New York's affluent gays and lesbians stayed away from Sunday's Gay Pride Parade "in droves, taking with them the money that has kept a 37-year-old tradition alive," reports the New York Observer in "Goodbye, Mr. Chaps."
"Queer" journalist Richard Goldstein opines:
"White people say they experience the parade as being tired and corny.... They'll say it's unattractive to them. The reason it's unattractive to them is because there are all these faces of people of color from all over the world."
Yes, I'm sure that's it, since all successful gay white people simply must be racists. But it also just might be that the parade has to a large extent, and for a long time, become too much of a mix of knee-jerk leftism and arrested-development sexual exhibitionism.
That's the dominant image, unfortunately overwhelming the contingents of civic, religious and professional groups who do participate. And you can't blame the media for focusing on the most outrageous elements while demanding "full and inclusive representations" of the LGBT community. That's why I'd submit that a growing number of gays (who are, as Paul Varnell points out, increasingly bourgeois) simply find pride parades at best useful as part of a coming out rite of passage, at worst an embarrassment, and in any event not representative of our lives.
31 Comments for “Chaps of Pride”
posted by Bill from FL on
Good Lord….the Left does it again! Please, someone call the BS police on Richard!
I miss it, BUT….
Anyone who has ever been to NYC’s parade knows that unless you have a friend’s house/apt. on the route you have to stand there on the packed street, navigate thru the police barriers, step around the bottles of water, fight the traffic or take a train if you don’t want to sell a kidney to park out somewhere in the back o’bourke, and not have a decent bathroom nearby as is often normal in NYC. AND if you drink anything out of a paperbag or other thing the police can question you for public drinking! (Vigorously and rightly enforced there in NYC now) ALL IN JUNE SWELTERING NYC Heat! A necessary experience 1 or 2 times? Yes. Every year? Not!
Now that I am an Ex-NJ’ian and a Floridian I’d rather swelter in a place I can walk to the ocean and take a dip after the parade!
posted by Roy on
Um, dude. I think you have it wrong. Bill from FL has it right – it’s just such a pain to navigate the streets during NYC pride. It’s a clusterf*ck. Once you’ve done it once, it’s just not worth it. It’s tiring. Why does everyone want to politicize Pride? New Yorkers don’t go to Pride, because it’s no longer new or exciting – and all of lower Manhattan turns into gridlock, not because it makes us look bad.
posted by john on
Or perhaps it is afflicted by the same thing Seattle’s Pride is that has kept me away for the past ten years – lack of entertainment and imagination. Pride in Seattle is best described as boring.
posted by Jimbo on
Unlike the comments so far, I’ll say that I love the NYC Pride Parade. I try & go every 2 years or so. Yes, it’s crowded (if you don’t like the crowds, watch the parade in Midtown). The parade has lots of eye candy & it’s fun. Younger people might think Pride is just 1 big party, but I realize the meaning behind the festivities. I’m addressing the following to James, Fritz, North Dallas, etc: if it wasn’t for the brave people who fought back for their rights in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969- you would all be in a psychiatric ward, in jail, or dead. So count your blessings.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
I’m addressing the following to James, Fritz, North Dallas, etc: if it wasn’t for the brave people who fought back for their rights in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969- you would all be in a psychiatric ward, in jail, or dead.
Oh really? And what is this power you have to see alternate futures?
What I don’t get is how so much of progress is ascribed to Stonewall, and then it’s whined about in the next breath that the media’s focus on showing crazy and outrageous drag queens is setting back the gay rights movement.
I think the gay rights movement would have done quite nicely without Stonewall, given that the most powerful element involved in it has been people coming out on an individual basis to their friends, coworkers, and families.
In fact, I will hypothesize that, without the media portrayal of gays as nothing more than rioting, sex-obsessed drag queens, it would have done much better.
posted by Michael M. on
I lived in NYC for more than 20 years and stopped going to the Pride Parade there at least 4 years before I moved away. Aside from the monotony factor (the same thing year after year), the main reason was that it lost much focus on the community that made it happen. I’d have welcomed more “knee-jerk leftism” — I’d have welcomed more political expression of any kind, in place of the mega-corporate presence and exultations to subscribe to Time-Warner Cable and buy Absolut Vodka. The Pride parade in NYC has largely become a marketing event; it’s boring.
