social injustice, there’s the newest post you’ve made to fret about.
I saw Pride in Toronto in ’98 after not having seen the event for at least a dozen years. To me, it was amazing. The size of the parade, the crowd, the hot guys. After seeing a few, it seemed repetitive. I wonder how many of the twinks or circuit boys read books by gay authors or could name a gay Canadian playright. It’s a bit of superficial fun, but at this point I feel I’ve seen enough of that kind of pride.
Actually, thank my brother – he did the “dress up as a nun” thing in the 70s. All I’ve ever done to mold society as we know it today is to twirl a flag in ROTC.
Thank you Andrew. But I differ about the “beyond the stereotypes” line. You need to get a TV and see what kind of queer culture is being shown to the masses. I think we’re still being presented as the sad clowns, the psychotic creepy serial killers or the mincing fashion experts.
not having to work in the pit of pride helps one gain perspective and appreciation, so i’ll be all soft and sweet in my answer.
pride brings a bit of decency out of strangers. well outside of the church/wellesley area people will take a moment to wish queer couples and singles a happy pride (most don’t bother with the ‘week’ or ‘day’ modifiers). quite frequently i have no idea about the sexual orientation of the well-wishers, which is perfect: who cares what anyone’s sexual orientation is? that’s a triumph for all of us. taking a moment to connect with other people in reference to a celebration dear to them shows that we’ve progressed well beyond tolerance and acceptance. queers are actively embraced here in toronto, and all of us who live here should take a moment to appreciate this singular environment.
other queers are more affable, as well. outside of pride week it’s not difficult to avoid eye contact unless one is seeking sex partners. during late june it’s almost impossible to navigate any queer space in the city without being wished a happy pride, often by people who clearly have no lust throbbing in their pants like so much spoiling meat. residents of the city and visitors both seem much more charitable to one another and appreciative of the moment.
politically, we get to witness progress (as well as the vote-weaselling EP refers to). twenty years ago, it would have been utterly unlikely to see conservative politicians buying adspace in gay rags to wish us a happy pride. yes, it’s craven ass-sucking, but it does show that they know their very survival depends on appearing to be decent human beings and not bigots. if we’re astute, we’re not fooled by mere words, but we shouldn’t be dismissive of the progress our society has made. who knows: in twenty more years maybe even the social conservatives will be as indifferent to sexual orientation as the progressives of twenty years past. pride celebrations are not the sole cause of this shift, but they are part of our subculture.
as for our subcultures, many of us now shrug off the ‘main attractions’ of pride (parades, gay-marts, flags at city hall, etc.) and pursue the hidden or underexposed gems. photography exhibits (outside of downtown and/or in january or september) with queer themes or by queer artists, mixed (queer/straight/genderblended) concerts and dance parties, seminars and volunteer opportunities and nature walks and all sorts of events peripheral to pride (yet still quite queer) are more and more popular. good thing, because those of us too jaded to appreciate the purest concentrate of pride need an outlet. also good for us all because they push the boundaries of what is seen as queer and as pride to those outside of our subculture: we’re well beyond the stereotypes now and are unlikely to be condemned back to them. hurray for progress!
that all said, i’ll now repeat a refrain stated many times and in many ways before: take the time to thank your elders now for the society we have today. if it weren’t for old people like DR (just joking, methuselah) pushing boundaries years ago, we’d be stuck with crappy illegal parades occupying one lane on one street, ever-present, rarely-prosecuted bashings, a lack of same-sex marriage and on-and-on.
happy pride. make it what you want it to be.
Pride means a parade in which:
Corporations will compete for my money.
Bars and Cabarets will compete for my money.
Politicians will compete for my vote.
It’s become too crowded and corporate here in Chicago. It’s not fun like it used to be. Last year I rode on the float for the bank I work for. Our “gimme swag” giveaway thing was a rainbow swirled rubber bracelet that people were literally attacking the float for. It was really kinda pathetic.
Call me utopian, but I think that Pride could be a “fun” venue that addresses and supports some serious issues – and not just in our own backyard. I know that we still have a long way to go, but we’re so far ahead of so many!
I’m certainly not in any way complaining about “Pride Toronto” – they’re by all accounts doing a great job, adhering to their mandate and fulfilling their vision, but is it perhaps time to consider reviewing and broadening that mandate? Is it time to go beyond “defending our right to celebrate”? Just a thought.
Split
Remember the word “gay” use to mean “fun”!
Seriously, I’m not too excited about seeing all the half melted “I’M PROUD(ly drinking Labbats)!” body tattoos either.
If we are moving towards “Mardi Gras” then I would hope it becomes more “polished” like Sydney’s. And that takes money.
Thanks for the thought-provoking question – I look forward to the ensuing discussion.
The concept of Pride Week is certainly rooted in advocacy (and still fulfills that role, to some degree), but to the casual observer it seems to have much more in common with “Mardi Gras� than the “Million Man March� or “Tianamen Square Protests�. Obviously the media focus on the parades and parties paints a less than comprehensive picture, but for those of us living outside the ghetto, that’s all we hear about. I wish there was some way that the humanitarian and advocacy faces of pride could get as much airtime as the sequins and super-soakers.
Split
at the moment it means worshipping this video….