Pride Month

I both do and don't wanna go to Pride this year. It would be my first time [i]really[/i] going.

There's just so much hate and transphobia going on recently, and the Pride event that I would go to is hours away from where I live. I feel really torn about it. Plus, my partner lives in a different state and won't be able to make it.

I feel like it would be cool to go, but I'm thinking of passing. Idk.

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

Well, it's up to you buy maybe you need ask yourself why you feel any need to go, whatever you mean by "[i]really[/i] going" (your italics).

Slightly bisexual myself though that did not emerge until my mid-50s, I used to know as a pen-friend a young man who was not at all afraid of using the term "homosexual" about himself rather that the US slang "gay", and said he had no time for the "Pride" scene.

I asked him why.

He said he felt no need to attend anyway, but further was worried that these jamborees did more harm than good in trying to gain acceptance for non-heterosexual people.

I thought back to when the UK's mid-19C law banning homosexual activities between men was repealed in (I think) 1962. Repealing a law based on restrictive social prejudice does not remove the prejudice overnight; but slowly, understanding, tolerance, even acceptance began to reject those old prejudices. This was helped in the UK and some other nations by laws banning sexual, racial, religious, etc. prejudices against employment etc.

Yet now the prejudices seem to be returning. Why? Is, as my friend feared would happen, the recent rise in homophobia and nowadays also "transphobia" is at least encouraged, unintentionally and unwittingly by the "Pride" movement itself?

For it started among campaigns to be recognised as [i]people[/i] of equal merit as any other [i]people[/i] in society, but has found itself in a murky war of attrition between non-heterosexuals and their sympathisers against not only outright homophobic ignorance and antiquated prejudice. I fear too, non-heterosexuals being thought pleading some sort of special case, with views that must never be questioned. Not simply taken as fellow human beings.

It's that last that is becoming extremely dangerous, with all sorts of self-appointed but usually anonymous Guardians of The Cause, of any sexual orientation, censoring debates, manipulating what others say or write, even stooping to wreck careers.

It's no wonder why as you put it, so much hatred and phobia occurs. Equal acceptance, respect and treatment is not gained by trying to be something "special", because that looks like a call for its own form of superiority.

My friend and I were in contact years before all this blew up, but I think he could see what the "Gay Pride" campaigning might lead to, and it is.

pillowprincess · F

@ArishMell
Sure, let's blame the LGBTQ+ people and their pride parades. They should know better, and just stay in the closet. Then the far right can attack the next group of people who they see marginalized and start attacking these instead. I'm sick and tired of the people that keep pointing fingers at those being under attack and blame them for being victims of hatred.

What would it take for these so called [i]"Christians"[/i] to simply let the parades be what they are, parades, and before that marches as they've been since the begin of the 70's? What does it take away from their personal [i]"Christianity"[/i], it's not like the parades are advocating everyone should become anti-straight?

If you don't like the parades, fine stay away from them. Just like people stay away from any other big public event they don't want, or find interesting.

DarkAngel24 · 26-30

@ArishMell I think it's a very weird assumption people make that by embracing what makes you different, especially when that thing has been opposed and oppressed, that you somehow view yourself as "special" or above others. Honestly, I think this type of thinking is projection.

Pride started as a protest and has turned into a parade of acceptance. Being quiet has literally never gotten any marginalized group any rights or respect. All it does is allow the opposition to get louder and louder, while the status-quo remains untouched.

Whether marginalized groups are protesting or parading we are told to instead just be quiet. This is not because being quiet works in OUR best interest, but instead because being quiet works in the best interest of the status-quo and those who would rather we not exist. It's silly to think that people who call for the eradication of queer people would suddenly stop and happily let us live if we just agreed to be quiet. It has never worked that way and it never will.

Learning that there was an LGBTQ+ movement with parades and acceptance gave me hope as a young queer person growing up in an non-accepting environment. Ultimately, these months and parades are about oppression. A Pride parade is about standing up to oppression by being proud of who you are, instead of being ashamed and hidden the way many queer people have had to be and still have to be. If there was no oppression, there'd be no parades. Instead of questioning queer people, I wish people put more effort into questioning the oppressive systems that led us here in the first place.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@DarkAngel24 Yes it is a projection, but whose? I don't altogether accept the notion fully, but it is one I fear rising from the growing cat-calling via [anti]social media and in universities merely for expressing opinions or worse, facts, not matching some dogma or other.

At least you and I live in countries that do not oppress people by law for being "queer" (that used to be a term of derision!), in the way Uganda has just announced. [i]That[/i] is what should be opposed, but fancy parades in New York or Paris or London won't mean anything or make any difference to the Ugandan government.