OTOH, I went to my first Pride parade here in Portland, OR, last weekend and it renewed my enthusiasm for such things. The parade here is made up largely of the community the parade represents spanning the spectrum from social service organizations to churches to political groups to athletic leagues and even a few bars. Businesses, including a few large corporate sponsors and participants, are part of it, but don’t overwhelm it. By and large, it feels very much like an inclusive representation of the regional gay community, in all or most of its manifestations, getting together for a day to celebrate its accomplishments and its diversity.
posted by Jody on
And in other news, around 400,000 people turned out under dark skies and torrential rain to attend Germany’s Gay Pride.
I don’t think the problem with the various Pride festivals in the US is a “…mix of knee-jerk leftism and arrested-development sexual exhibitionism.”
I mean, have you been to Berlin?
posted by ETJB on
(1) I would think it would be rather hard to know how many wealthy gay men and women stayed away from the city pride festival.
(2) Racism is certainly a problem in the LGBT community. That does not mean that it is the reason for why rich people stayed away (assuming that they really did). One would think that such a scientific survey would have asked “why”.
(3) Do not assume that all wealthy gay men and women are white. Also I really do not think that gay conservatives want to claim to have a moral high road when it comes to sexuality…
(4) Leftism? Well, Were the gay Republicans and Libertarians denied participation in the parade? Where they denied a booth?
Yes, the media may love to focus on the more ‘outrageous’ parts of what is not unlike a straight man’s Mardi Gras. Yet, is that the gays fault or the media fault?
BTW, “bourgeois” means upper middle class and does not mean conservative or liberal and says little about ones religious or sexual morality or taste.
posted by Lori Heine on
Here in Phoenix, we hold Pride in April. It is about 110 degrees here now, and no living thing stays outside in the daytime long enough to celebrate anything.
Maybe it’s because Phoenix is a libertarian/conservative city, but you don’t see much “leftism” at our Pride Festival. It is all about corporatism and selling everything under the sun.
I go to Pride to visit with friends I haven’t seen since the year before and to load up on free stuff. Is it overcommercialized? I suppose you could say so.
Overcommercialization bothers me when the holiday being exploited is Christmas. When it’s Pride, I suppose I count my blessings. Corporate America has done a hell of a lot more for us, as a community, than have the politicians.
Maybe we need our own Bill O’Reilly to grumble about how “nobody says happy Pride anymore” and to mobilize opposition against the “War on Pride.” Or the Ghost of Pride Past can visit us, skeletal in her feather boa, and point a bony finger back to the hallowed moment at Stonewall that started it all.
(I think I have my ghosts mixed up here. My apologies to Dickens.)
posted by Brian Miller on
Contrast this with SF Pride, where Outright Libertarians had a presence again this year, and yours truly spent lots of time in the booth, marching, and walking around the festivals.
It looked as packed as it was in previous years, with the City Hall Plaza filled to the bursting point.
But the composition of the booths was changing to match the composition of the attendees. There were more family oriented booths, booths reflecting the diversity of the LGBT community (in every area), and lots of interesting discussions between people from every viewpoint in a respectful and informed manner.
My last experience with NYC Pride was that it was a big parade with lots of sex talk, porn actors, and strident leftism that left no openings (or space) for people with alternative perspectives. San Francisco, in contrast, was open to all LGBT people, and for every naked guy walking around wearing nothing but a leather dog collar, there were six or more pairs of men or women with their toddlers in tow.
The lesson? LGBT issues are no longer something that serve as a campaign foil for a certain political or social viewpoint. Rather, queer people simply *are*, and events that reflect us in ALL of our permutations do well. This definitely reflects SF Pride.
