Bottle wrote:St George wrote:This needs repeating again and again and again. It is a huge part of what Pride is about, showing ourselves and everyone else that it doesn't matter if you're as camp as Liberace (and that closet case has a /lot/ to answer for with regards to 'gay' culture) or are seen as 'straight as a board', everyone who identifies as queer, lgbt, whatever, is a natural, acceptable, lovable human being who isn't some freak who should be persecuted,whether that persecution comes from the state or from individuals.
I think what people are having trouble with is that Pride culture is evolving just like every other aspect of culture, and the pace of that evolution doesn't suit everyone.
Pride 1.0 was about fighting for and establishing the space to be out of the closet. Naturally, this tended to emphasize the aspects of gay culture that are distinct from mainstream culture, most obviously the camp culture for men which is so very transgressive because AMG GIRL COOTIES.
Pride 2.0 is more about fighting for and establishing the reality that, once out of the closet, gay people are just like everyone else. That is to say, gay people are a diverse group that is not defined purely by their faggitude. In some ways this will be harder than Pride 1.0, because 1.0 was about carving out our own space and 2.0 is about getting everyone to recognize that we are sharing the same space as non-queers. That can actually be a fuck of a lot more threatening to people, as evidenced by all the 'phobes who are okay with fags as long as we keep our fagging out of their sightline and don't accidentally remind them we exist.
The message that masculinity does not belong to straight men alone is going to cause some heads to explode (just ask the feminist movement about that one), and not just for straight people.
Which, in fact, is being illustrated quite clearly in this thread.
