This photo is from last week’s Pride parade in New York. Everyone is always pretty friendly in allowing me to take their photo at these events — it’s one of the only times people are that gracious about having a stranger stick a camera in their face, and it’s one of the things I love about NYC Pride. I also love that it’s one of the most racially diverse queer events you could ever participate in. Not every state is that lucky. What I hate about Pride, though, is that like any queer-related event, the focus is still on very homonormative goals and values.
This year, there was a lot of focus on DADT and on marriage, as there was last year. Don’t get me wrong, when I decided to sneak into the march last year, I ended up walking with Marriage Equality NY – and they were lovely people! But the emphasis on “gay marriage” is problematic for a number of reasons: it ignores the fact that not everyone who wants a same-sex marriage is gay, and it also prioritizes marriage (something that mainly affects gays and lesbians) over issues that affect the other letters in our acronym, such as trans-inclusive hate crime legislation. Last year, I was at an LGBTQ conference with other colleges in the Northeast, and we were asked to state our opinions on a number of issues affecting our community by standing in various boxes ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. When marriage came up, 95% of students strongly disagreed with Prop 8. When HRC’s actions concerning ENDA came up, 95% of students stared blankly at the man asking us questions, as they had no clue what he was talking about.
Let’s think about this for a minute: a bunch of students living on the east coast were up to date and very much concerned with a law in California concerning marriage, yet none of them knew about HRC lying to the trans community and pushing for a non-inclusive ENDA, an action that probably set our community back a good decade. They’ve since apologized, but it’s still troubling that this doesn’t quite register as a big concern within the LGBTQ community (at least not within my age bracket, though I don’t think this is really specific to us).
I also saw a lot of “born gay” signs this year, a phrase that annoys me more and more every time I hear it. I think it’s one of the worst approaches to homophobia our community has ever created. Besides the fact that it (absurdly) singles sexual orientation down to this one so-called “gay gene,” it assumes gender by suggesting that biology predetermines our attraction to gender. If we understand gender to be biologically innate (rather than a social construct), the “born gay” standpoint further complicates the LGB relationship with the trans community, and we have enough tension there to begin with. “Born gay” is an easy comeback to the argument that homosexuality is unnatural as well as the religious argument, but it’s more problematic than anything else, and completely ignores the fluidity of sexuality.
In addition to the born gay posters were signs that appropriated the language of the Civil Rights Movement. I believe I’ve posted about this before (one one of my blogs, at least), but I’m bothered by it so much more after Prop 8. As it is, offending the black community by equating our struggle with the Civil Rights Movement does nothing to help our relationship with people of color, but it’s especially offensive after we blamed black and Latino voters for the outcome of Prop 8. And that was only after opponents of Prop 8 did not go into communities of color to appeal for their vote in the first place…
I still love Pride events, and I always enjoy myself in the craziness of it all. But we’re not immune to homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or racism just because we are a fairly progressive community. As a community so focused on our own oppression, we should be more conscious of the prejudice within our own community and the voices we silence in favor of the ones more marketable to heteronormative society.
(cross-posted on my tumblelog)
