Tag Archives: culture

That isn’t what discrimination means

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One of my math professors began one of our classes with a lament about the loss of the word “discriminate.” She didn’t have a problem with any of the various movements to stop discrimination, of course. Having been a woman pursuing a career in science from the 1940s on, she had experienced her fair share of gender-based discrimination.

Discrimination ultimately means to perceive or distinguish the differences between things. “It’s unfair discrimination that’s the problem,” she said. “Someone’s race or gender has no bearing on how qualified someone is for a particular job. It’s perfectly legitimate to fire someone for incompetence, or for stealing on the job. In those cases you’re distinguishing between good employees and bad.”

While dictionaries still list the “distinguish between” definitions, in most modern discourse, people almost always use it to mean “an unjust or prejudicial distinction.”

When the largest ex-gay organization out there, Exodus International, disbanded recently, several of the smaller groups went into a bit of a panic. The spokesman for on the International Healing Foundation, Christopher Doyle, was right at the forefront. And then he announced that his organization, in concert with groups like the Family Research Council, was going to sponsor Ex-gay Pride in July, as a “balance” against Gay Pride. He even announced a banquet and reception at FRC’s headquarters, and so forth.

Except none of the more generic anti-gay groups he named would confirm they were attending the banquet. FRC wouldn’t even confirm that such an event was happening in their building! Next thing you know, they announced that they were re-scheduling it, claiming that they’re received death threats. Except, of course, they wouldn’t provide proof of the threats, nor could any news organization get any spokesperson from the other groups to confirm that they have planned to participate.

Doyle won’t be deterred, though. In radio interviews he repeated the charge of threats and talked a lot about how oppressed and discriminated ex-gays are.

“We want federal protection just as gays are given. Ex-gays also need to be given protection.” —Christopher Doyle, International Healing Foundation

There are several problems with that. First, at the time of this writing, gay people aren’t explicitly given much in the way of federal protections. The two big Supreme Court rulings that all the anti-gay organizations point to in this regard don’t extend anti-discrimination protection to people based on sexual orientation.

  • Lawrence v. Texas: struck down sodomy laws in 2003. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct between adults was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling invalidated sodomy laws regardless of the gender. Most of the sodomy laws in question in theory could have been applied to opposite sex partners (remember that the original definition of sodomy is any sexual act that can’t result in pregnancy, it doesn’t just refer to anal sex between men, contrary to popular belief), though in practice they were almost never used against straight couples.
  • United States v. Windsor: struck down section three of the Defense of Marriage Act. The court ruled that if a state recognizes a marriage, then the federal government must also recognize the marriage. The ruling skirted around the issue of defining exactly what level of scrutiny should apply to cases of applying rights based on sexual orientation, though it implied a level greater than the lowest level, rational basis.

Neither ruling created any federal protection against discrimination. In fact, the second ruling was written in such a way as to completely sidestep the question of whether gay rights rise to the level of a constitutional right requiring strict judicial scrutiny.

Even their decision that effectively restored marriage equality in California didn’t create any federal protection. The ruling was specifically that the anti-gay groups didn’t have standing to appeal a lower court ruling.

The second problem with Doyle’s plea is what do they need protection from? As several people have pointed out, if what they say about their therapy is true, than an ex-gay is merely a straight person. So who is discriminating against them? No one is beating them or shooting them for holding hands in public with an opposite-sex person. No one is prohibiting them from marrying an opposite-sex person. No one is denying them any legal rights at all.

When confronted with these arguments, Doyle says that ex-gays are harassed by gay people. “There are tens of thousands of ex-gays out there, but they are afraid to go public because they are harassed, and threatened, and called liars.”

Here’s the thing. Every time that an ex-gay therapist or organization has been put under oath in a court of law, they have had to admit that they don’t cure gay people. Ever. For a while they claimed a 15% success rate (which seems dismal by any standard), until they had to defend the methodology in a court of law, at which point it was learned that the one study they pointed to was of 73 patients who enrolled in the same year with one ex-gay organization. They only got the 15% rate by excluding 98 other enrollees who dropped out before completing therapy, and by defining success as “the person reports that they feel their same-sex attraction is less than it used to be.”

More recently, they admitted their success rate was less than 0.1 percent. That means that 99.9% of people who try therapy, or pray-away-the-gay programs, et cetera, are unable to change from being gay. And even then, success is defined as refraining from same-sex sexual activity, not actually ceasing to be attracted to members of the same sex.

One of the former leaders of a couple of these groups published a book chronicling a couple of case studies of young men he treated from adolescence into adulthood. The book concluded by declaring great victory in one case, naming the boy as proof that god and therapy could cure homosexuality. The problem was that the young man in question had committed suicide, six years before the doctor published the book. The young man’s suicide note indicated that all the years of therapy (including aversion therapy, drugs to deaden his libido, et cetera) and praying hadn’t changed how he felt. And he would rather die than face rejection from his family.

Hardly a success.

Just google ex-gay and see how many news stories pop up of “famous” ex-gays who have been caught trying to hook up for sex in gay bars, or using hook-up apps, or hiring young male prostitutes to accompany them on overseas lecture tours. You’ll also find stories of once prominent ex-gays having quietly left the movement and taken up with a same-sex partner.

