Pride, the month, the holiday...what does it mean to you?

[LeftWriteFemme]

I'm not sure why I'm posting this here other than gay men's Pride and culture seems to me to track alongside Butch femme Pride and culture, so here it goes


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/op...e.html?_r=1&hp

[Massive]

I don't think I've ever wished anyone a Happy Pride, but I may start to do so from now on, and see how it goes, it's different over here, the smaller local prides are less to do with politics, etc and more to do with people from all different aspects of the community getting the chance to get together and celebrate who we are, most just want a decent day where they can have some drinks, meet old mates and potentially make new mates too.

[pinkgeek]

This year most of the high holy days of gay (ok all of them) have had to be skipped for me. I am taking a very intense summer chemistry course as well as several gerontology seminars that don't leave me any moments for frivolity or celebration. What I have had instead is many short intense moments for reflection.

We don't live in a world of full equality, but we've come a damn long way from Stonewall and the times before and after. We have medical clinics (not enough) with specialists who have dedicated themselves to queer medicine. We have more art installations, movies, TV characters, artists and writers than ever before. We have queer police officers, fireman, and politicians. We have an army of allies, a generation of young people who refuse to believe the rhetoric of the right and we have a President who changed his mind, admitting it for the world to witness.

So as I return to building organic chemical models and putting together a veritable library of LGBT gerontology information to take back to Hawaii with me I'm grateful.

I'm grateful The.Gay.Beach (aka Delores Park), the TransMarch and the DykeMarch celebratory festivities ie. drinking->drinking->drinking celebrating->celebrating->celebrating will be around when I'm done with school. (For the sake of my sanity I'm going to assume they will be.)

I'm grateful for the older queers who braved the way before me and unflinchingly support my academic endeavors.

I'm grateful for my generation who celebrates these high holy holidays with abandon when I can't.

I'm grateful for the generation coming up behind me - because it just keeps getting better.

!!!!HAPPY PRIDE!!!!

[Turtle]

June has been a busy time in my life - birthdays, anniversaries, Father's Day, school going into the third week of the month, Juneteenth, Pride, and multiple national conferences I would like to go to ---and sometimes do and sometimes don't...for me and how I like to live my life, too many choices...too much.

I take very seriously, one's development of identity, culture, and one's decisions as to how to be in the self and act in in communnity.

And I take even more seriously the "State," the government, and what liberties it grants or withholds.

And I am indebted to those who have been beaten, arrested, imprisoned, killed, unemployed, hated, ostracized, and isolated and stood up to all the things that people do to each other for people not being the way we think they should be.

I have received much in this life for others actions and I am very present with those Blessings. I am glad for Pride AND I don't have such a celebratory attitude because I do not see the Liberty that I believe should exist.

This thread has brought me to thinking about creating a Rainbow Juneteenth family reunion of some sort.....hmmmm.....

Thanks Sherrie

[Soon]

[theoddz]

I came out as "gay" or "lesbian", I guess, in 1979, while in the USMC. It was "on the quiet" because being in the military and being GLBTQ was a huge no-no and you could lose a military career over it. I knew and know quite a few good Marines, Sailors, Soldiers, but not so many Airmen (simply because I haven't been around them as much) who got ejected by the military simply because they were not heterosexual. I even know a couple of STRAIGHT folks who suffered being investigated by the Naval Investigative Service, otherwise known as "NIS" during the infamous witch hunts that went on during the 70's and 80's. All but one of my own Drill Instructors from Parris Island MCRD were thrown out after a big witch hunt investigation that went on in 1981. It was horrible.

I remember parking a mile or more from a gay bar in Oceanside, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs, CA, in order to avoid the NIS agents who stood outside, on the watch for cars to pull up outside of the gay bars with military stickers on them. Once they had your name, there was a good chance that you'd get pulled in for investigation, or your name would be used in the many lies that the NIS agents would give to those under investigation as a means to coerce a confession from them. You never used your military ID as an age verifier to get into a gay bar. You did that and they had your name, too. This past year, the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy ended and things changed for gays and lesbians in the military. I never thought I'd ever see that, but there it is and that brings me profound joy. I think of all those I knew who were ejected from the military, sometimes with an "other than honorable" discharge, which meant that they didn't get Veterans' benefits, for no other reason than for being gay. I see their faces in my memories now, and it can bring me down if I let it. Then I feel the joy again. I think of how things were then, and then I come back to how good this all is now and how very strong our community is, now that we've all come together into one big loving, vibrant force.

