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Mistress Manners: Gay Pride |
Posted by
callei on Saturday, July 03, 2004 - 05:01 AM PST
As gay pride week approaches, I look back with a sense of nostalgia on all the parades I have been in. I think back on the math that the organizers told us about, that each one of us represented 10 people that couldn’t be there. I wonder about those 10 people and what they are doing now. I wonder what kept them from being able to march with me, side by side for the rights of people to pursue happiness, or at least get laid by the person of their choice.
I also think back on the history of Gay Pride Week: the Stonewall riots, the White Night riot, the phrase “gay village”, AIDS, the enactment of the “hate crimes” bill, the equal rights amendment, “gay” marriage, “Ellen”, rainbow flags, Dykes on Bikes, “gay until graduation, and “I kiss girls” t-shirts. I also remember the friends I have lost to AIDS, hate crimes, police brutality, and murder.
I remember the organizers talking to us kids about why we needed people to show up and march. I remember the speeches and the parties. I also remember the over the top outfits, the men kissing in the street, and all the kids that got lollypops instead of condoms from the condom fairies.
The Stonewall riots were the starting point of the politically active gay rights movement. It splintered immediately into hundreds of factions, partially because there was so much to do, and partially because they could. The White Night riot happened when the man that shot Harvey Milk (openly gay politician) got off with manslaughter instead of getting the chair. Gay villages (one in S.F. and one in N.Y.) became Mecca’s for the young, horney and queer, and strangely, the rents went up as fast as the clothes came off.
I was there when AIDS (called KSOI, GRID, and other series’ of letters meaning about the same thing, “its kills gay men”) hit. I lost a close friend of the family, a man that had babysat me when I was 8. That death was followed by many more, some close friends some total strangers, but I remember the fear, the hysteria, and the sense that something had to be done. I remember the black armbands.
The equal rights amendment, the one that means that husband beating is just as serious as wife beating and that a girl wasn’t asking to be raped just because she wore a dress still hasn’t been ratified. The hate crimes bill is still pending and being fought because it would mean that being mean WHILE beating the hell out of someone was actually worse than just beating someone.
Gay marriage laws are moving forward and people are getting to have the right to share their money with their lover. And this is a great reason to celebrate. “Ellen”, a sit-com about an openly gay woman, ran for a year, another good reason to celebrate. Dykes on Bikes, who have changed their name to include all women that want to ride in the SF Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Parade, have great breasts. Yet one more reason to party. And do I really need to explain why “gay until graduation” and “I kiss girls” t-shirts are reasons to celebrate? I sure hope not.
So what is Gay Pride all about? It’s about sex and death and disco. It’s about community building and networking. It’s about votes. It’s about marketing and freebies. It’s about remembering the people that have died in protest to make it ok to wear an “I kiss girls” t-shirt to the parade. It’s about fashion and fanatics. It’s about real people being people as hard and as loud as they can.
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Gay Pride | Login/Create an account | 20 Comments |
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Re: Gay Pride
by Domkitten (saradevil@saradevil.com)
on Jul 03, 2004 - 11:18 AM
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In a lot of ways Gay Pride is about growing up. As the years pass, as Stonewall becomes a distant memory celbrated with a potluck dinner between aging police and the aging citizens they were bashing, the Gay Movement has grown up.
It needed to, if it was going to be taken seriously. In the hundred or so years before Stonewall, the secretly gay were also coifed, thoughtful, outspoken, and living on a dangerous edge of exposure. Frequently managing to be in the background. But as all things chane, and the gay society became a realy culture group it went through it's inevitable teenage years of rebellion, outrageousness, and outright silliness. And it had too, in order to become a living, breathing entity that could change rights in different ways, the gay movement needed to be truly out and in your face.
And now, we can have Gay Pride, rainbow stickers, pink triangles, topless biker chicks, rollerbladding drag nuns, kings and queens in all ages, shapes, sizes, colors, and creeds, come together and still be taken seriously.
Queer culture had to explode, and then reshape itself, and learn to find a niche both in and outside of society, becoming better and more recoginzed (Queer Eye, L-Word, Ellen, Oprah, Martina, Poppie, etc. etc.) more notorious (Dan Savage, Nick Sedaris, Log Cabin Republican Party ), and more acceptable (Too Wong Foo is the best example of this to date, but Priscilla is the better movie, Civil Unions, Adoption, and apple pie).
And the realer people get, the easier it will be to change the world.
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Re: Gay Pride
by MystryssRavynDarque (MystryssRavynHI@wmconnect.com)
on Jul 04, 2004 - 09:56 AM
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I recently attended Seattle Pride Fest and this was my first time ever being around so many many people who are open about their choice in homosexuality, bisexuality, or being transgendered. I am not from a town where this is accepted openly. There are too many churches telling people it is wrong, there are too many people having to hide their sexuality. Even if they are known as gay they aren't totally open about it. I knew 4 gay boys and a few lesbians, and I knew there were more than that. Why did I have to hide when I wanted to kiss my girlfriend, why did I have to hide that I liked her and wanted to be with her? I hid it from my parents for so long, and they finally found out and I was glad they did, but I was scared of what they would do. They said they loved me no matter what, though my stepmother still thinks it is a phase. I've been on a date with a girl now, but only one date. We didn't even kiss in public that nite. She still has to hide. I respect her for allowing herself to finally accept who she is and what she likes. Her mother kicked her brother out when he was 17 for being gay, and she is only 17 now and she is afraid she will do the same. I am willing to take her in if that ever happens, and she is going to come visit Devin and I for Christmas. She can be as open as she wants to then. Even though there are so many open people in this world, and the world knows about alternative lifestyle choices, it is still not fully accepted. I hope some day it will be, but I do not see it on the horizon yet.
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