Image credit to The Blaze
There are two important conversations happening at Pride events across the country. First, is a question of how to reclaim or reinvent Pride as inclusive of marginalized groups. The second, is a conversation about the role of corporations at Pride events. Both questions are at the fore of controversy surrounding Capital City Pride and its choice to accept money from the corporations responsible for DAPL, a move that further marginalized the community’s most vulnerable members.
Plenty of white gays were eager to defend Capital Pride and vilify protestors, most of which are people of color. These same folks also took issue with adding a black and brown stripe to the Pride flag in Philadelphia City. To them, there is no necessity to make extra effort to include people of color, during a year of police brutality, with pending Muslim bans, and on the one-year anniversary of Orlando.
These same white gays might also think Madonna invented Vogue, or that a white boy named “Danny” threw the first stone during the Stonewall riots instead of Marsha P. Johnson. They’ve never heard of Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major, or Gilbert Baker. They prescribe to the idea that being bought is a good thing. They are complicit and comfortable with money for erasure.
Even Ru Paul, a goddess of the drag and hero amongst (most of) us, seemed to denounce protests, “When it gets down to survival, you have to pick your battles, and you don’t pick battles with your allies.”
You’re right, girl. But let’s make one thing clear: I'm not picking a fight when I ask friends to do better.
We should do better, and by “better” I mean in terms of effects. Black Lives Matter has been so clear about the importance of the latter. If you’re intention is to save people from drug addiction, but the effect is a new Jim Crow of imprisoning generations of Black men, your intent does not matter. What matters are the effects. When Ru says “The people who are mulling over certain words will have to ask themselves, “Is that word coming from a place of love, or coming from a place of hate?” That’s how you differentiate.” No, it’s not, Ru. I can’t be. Because if Justice is blind, then the truth is in what she hears and in what she feels. She doesn’t know who is smiling.
So let’s talk about justice and pride. No Justice; No Pride. Pride is about Justice and Justice is about love. It has to be. Love is a lot of things, but above all it is our assurance that some lives matter more to us than to others—or should. And we might all be complicit, but we can work against that.
I’m certainly guilty of partying hard on Pride, but I do not take pride in watching white, cis men spend enough money on dinner and drinks to have fed a small family for a week. Instead, I take pride in the interracial lesbian couple who stand bare breasted in the company of their adopted children, the family they work twice as hard to support, waving the flags they made by hand as a family. I fucking love them and they deserve justice.
I’m certainly guilty of being uninvolved with planning Pride, but I do not take pride in seeing committees filled with white, cis men, who plan commercially successful events at the expense of access for the disabled, for people of color, and for the those enacting a self aligned within the feminine spectrum of identity. Instead, I do take pride in paying womXn or color to be on committees, and who often assume more than their fair share of labor making events more affordable and accessible. I fucking love them and they deserve justice.
I’m certainly guilty of indulging at Pride, but I do not take pride in buying the same junk food so many attendees have to rely on to sustain themselves every other day of the year. Instead, I take pride in moments of buying from local, queer vendors of every hue, and in sharing that food with friends and with the many queer homeless who lost the comfort of food and shelter because their families do not accept them. I fucking love them and they deserve justice.
I’m certainly guilty of wanting a safe space for Pride, I do not take pride in armed police escorts or security personnel payed handsomely to make us “safe.” Instead, I take pride in every queer veteran, or queer militant, armed for another’s defense and not necessarily their own, as bodies who are penitent with that power because they know that drawing a weapon means either their blood, or another’s. Instead, I take pride in those who are planning ways to free the captives of ICE. I fucking love them and they deserve justice.
I’m certainly guilty of watching the whole parade regardless of who marches, but I do not take pride in a parade filled with banks, beers, and mostly white churches. Instead, I take pride when queer people of every race and creed come together and say hey, these folks over here are having a tough week, a tough month, a tough year and for the next four years and really for fucking ever. (I’m looking at you, Capital City Pride. Don’t act like you don’t know what I am talking about.) Instead, I take pride when the most afflicted—who lost people in Orlando, in the Castro, in Ferguson, in LA, and at Wounded Knee—wear the tiara. Instead, I take pride in centering and celebrating them for the way their being and doing defies every billboard, every movie trope, every lobbyist, every dog-whistle politician, and every attempted (and successful) murder. I fucking love them and they deserve justice.
I’m certainly guilty of being all about “gay” during Pride, but I do not take pride in the erasure of those who are queer, but who are currently committed to opposite sex relationships. I take pride in talking openly about our partners, our many partners, and our partnerships, who inspire and satiate our many selves. I fucking love them and they deserve justice.
I’m certainly guilty of a little promiscuity at Pride, but I do not take pride as men look around with eager eyes for who is the most aesthetic, or the most able bodied or athletic, or the most well-dressed. Sexual liberation has nothing do with commodifying male sexual activity within a postmodern aesthetic defined within a system of white supremacy and explicitly from early victims of the AIDS virus. Instead, I take pride in the campy, ham-fisted, and over-the-top displays of gender fluidity and sexuality, the performances that remind us that sex is often this bizarre gyration as we figure out how to make friction with our most sensitive parts, while saying embarrassing, awkward shit shit like “oh baby,” “right there,” “oh gawd,” or...
I fucking love you and no power on earth could make me let you go.
I fucking love them and they deserve justice. So we need to do the work: personally and as organizers and patrons of Pride. Make new flags, tell some sponsors thanks but we have a standard they need to meet first, organize, and spend on more than booze and junk food. No Justice; No Pride. Let’s have a just Pride this year: safe, happy, healthy, and loved, for all of us, but especially for the ones we love more than others.
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