Redcub on Pride

[drewan]

redcub has a nice LJ essay about Pride (the GLBT kind of Pride). Go read it.

"Pride is about the ability to congregate without getting shot at."

Comments

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Good piece. Please pass on my compliments (as he only allows friends to post replies).

[unzeugmatic.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a good piece, but it only depresses/enrages me to see the tight-assed cliched historically-ignorant responses to it about how icky homosexuals at pride make things so much harder for the good homosexuals. Which I wouldn't mind so much if I hadn't been seeing word-for-word the exact same things since the very first Pride parade (any statement about what Pride used to be like is guaranteed -- yes, guaranteed money-back -- to be nostalgically false).

Since I'm not going to respond there to people I don't know I'll respond here: If 50000 homosexuals in suits marched in a Pride parade, the hateful statements of our enemies would remain equally hateful. (My gosh, those very same statements are made about homosexual ministers, for crying out loud). Those statements are never based on anything you can see or point to, but on cultural myth. Shame on you for buying into that myth.

Oh, cool, I get to have my own annual anti-rant rant two weeks early!

[cheerfulchaotic.livejournal.com]

I agree with his 'pride is' statements, but not so much his 'pride is not' statements. I don't have unzeugmatic's reach of historical perspective, but it was kicked off by the stonewall riots. R I O T S. This was not about prayer circles and suits. The mattachine society tried that approach for years before the riots, and got nowhere. Pride is many things, but there are few things that it definitely isn't. Because it's inclusive.

I'm not entirely pride positive. But if there's any value to be had in it, I doubt declaring it to be a solemn gathering is going to be the road to political equality.