So much has changed in the 33 years since I first came out. I no longer identify as "gay". I'm a queered straight transman who happens to be attracted to women and I'm kind of invisible now. Hey, I understand how some of our Femmes feel now, with the invisibility thing. I see a lot of things both ways now. I think that is a gift, really. Some things you just never understand until you've walked on both sides of the fence. I've seen soooo much change in my years walking through this life. Sometimes I look back and I don't recognize the person I was 30+ years ago. I remember the struggle, though, and the feelings. I remember being shamed and my mother telling me that "there are names for people like YOU." She's evolved since then, I'm happy to say.

This is why I think Pride is important. Now, I have never been to a Pride event. I'm almost ashamed to tell any of you this, I must admit. I have always looked at this community as being proud and outspoken and, well, a community of activists, so to speak. There are so very many, many smart articulate good people here. I'm pretty proud of that!! I've only been a member of this group since about 2005 (over 2 web sites), but in these past 7 years, I've learned that being who we are is a source of pride and strength....at least for me it has been. It's peeled back a lot of layers of shame and marginalization that I felt for all those years of hiding and all the negative comments I've had to listen to all that time. More importantly, I think that since more of us have stepped forward and become visible, we are becoming a lot less marginalized and even more heterosexual folks have stepped forward in support of us and our quest to be treated equally. Visibility is a powerful tool, and it is important for us to live our lives honestly and openly, and be who we are. Only that will lift the veil of ignorance, hate and fear that is really at the root of all the bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, etc. What's that saying?? "Open your mind and heart and your ass will follow"?? Yeah, that's it.

So, about Pride......

I never thought I'd ever see this happen, but it did:



I think, for me, the above made my stepping out, becoming visible and demanding to be treated equally......all worth it. You know, it took a whole lot of courage to do what our GLBTQ community has done over the years. We got that kind of courage from each other, and there is strength in numbers. We have done this, we have moved forward together. That's what we can be proud of.

So yes, Happy Pride to all of us!!! If you're so inclined, get out in the street, wave flags, hug on each other, share your joy and do your part to celebrate in whatever way you choose. Me?? I have to work on Las Vegas' Pride weekend, so I can't attend, but that doesn't mean that I'm not feeling it in my heart, because I do. We have so very, very much to be proud of and it's so worth celebrating.

~Theo~

[Kobi]

June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender pride month, and the rainbow flag — that iconic symbol for gay pride — is flying from Athens to San Francisco to Brazil.

Enter artist Gilbert Baker, the man who first came up with the flag’s design some 34 years ago. After being discharged from the Army during the Vietman War, Baker settled in San Francisco, where he taught himself to sew and soon began crafting banners for gay marches and events, CBS Chicago reports. He eventually befriended Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay elected official. Given Baker’s influential role in the gay community, in 1978 the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade commissioned him to design a new symbol that could be used year after year. Hoping to represent diversity and acceptance, Baker soon settled on the image of a rainbow.

So Baker set to work, originally producing a version of the flag with eight stripes, each color with a distinct meaning: pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for the human spirit. The color pink was not widely available for commercial use at the time, so it was dropped — as, eventually, was indigo — to give the flag an even six stripes.

Although Baker’s design that has seen consistent recognition and served as a worldwide symbol of the LGBT movement, he said flags are “something that everyone owns and that’s why they work. The Rainbow Flag is like other flags in that sense, it belongs to the people.” And indeed, the flag is in the public domain, thus enabling infinite commercial reproduction on everything from beach towels to neckties to dog collars.


Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/06/26/...#ixzz1yvwKIwor

[ruffryder]

I guess for me, Pride is a time to get out and hang with like minded individuals, LGBT people and network. When I say "Happy Pride" it is for visibility and somewhat political. I want people to be aware that I or others are celebrating something we believe in and "are" which is LGTB.

HAPPY PRIDE !!

