Look Mary, we're a market now!

2001 Events San Jose Pride™

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05 EVENT INDEX

A Marketable Identity for Sale

My friend Jackie lived through he 1960's as a hippie. She showed me pictures of what they looked like then. I was really shocked because there was not a single Guatemalan jacket or holly hobby dress with jeans in any of the photos. Now there's a formula, a uniform that hippies, deadheads etc. must conform to or they get labeled as something else.

I never much cared for the lambda as a gay symbol. I think it belonged to an older generation that could identify with the "unspeakable love of the Greeks."

I get the whole inversion thing with the pink triangle, but Act-Up and Queer Nation and other activist groups sort of beat it into the ground for me. As that level of idealism has tapered off, so too have the pink triangles. It's still associated with queers by outsiders because of the inversion thing, but I don't know of a single queer-identified person brandishing a pink triangle. For me, it still has too many connotations of death, wether it's point up (Nazi usage) or point up (dead activist usage)

Now we have the rainbow. Yes, it's colours represent the different elements of our large and diverse "community" but in the past couple of years I've been finding it's definition extremely confining. As the picture above illustrates, almost all other symbols of Gay or Lesbian identity have been usurped by its easily marketable representation. The majority of people buy their cool off the rack giving the "community" a cookie cutter pastiche of interchangeable archetypes.
As the range of expression diminishes, the outspoken, creative elements seem to beckon ever louder. Even within it's limitations, some kids can still get their pimp on!

In some ways I think the rainbow is slowly replacing the bar as the lowest common denominator for GLBTQ people. In places that are too small for a gay softball league or a lesbian bowling night, they used to just have one bar for everybody. I think they'll still have the bar, but in a few years time, they'll also have the rainbow too.

A unique opportunity

"Gay pride" is one of those things that I have difficulty reconciling. I mean, I'm all for not being ashamed of who you are. But I prefer to take pride in my accomplishments and not a biological condition that I didn't have any control over. It's a subtle distinction, but one I feel strongly about making.

It seems to me that most gay people at most Pride events are only proud of how great they look topless, or they have pride in their ability to sniff poppers and shag. San Jose's event is different, every time I go I see the complete range of people. There's young and old, people of all colours and persuasions. The lesbian mums even bring their kids. It's such a small venue that it's easy to see the same people throughout the day and just wander around and find friends or make new ones. My pal Jim remarked that he likes the event because he gets to see people that never go to the gay bars and he can't see them any place else.

Inspiration

After going to such a great event in San Jose, I've been inspired to look at the San Francisco Pride™ event and say, "why can't we do that here?" I've been helping them book DJs for the past couple of years and I talked to some of the board members about doing more.

Most of the time, I'm not overly proud to be part of a community that seems to be so shallow, vapid, apologetic, assimilationist and self destructive. Or a community that's SO discriminated against, yet is itself so discriminatory. It's not just racial discrimination, it's classist to a certain extent and certainly operates on the basis of "looksism" where those not deemed conventionally handsome or masculine are at best marginalized.

"I get to be compassionate as long as it's towards people I like."

I will admit that with the creation of the "bear" community this has started to change. But even then discrimination still operates because now there are "Muscle Bears." I think they had to make that distinction because every fat guy in the world wants to be labeled a bear to get laid. Now you don't even have to be hairy to call yourself a bear. Once the Mirth and Girth club members started infiltrating their scene, all the full figured or muscular hairy men got embarrassed and still wanted to discriminate so they made up the whole muscle bear thing. What was once a tool to propagate inclusion is twisted around yet again, sigh.