P E R S P E C T I V E : P r i d e
Dominating and Humiliating Pride Into Respectability
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Who is the Pride
March for? The answer
should be easy:
the LGBTQ community.
But that phrase is more a
convenient fi ction than a description
of a group of people who agree
about how to present themselves
politically and culturally. Arthur J.
Bressan’s documentary “Gay USA,”
shot at Pride Marches in 1978,
shows a lesbian criticizing drag
queens as sexist. In retrospect,
it’s likely that this was the start of
TERF ideology. The right, including
conservative gays and lesbians,
has long seen Pride parades as an
occasion for vulgar sexual display,
while leftist concerns about corporate
domination of the parade and
the participation of police have led
to the launch of the Queer Liberation
March parade as an alternative.
But starting last year, the left-
and right-leaning critiques of Pride
have increasingly merged.
Maybe it’s just part of life in
2021, but this has played as part
of The Discourse on Twitter and
YouTube. Online, generational,
and geographical differences contract,
but the way we speak is still
marked by them. The far right has
cherry-picked images of leathermen
at Pride March for years to try
and shock a larger public. But so
much recent discourse about Pride
suggests that many young LGBTQ
people have internalized these images
and defi ned the event by them.
A photo of a young girl greeting two
men doing puppy play went viral recently
and has become a symbol of
libertinism at Pride. But there’s one
big issue: it was taken at San Francisco’s
Folsom Street Fair, which is
supposed to only admit adults, not
a Pride March. When social media
settles on the outrage of the day,
these differences get lost.
Some have argued that they
didn’t consent to witness any displays
of kink at Pride. A few survivors
of domestic violence or sexual
assault have said that they’re triggered
by the imagery associated
with BDSM. Some asexual individuals
have also complained that
they feel alienated by sexual displays
at Pride. This is a point worth
considering, but a march this large
The scene at last year’s Queer Liberation March.
can’t function as a safe space, especially
when the notion of violations
of consent comes close to mere offense.
Judging from YouTube comments
and tweets, many of these
criticisms are concern trolling
from people claiming to speak for
asexuals and sexual assault survivors
as if they all have a unifi ed
negative reaction to such imagery.
As trans theorist Julia Serano
tweeted, “Respectability politics is
nothing new at Pride. If you don’t
like the sexy-dressing people who
attend, frame it in those terms, like
you used to. But don’t appropriate
language used to challenge ‘actual
direct incidents of sexual violence’
to make your point.” Further down
in that thread, Sam Logdson made
a worthwhile comparison for people
who may be genuinely psychologically
harmed by certain displays
of kink: “As a recovering alcoholic I
may get triggered at any event with
alcohol. To demand a dry event is
placing the responsibility of managing
my triggers on other people.”
The very popular pansexual socialist
Twitch streamer/YouTuber
Vaush went on a 26-minute rant
in which he declared “Pride should
be a celebration of liberation and
identity. Do you have any idea
how many people you ostracize by
making it a f****** sex thing?” (The
debate really seemed to blow up on
Twitter after he stepped into it.) A
far more nuanced response came
from YouTuber Kat Blaque, who is
transgender and frequently makes
REUTERS/EDUARDO MUNOZ
videos about her participation in
BDSM. She made a distinction between
a situation described in an
earlier video, where she criticized
someone for staging a humiliation
scene in a public grocery store
without anyone’s consent, and
merely wearing a leather harness.
The debate points to something
larger. The tensions between assimilation
and resistance among
LGBTQ people have existed since
before Stonewall, when protesters
earlier in the ‘60s donned suits
for more polite but far less effective
protests. The drag queens and
trans women who fought the cops
at Stonewall were pushed out of the
‘70s gay liberation movement. The
push and pull between those two
poles has long defi ned LGBTQ activism:
ACT-UP and Queer Nation
versus HRC and GLAAD. When
same-sex marriage become legalized
nationwide via the Supreme
Court, it seemed as though assimilation
had won. A certain level
of complacency has set in since
then, which has only changed with
a general rise of the left amid legal
assaults on trans people from Republican
politicians.
The successes of the assimilationist
approach benefi ted certain
LGBTQ people — specifi -
cally, middle-class white cis gay
men and lesbians — while leaving
trans women targets for attacks
that reproduce the exact “think
of the children” rhetoric used by
Anita Bryant back in the ‘70s.
“Think of the children” has also
been a running theme in attacks
on the presence of kink at pride.
While I think everyone would agree
that there should be limits on the
sexual imagery they’re exposed to,
singling out leathermen ignores the
reality of a world where half-naked
women are used in advertising constantly
and anyone can go on You-
Tube to watch Cardi B and Megan
Thee Stallion’s softcore antics. The
rhetoric of protecting minors from
sexualization also ignores the differences
between what a 7-year-old
and 17-year-old can understand.
Queer bodies are seen as inherently
pornographic, therefore threatening.
Personally, I’ve never seen
anything raunchier at Pride than
men in their underwear, which one
might also see at the beach. But if a
man strips down to his speedos at
the march, he’s viewed as making it
clear that he wants to be desired by
other men. While it’s legal for people
to go topless in New York, the Dyke
March is one of the only occasions
when women and some non-binary
people can safely do so.
When I fi rst started attending
New York’s Pride march in the
‘90s, the idea that it would become
a popular tourist attraction for heterosexual
families with children
seemed like science fi ction. Normalizing
the lives of LGBTQ people
for this audience has become a
function of Pride. But it also plays
into a common form of rhetoric,
where we deserve our rights because
we’re just as normal and
boring as everyone else. (Granted,
this is a reaction to a specifi c set of
stereotypes, where we’re all seen as
having a dozen Grindr hook-ups a
week before heading to a chemsex
party every Saturday night.)
Is it possible to reconcile Pride’s
radical roots and the fact that it began
as the sequel to a riot, as well
as the continuing need for leftist
queer activism, with the huge, varied
audience it now attracts and its
massive co-option by corporations?
The launch of the Queer Liberation
March suggests that this question
may be answered by splintering
Pride march into something smaller
and aimed at a more specifi c
group of people rather than acting
as though all LGBTQ people and
our allies share the same ideology,
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