Events that are political “statements” and that exclude large swathes of the community, in contrast, fail. I think this is more similar to what New York Pride is.
posted by Brian Miller on
What’s up with describing NY’s gay community as “affluent,” BTW? Are the Bronx, Queens, and Newark suddenly “affluent” too?
posted by Jorge on
I went for the first time last year, and that was enough. Too wild for me, even these days, and I did not like how all my family talked about the parade being was an attraction or something, a halloween party. Now I could take that, I mean I enjoyed some of it. And there’s a lot of political and diversity stuff in the, too, some of which really deserves to be there. I have major differences with the Empire State Pride Agenda and so on, but I respect them for being in the trenches. Still, after a while the laundry list of floats devoted to diversity groups gets boring. I mean it went on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Now if that makes me a racist for saying that, I embrace that title gladly–get over it. That’s not the reason I stayed away.
What I really couldn’t stand was all the advertising. Everyone on every float trying to hand me some sticker or something, and some of them were pretty intrusive about it. I just want to be left alone and enjoy a parade. Like I said, too wild for me.
I showed up early and had a very nice spot, though. 34th Street. Got in, got out.
posted by Jorge on
I suppose what I mean to say is that I find it disappointing that in a time when there is so much to be done and said–even if we don’t agree what–so many people do not take the pride parade seriously. Then I see that the snobs are right, and that there are so many people in the parade devoted to making spectacles of themselves. Diversity parades have a misguided purpose. Custumed prancing is an expression. But what possible excuse is there for the commercialism?
posted by Audrey B on
I would say more, but I’m a horrible racist.;-)
posted by Randi Schimnosky on
I think the pride parades in
Canada and to a lesser degree in the U.S. have largely outlived their usefullness. It was one thing to march when gays were invisible and universally loathed, when it was more of a civil rights thing. I’d say pride parades still serve a valid purpose in backwards countries like Russian, Poland, etc. – the battle’s just begun in places like that.
posted by Lori Heine on
There should be some sort of process, open to the community, by which the content of the parade can be determined.
Those who feel themselves best represented by family organizations, by churches, by various clubs or outdoor activities or whatever, could vote to have these things represented in the parade.
Those who feel themselves better represented by Tinkerbell popping out of a cake, or by muscular women wearing leather bras and riding Harleys, would be free to vote for those choices as well.
That way, instead of sitting powerlessly on the sidelines year after year, and griping about how the parade fails to represent us, we could change it in positive ways.
posted by Avee on
ETJB writes in criticizing Miller, “‘bourgeois’ means upper middle class and does not mean conservative or liberal and says little about ones religious or sexual morality or taste.”
Well, Marx said bourgeois meant owners of the means of production (factories), but today its meaning is not limited to either Marx’s or ETJB’s definition. Miller is correct, in common usage it means a holder of conservative values. Confer Diedre McCloskey’s book, “The Bourgois Virtues.”
posted by Jordan on
As a board member for the Little Rock Capital Pride organization, I’d like to chime in and say that you can have pride without blatant sexuality.
Perhaps it’s simply that the people of Central AR are so desperate just to get together in public that they don’t demand a lot of inappropriate elements, but our pride this year was more about simply coming together as a community than anything else. Our chairperson Joe LaFountaine directed the events to be focused on community togetherness, and I think it came off beautifully. We had a number of singer-songwriter types as entertainment, but we also had “Pride Idol” and our last entertainment event for the day was a Drag show — this in the River Market Pavilions in down town Little Rock on a Sunday evening. The latter was, of course, more outrageous than the rest of our entertainers, but we were asked that the Drag Queens keep their performances appropriate for all ages.
A full half of our festival location was organized for the benefit of community booths. We had everyone from Alltel (cellphone company based in Little Rock and very popular in rural areas around the company), to the Humane Society, to the Green Party of Arkansas.
I think that parades automatically attract that bawdiness element as there is some intrinsic need to “out do” everyone else in the parade. But when Pride becomes more about creating opportunities for many community groups to simply come together, it’s a more productive and embracing mentality — not to mention easier to navigate 😉 Perhaps the focus needs to change from getting out on the street to simply getting together as a total community, and broadening our horizons beyond the cliques we tend to form into?
posted by Lori Heine on
Jordan’s model sounds like a great one. I hope more communities come to embrace it.
posted by Amicus on
I saw folks in chaps, this year. More power to them. So much for “Goodbye, Mr. Chaps.” (Oh, and I also noticed some of the *non-gay* guys on the sidelines *blatantly* checking out the gear/chaps. That was a first I’d seen such at a Pride event …).