Even a superficial attempt to research this topic will make it clear that the only living ex-gay they can name are people who now make their living entirely by peddling ex-gay therapy or working for things like anti-gay political action committees.

When you make your living selling a therapy that has been proven not to work, when you prey upon people who fear rejection from their families and communities by promising a cure that has been proven not to work, when you sell people $300+ “introductory kits” and charge them exorbitant fees for therapy sessions that have been proven not to work, you are lying.

That makes you a liar.

Pointing out the fact that you are a liar when it has been demonstrated again and again and again that you are lying is not subjecting you to unjust or prejudicial discrimination. It’s an accurate description.

If we go further and point to people like that one young man who committed suicide (and there are far, far more than just him) as a result of your failed therapy, that isn’t unjust or prejudicial, either. That’s called holding you accountable.

After canceling Ex-gay Pride, Doyle announced an Ex-gay Rights Rally in Washington, D.C. He did the arch-conservative radio circuit confidently predicting that thousands of ex-gays would show up to demand their rights.

Three people with signs, two speakers, and a podium
Speakers at the big Ex-gay Rights Rally earlier this week. (Click to embiggen)
They came up a little short.

And to be clear, this isn’t a picture taken from in front of an enormous crowd of the oppressed masses of ex-gay people. There was no crowd. At all.

Afterwards, Doyle admitted that only nine ex-gays attended, but he declared it a success, because those nine people overcame great fear of discrimination to bravely show their faces. He failed to mention that he was including himself and eight other employees of ex-gay ministries in that count.

Eight people behind the podium, only reporters and camera men in front.
They didn’t just outnumber the crowd, there was no crowd. (Click to embiggen)
In the second picture I’ve included, everyone you see in that wide shot is an employee of one of the ex-gay groups, or someone there covering the “news” event. And please note, the camera crew was hired by one of the ex-gay groups hosting the event. Even Fox News couldn’t bother to send a camera man, they later ran the video shot by the organizers. The Wonkette news blog went so far as to issue an apology for its earlier story about the announcement which had predicted “maybe tens or even dozens” of attendees.

Just as accurately being described isn’t discrimination, trying to appear relevant so donations will keep coming in isn’t fighting discrimination.

It’s just pathetic.

Incepting ourselves

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When I wrote about the inaccuracy of the “You weren’t promised flying cars, you were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia” meme, I elided over a few things. One of which is our collective tendency to misremember and oversimplify.

The flying cars vs cyberpunk dystopia dichotomy is a great example. Given how many friends felt the need to point out to me that Blade Runner, clearly depicting a cyberpunk dystopia, also had flying cars, I’m not the only one to notice this oversimplification. Flying cars and dystopias are not mutually exclusive.

I chose to into interpret “flying cars” as short hand for “utopian future which includes flying cars,” which is why I kept referring to a “flying car utopia” throughout the post. Since “oppresive cyberpunk dystopia” was clearly presented in the original meme as a contrast, I didn’t think it was much of a stretch to assume they meant the two choices as mutually exclusive notions of the future.

The issue I focused on was the age which the meme asserted one must be to have been “promised” the one over the other. I didn’t talk about what prompted so many people to think that the age assertion was reasonable.

The clear implication of choosing 60 as the cut-off was that all that optimisim about the future was only happening in the 1950s. Clearly, such shiny hope couldn’t have existed during the 1960s, when everyone was either protesting the Vietnam war, or rioting over civil rights, or dropping out and tuning in, right?

If that’s what you think the entire 1960s was like, you’ve fallen prey to a massive rewrite of the collective memory.

For instance, the first protest march against our presence in Vietnam was in 1964, but the anti-war movement didn’t become a large scale phenomenon until 1966. Even then, it wasn’t until 1969 that a majority of college campuses had seen protests.

On the other hand, major civil rights events were happening from the mid-50s. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott were in 1955, not during the 60s. The lunch counter sit-ins and boycotts got underway in 1958 and had given way to other activities by 1960. Yes, the Freedom Rides, Selma, the March on Washington, and the horrors of Freedom Summer in Mississippi (where local authorities teamed up with the KKK using arrests, beatings, arson, murder, and more to drive out the civil rights volunteers and prevents blacks from registering to vote) all happened during the first half of the 1960s, that’s true. But there was plenty of racial civil rights unrest in the 50s, as well.

A lot of the popular culture trends that people ascribe to the 60s didn’t really become widespread until the very end of the decade. As late as 1974, for instance, most public high schools still forbade boys from having long hair. A lot of the clothing styles people think of as 60s is really early 70s.

And what about those 70s? It was all disco fever, with people snorting cocaine between dances, or popping quaaludes while organizing their omnisexual orgies, right? Well, briefly. There is a lot of proto-disco music running from the mid- and late-60s, but the first indisputably disco songs to chart in the U.S. were in 1974. It wasn’t until ’75 that disco music really starting holding its own in popularity, and not really until ’77 that it and the associated styles were dominant. And by that point, the “Disco Sucks” movement was gaining steam, culminating in an anti-disco event that was organized at a baseball double-header, but turned into a riot in 1979. Disco’s time as a defining characteristic of pop culture was only about three-and-a-half years.

