We’ve relegated Pride to the providence of tourists and looky-loos. An inconvenience. An invasion. Worse—a disappointment.
BY BRENDEN SHUCART
Friends, homosexuals, assorted misfits & weirdos of the LGBTQ communities, lend me your ears; I come not to praise Pride, but to bury it. Once the crown jewel of the West Coast’s observances of the Gay High Holy Days, now it feels tacky and small—like a business expo in a beer garden. The sense of community I found at my first Pride when I was 17 crowded out by copious consumption of watered-down beer and cheap plastic rainbow jewelry.
The Parade is even worse, with its corporate contingents coming wave after wave; the undignified sight of young Queer professionals, pressed into pinkwashing their respective CEOs’ various sins; shuffling sadly along the Parade route in rainbow-logoed t-shirts commemorating their HR department’s lack of imagination that they’ll never wear again. Meanwhile, activists clash with cops in an attempt to make headlines & assimilationists clutch their pearls at every gogo boy in a jockstrap… it’s all so disappointing.
Somewhere around 2015 Pride went from being my favorite time of year to a disappointment to be avoided almost together. And I know many who feel the same way, in our minds we’ve relegated Pride to the providence of tourists and looky-loos. An inconvenience. An invasion. Worse—a disappointment.
But in 2018 the crew who was scheduled to work our booth at the festival canceled at the last minute, and since I was the editor of the San Francisco edition of THE FIGHT, it fell to me.
I was less than enthusiastic, but I’ve encountered very few situations I can’t find the fun in, and I was determined to have a good time. I resolved that if I was trapped with these tourists for two days, I’d take the opportunity to better understand these invaders. Soon I found myself having variations of the same two conversations, with iterations of the same two cohorts of individuals.
The first group was very young, very non-binary, and very enthusiastic (often draped in a flag representing one of the Queer Coalition’s ever-growing number of micro-communities that resonates with them. Official Oldz that I am, I recognized almost none of these.) They had come into the City for the day from their small towns, mostly located in the Central Valley or the hinterlands between Sonoma and Oregon border colloquially referred to as “Jefferson” by those who live there. They were just excited to be in San Francisco, and almost universally they told me the same story: they couldn’t wait for graduation so they could escape their little corner of Hell and make a home amongst SF’s fog-strewn hill.
For these kids, the City represented belonging and community. I didn’t have the heart to tell them there was no place for them in San Francisco. I could bring myself to express my worry that if they moved to the most expensive city in the Anglosphere that they’d end up on the streets.
The other sort of conversations I found myself in was with older Gays (in friend groups of three or four) and Lesbians (usually coupled), with a smattering of Trans folks (often alone). One and all they had moved to The Bay in the ‘70s. Almost all of them told me it was the first time in their lives they could be themselves. They all lost loved ones in the AIDS crisis. The men often survived several partners. And all of them had been priced out, either in the ‘90 or late ‘00s; casualties of Tech’s colonization of the City. Every one of them was there to reminisce, remember, and walk with old ghosts.
“We must resist the seductive dangers of corporate capitalism while harnessing its power to benefit our community.”
These folks aren’t tourists, I realized to my chagrin, they’re pilgrims! To them, that Pride festival and that City are holy grounds. A kind of Promised Land to some, and the Eden from which they’ve been ejected for others. Either way, Pride-as-is is failing them. They deserve more at the end of their journey than a tacky craft fair buckling under the weight of its corporate sponsorship and an uninspiring parade that’s ceased to be a focus of celebration in favor of becoming another front in the LGBTQ coalition’s internecine civil war.
We all deserve a Pride we can be proud of.
I know, easier said than done, but here are some places to start.
- We should aspire to make the Pride festival more than a concert, an outdoor mall, or even an opportunity to raise money for worthy causes. To that end, areas should be set aside to facilitate a sense of community, modeled on the Faerie Freedom Village. Perhaps a Trans Pavilion, maybe a Dyke Grove, etc. A place for each letter of the coalition Spaces to connect, debate, and organize.
- The Pride Parade should be spectacular. Collective shame on all of our houses for the blandness and lack of inspiration that pollutes these processions in almost every Pride in the country. At the risk of sounding essentialist, your average Queerdo could transform a colonoscopy into a magical experience, given enough prep time and complete creative control. And it’s not like we have to start from scratch. Let’s draw inspiration from events world-famous for their heights of spectacle—Mardi Gras, Carnival, even Burning Ma—to make Pride something visitors go back home and won’t stop gushing about for weeks afterward.
- We must resist the seductive dangers of corporate capitalism while harnessing its power to benefit our community. Look, I hate how corporate Pride has become, but I’m not foolish enough to think we could eject Facebook and the banks completely. So let’s put them to work. Do you want to advertise your products at the festival? How about funding a program to transition LGBTQ youth off of the streets and into vocational training? Or you don’t like the new rule that says corporate logos can’t be bigger than 1’x1’? Well, there happens to be a loophole for groups that donate to the new supportive living facility for LGBTQ seniors we’re building.
- Finally, this year let’s remember the true meaning of Pride. It has never been about being “family-friendly” or trying to present as respectable for the benefit of heterosexual approval. And while it commemorates the Stonewall riots against police violence, Pride is not really about police violence any more than Thanksgiving is about showing up at the home of a Native American family and asking them not to let you starve. Pride is about telling a world that rejected us “we don’t care what you think, because we know there’s nothing shameful about living honestly”; and it brings us together so we can remember that we aren’t alone in our struggles—we have community. Embody that spirit, family. Find the strength in it, and the freedom, and let it carry you through the whole year.