Zipped through the Lincoln tunnel with NO traffic – braked a little for a light at the exit, as I recall. Parked in the West Village, for free.
Easiest way to ‘avoid the crowds’ is to walk with the Marchers, so… Otherwise, there is a system for using sidestreets, etc., if you are clever.
I’m always interested in what non-boring things people had to do. Watch the waves crash on the shoreline? Exciting that. Go for brunch at their favorite p-town haunt? Can’t get enough of that, eh? Watch Sunday morning political shows?
Mardis Gras doesn’t change that much, yet people go every year. Ditto Carnival in Rio and elsewhere. The St. Patricks Day’s Parade is big shakes in NY, but people don’t get ‘bored’ of being Irish. So what gives?
posted by Jorge on
How did you know they were non-gay?
Were they in imminent danger of being slapped by their girlfriends or something?
posted by Thomas Witt on
“I’d say pride parades still serve a valid purpose in backwards countries like Russian, Poland, etc. – the battle’s just begun in places like that.”
Or in my home state of Kansas 😉
posted by finchie on
I’ve been going to NYC pride events now for about 14 years.
As far as the waning enthusiasm for these events are concerned it’s simplistic to point to things like too much exhibitionism/radicalism or an over abundance of corporate/conservative presence.
If anything the parade has gotten a lot less sexy and a lot less political in the last few years. Fewer/smaller leather groups, less extreme politics, fewer fairies, less drag, the bigger bars and night clubs that used to sponsor the sexier displays seem to be staying home. And while the corporate presence has grown, business concerns still account for a tiny percentage of the many groups marching.
I suspect the lack of any really galvanizing unifying theme is part of the problem.
As one hits the 4th hour of the parade watching what seems to to be 234th advocacy group for some sub-group within a sub-group within a borough one gets a tiring sense of fragmentation and disunion.
Are we a diverse community or are we a lot of little communities in competition for attention?
I’m not sure what the answer is, but at least in NY you’ve got to move beyond the easy tropes of either too much sexy/liberal/wacky stuff vs. too much corporate/conservative family/ stuff. It’s not that simple. Part of it no doubt has to do with the cultural, economic and ethnic differences that exist within a city like NY.
It stands to reason that a 35 year old lesbian from Brooklyn who came here from Haiti is going to attend the parade with a different set of reasons and expectations than say a 24 year old Ivy leaguer raised in Scarsdale by oh-so-accepting parents. Provided that the kid from Scarsdale feels compelled to attend at all. In a city like NY you have immigrants from all over world bringing with them all the cultural attitudes of their former nations, both good and ill where homosexuality is concerned, living in close proximity to some of the most liberal, progressive and privileged people in the world. You have people in all phases of the coming out process?from completely out in every aspect of life to not even thinking about coming out any time soon. Coming out stories are wildly different, from those who were met with unequivocal acceptance to people who were disowned. You have people who live in neighborhoods where two daddies can show up for a PTA meeting without anyone batting an eye and others who reside in places where a gay man or lesbian wouldn’t dare let anyone know their secret for fear of reprisals.
I think that pride events are still valuable, even in supposedly fully liberated places like NY. But they will change and evolve in ways that serve those that still look to these events as valuable outlets. For better or worse we have some gay people who have come out in accepting circumstances and who don’t see the need for the validation provided by pride events and the like. And at the same time we have people who for a variety of reasons, some ethnic, some cultural, some economic, some geographic aren’t nearly as self-assured and who enjoy and benefit from the affirmation that comes from large communal events.
What it means to be gay in the NY is different for different people and that may make it harder to find common ground.
posted by Amicus on
Were they in imminent danger of being slapped by their girlfriends or something?
Actually, no, the guys have a way of doing the ‘checking out’ while the girls aren’t noticing.
