So I went to my first Pride march.
I went with some friends, and my wee sister, and the significant other. And, of course, my trusty steed (we're here, we're queer, and we have wheels!).
It's hard to put into words what it was like, exactly. The first word that comes to mind is...safe. In all the right ways. Usually, when I walk past gay bars down that side of town on Friday and Saturday nights, I am acutely aware of the high police-car-to-bar ratio. I've not yet seen An Incident, but there they are, parked police cars, and I guess they wouldn't be there if there was never An Incident.
So when hundreds of people walk down the middle of the city wearing rainbow flags and peace signs, surrounded by their friends, holding hands with their partners, carrying their kids, and nobody gets any trouble -- it was amazing. Tenuously privileged, in a similar way to what I wrote about the Gay Icons exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Safe.
And fun. Fabulously so.
Also, I think some mental clicking happened. It's not that I'm not out at uni or among my friends and other people I know. It's just that, sometimes I catch myself using the vocabulary of other disciplines instead of the vocabulary of, say, queer theory. I'm not exactly sure why I do this, especially when speaking to people I have already explicitly outed myself to. Maybe it's the perpetual threat of being seen as "flaunting".
So the next day, I thought "well, I could take the Pride decorations off my mobility scooter." But I didn't. Because, well, the whole point is pride every day.
(On an accessibility note, I find chanting much better than whistles. A note for future organisers, perhaps?)
--IP
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So glad to hear you had a great time! My favourite thing was getting free rainbow coloured lollipops. And, umm, permanently borrowing someone's rainbow whistle.
ReplyDeleteI also saw the Gay Icons exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery last summer, with my mother actually. She loved it, although she wasn't sure who Ian McKellen is...
I didn't get a lollipop! Why didn't I get a lollipop?! *Sob.*
ReplyDeleteMy mother saw the pictures of the Pride march, and said to me "I love how happy and peaceful it looks". My significant wished, afterwards, for angry speeches in the style of Queers Read This. I think I sort of wished for that too, but also the peaceful celebratory stuff, and that's a hard balancing act.
My mother and sister also saw the Gay Icons exhibit, but not with me. I liked that some of the people were really famous, and some were kind of obscure...like someone had chosen their parents for the exhibit, and someone had chosen a person who kept a feminist bookshop, and there were a few others that I'd never heard of.
--IP