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by LeftWriteFemme

I'm not sure why I'm posting this here other than gay men's Pride and culture seems to me to track alongside Butch femme Pride and culture, so here it goes


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/op...e.html?_r=1&hp

why so many people, straight and gay, are so overeager to declare its death. And we will never understand the most essential thing about it: how gay culture continues to perform a sly and profound critique of what passes for normal.

There definitely always does seem to be this need to talk about the supposed "identity-less" queer youth in the same way that many claim gay male culture is "dead." Or the "post-gay" culture of well moneyed, well careered, well privileged young gay men who don't see a need for queer community anymore. I think in those cases, it's once more important to go beyond the most mainstream and media-visible people within the queer population, because those are frequently the ones who are completely out of touch with the struggles of many other queer youths (or many other queer folks for that matter). They think that because they are "successful" (in the mainstream sense of the word) that everyone must be in the same way, that their reality frames all realities, that everyone has the same equality they have. The see equality as the right to get married and be a good capitalist.

As Halperin points out, that isn't the case at all as far as the "death" of gay culture among young gay men (or young queers in general, for that matter).

Instead of worrying that the feminine associations of diva worship, interior decorating or the performing arts may make gay male psychology look diseased, the real question we should ask about gay style is what its refusal of canonical masculinity achieves and what it enables its practitioners, straight or gay, to do.

Again, same can be said for all queer culture, although these days it seems that gay male challenges to standards of masculinity seem more successful (as far as straight-identified society beginning to view certain aspects of "femininity" as "acceptable" for men) than the challenges to the norm by queer women or genderqueer folks. Where in the past, women challenging gender norms were slightly more acceptable than challenges to the standard of masculinity, today that seems to have changed. Probably helped along by the images portrayed by shows like The Real Housewives of XYZ that promotes that idea that women shouldn't try to be independent and self-sufficient in order to be "empowered." In its own way its promoting a hyperfeminine standard of dependence on men as somehow empowering, under the feigned assumption that women have already achieved "equality" and so can go back to "chic" dependency that seems more unbreakable within the mainstream today than it was in the 90s.

So yes, it is important, I think, to look at what queer culture's challenges to masculine/feminine standards enables people to do. And that may be precisely why so many people want to declare certain aspects of queer culture (or queer community, queer politics and queer youth) as "dead," or the culture of young queers as non-challenging, normative and apolitical when there is much evidence pointing to the contrary. These challenges that still continue to exist do enable many to do many things that mainstream straight-identified culture does not. To gain access to freedoms that are restricted elsewhere. They claim that our culture is "dead" simply because it continues to be a threat to normative culture and its oppressive standards.

[alexri]

One of the things I've noticed in the past 10 years is how corporate pride has become.

Ten years ago, we had small tables with flyers in front of the state capitol. We marched, we protested, we knew the issues. We were prepared to call the police if we got jumped by the anti-glbt protesters.

Now, it was pride sponsored by Bud Light, with booths from Subaru, Shaw's grocery stores, Blue Cross Blue Shield, some other large corporations, and six booths selling rainbow everything that was made in China. Instead of walking home with an armful of pamphlets and voter info, I could walk home with a shopping bag full of promotional freebies.

I kid you not-- on my way to pride this year, I passed a chain restaurant by the Providence Place Mall. Their staff was trying to figure out how to hang up a rainbow flag, and were actually asking each other which way the flag was supposed to hang (red on top? horizontal or vertical)? Yes it is nice that they were hanging the pride flag for pride. But it was to attract business.

I still think the events are relevant because there is still so much work to do and I know they do help people connect. I see pride events popping up in new communities all over the nation, especially in the south, and I am grateful for that. Pride is often a time for people who have no connection to the community to come out and get the visual reinforcement that no, you are not alone, and yes, there are a lot more of us that people think. I just wish for a little more "here's a list of all the candidates who are voting against gay marriage" versus "here's a commemorative rainbow (insert product here)."

And don't get me started on the news media that choose to focus on nothing but the more fringe members of the community.

[Martina]

Originally Posted by alexri

Their staff was trying to figure out how to hang up a rainbow flag, and were actually asking each other which way the flag was supposed to hang (red on top? horizontal or vertical)?

I had an upside down rainbow flag bumper sticker for years. Till I sold the car.