I’m not saying they were ‘gay-curious’ or whatever. Rather, in general, it would just be a sophomoric mistake to think that non-gays don’t want to dress or act to feel sexy in any number of ways. Or even ‘dress-up’ to look dapper or dandy. All this long before there was ‘metrosexual’ or a fashion-forward Pope with a handsome personal assistant. In short, there is nothing particularly / exclusively ‘gay’ about “Mr. Chaps”, now or historically, I don’t think.
I suspect the lack of any really galvanizing unifying theme is part of the problem. [and]…who don’t see the need for the validation provided by pride events and the like
How about just getting together on a day with some important historical motivation for its own sake? Even if out of a sense of obligation or duty?
If you get bored watching, why not just ‘mix it up’? Watch a little, march a little, have a drink, have lunch. Walk with a different group every year, just to see how many of the endless subdivisions that you possibly fit into.
I’m perpetually surprised by the number of people who go just to hang out with their close circle of friends only. I used to have a goal of making three new friends (or at least talking to three people I’ve never met before) by the end of the day.
One year, the year of the big flag when the route was shifted, I met a woman up on 54th street (as I recall, that was where the March went crosstown on its way up to the Central Park). Anyway, I smiled at her and she said (heavy Jewish accent), “Why do they have to do all thaaaat? In my day, we burned our bras, but we never did all that.” We had a medium-long talk about “liberation” and do this or that to feel free / empowered, at least one day, from repression and stigmatization (I think it even included something about Dionysis or Aphrodite!). She told me about her kids and their problems with drugs when they were growing up. When it was clear I was ready to move on, she said, “You know, you’re a really nice boy.” That was just a killer for me, because, you know, no matter how little Peter Pan syndrome you have and how little you actually look like a “boy”, to some, you’re always … a nice boy. At least I felt … not old. 🙂
posted by Spongefile on
“I think the pride parades in
Canada and to a lesser degree in the U.S. have largely outlived their usefullness. It was one thing to march when gays were invisible and universally loathed, when it was more of a civil rights thing. I’d say pride parades still serve a valid purpose in backwards countries like Russian, Poland, etc. – the battle’s just begun in places like that.”
Speaking as someone living near Estonia, where they just had their first few pride parades, I’d say the parades in NYC, etc also serve a purpose as being an example to these other places. Having it going on in NYC as well gives a pride parade in Tallinn a sense of belonging to a more global movement, with a bit more support. Perhaps those of us living in places where most of our rights have been granted could consider our parades in support of those living in places where being gay will still get you fired and/or killed?
And don’t forget, there are people who travel to NYC for pride from places like Kansas and Estonia too.
posted by Spongefile on
How about next year’s NYC pride having global gay rights as its theme?
posted by finchie on
Spongefile, I think hit the nail on the head. One of the best reasons for the more established GLBT communities to continue their large visible pride events it to provide moral support and a sense of connectedness to those communities who have a longer way to go on their way to acceptance.
Knowing that someone in Estonia or in Kansas for that matter takes strength from our presence on 5th avenue gives me a good reason to be there.
posted by Brian Miller on
I second Spongefile’s suggestion. Given that Republicratic candidates like George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton are working overtime to avoid rebalancing our asylum system to help victims of oppressive anti-gay regimes abroad, it will be up to us as private citizens to once again do their jobs for them (while voting for other candidates who actually do care about real human rights).
An international gay rights “pride” event in NYC could be a significant catalyst for such a mission.
posted by Jordan on
Much agreed!
InterPride is probably the place to start for creating this kind of movement for next year’s pride events.
http://www.interpride.org/
posted by Jordan on
… as a sidenote, it would probably be particularly politically prudent to have a really, really huge showing for 2008 prides, considering that the election will only be a few short months later.
posted by ETJB on
Karl Marx (and Frederick E) were two rather homophobic SOB. I have done a fair amount of research on this topic.
Even so, the ‘bourgeois’ (then and now) is a French term for the upper-middle class. To say that more gay people are bourgeois is to claim that they are suddenly wealthy.
The ‘values’ of this economic class are debtable. Their have been upper class men who liberal, moderate, socialist, conservative, libertarian, etc.