Club drugs had always included both cocaine and pills such as Quaaludes, but they definitely were most strongly associated with disco for a while. And while it was true that the enormous gay dance clubs came into being—and straight people going to those gay clubs hit its peak when disco was king—New Wave was the music scene that was most accepting of bi and gay people, not disco.

Another way to look at it: it was no accident when the creators of That 70s Show began their nostalgic recreation of what being a teen-ager in the 70s was like with the week that Star Wars was released (May 25, 1977).

My point is that the entire 1950s wasn’t an idyllic, innocent Pleasantville time. The 1960s wasn’t all strife and discord and a clash of cultures. And the 70s wasn’t all a decadent time of dancing and drugs and hedonism as a reaction to all that seriousness in the 60s. A bit of each was true throughout all three decades.

Speaker for the Abyss

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I thought I had said all I would say about the Orson Scott Card stuff in “Abyss Gazing” and “The Abyss’ Game“, unfortunately some people who I would have hoped knew better have decided that any gay people who have chosen or are contemplating choosing to withhold our patronage from anything that will put money in the pocket of that hateful homophobe, simply don’t understand the situation properly.

So they’ve decided to explain it to us…

Continue reading Speaker for the Abyss →

The co-opting of the Nerds

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The Great Nerd Summit (also known as San Diego Comic-Con International, or SDCC) of 2013 has just happened.

I have only attended once, back in the mid-80s when attendance was a mere 6000 people. Yes, I said “mere.” Last year’s attendance was more than 130,000 people. I don’t believe that official figures are out, yet, for this year. While the convention (called the Golden State Comic Book Convention when it was founded in 1970) originally was about Comics, and the word “comic” is still in its name, it had expanded far beyond that realm to embrace sci fi/fantasy books, movies with any sci fi or superhero connection what-so-ever, and gaming back when I was there.

Of course, comics is a style or medium of storytelling. I grew up reading both Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge comics and X-men and the like, so even I knew that as a child. Yes, I said grew up. My mom was an X-men fan in the mid-sixties. I have mentioned before that I’m a second generation fan, right? My point being that you can conceivably tell any kind of story in comic form. And there have been the extremely interesting and well done examples of memoirs, biographies, and other kinds of story that don’t fit the comic book stereotype.

That said, SDCC has gotten to the point where it is the trade show for just about the entire entertainment industry. I understand why there are events highlighting upcoming movies such as sequels to The Avengers, Captain America, and Thor, as they’re all based on comics. And I understand why there are events rolling out teasers for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It’s a cartoon, not a graphic story (there are comics, but those are spin-offs, and the official MLP events were all about the cartoon), but animated cartoons are an allied artform of comics. I even understand all the video game stuff that happens at the con.

But, much as I love Benedict Cumberbatch and the current BBC Sherlock series, I think that Sherlock events at SDCC is stretching the definition a bit. Whereas the fact that there were events for How I Met Your Mother, Veronica Mars, and Community is just insane.

The official SDCC award (as opposed to Awards sponsored by other organization which are simply presented at SDCC), the Inkpot, is given out for “outstanding achievement in the Popular Arts industry.” Which makes me think the event should more properly be called the San Diego Popular Arts Con.

I’ve gotten into arguments with fellow nerds about why Sherlock Holmes, as in the original character and stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, has often been included in science fiction events. I have defended the inclusion because Holmes could be argued to be an archetype of a particular kind of nerd: hyper observant, possessed of encyclopedic knowledge of a vast range of topics, an uncanny ability to find relationships between the most minute details, and infamously incapable of relating to people empathically. Serious articles have been published in psychological journals debating (pro and con) whether the fictional Holmes had Aspergers syndrome, for goodness sake! The Holmes stories may not be sci fi, but both the character and the methodology by which he solves his mysteries are highly identifiable to a significant portion of the fan community.

While I have made that argument, and will continue to do so, I’m also the first to admit that all it provides is a reasonable rationale for stretching the envelope to include Holmes as an allied creation. It’s a stretch, and I admit it.

A sort of similar argument can be made for the specific television show, Community, because its ensemble includes some nerds. But it’s a much more tenuous connection to make based on a couple of supporting characters, as opposed to the main character and his primary activity.

I can think of even more tenuous (and ludicrous) arguments that might be made for shows such as How I Met Your Mother, but all of them would be a smoke screen. The truth is that, as I mentioned, SDCC is a trade show, not a fan convention. Its purpose is to advertise, generate buzz, and fan the flames of enthusiasm for any popular art property that can shoehorn itself into the convention. That isn’t a bad thing, per se. Certainly no one is forcing fans to get online at a particular time on the final day of the convention so that the entirety of the next year’s memberships can be sold out in less than two hours. No one is forcing people such as myself to track down stories and videos of the events to get some ideas of what movies and shows I should be looking for in the future.

If you want to fan the flames of enthusiasm, there is no better place than the heart or mind of a nerd or geek. We’re more politely called fans, which is short for fanatic. The one trait that most distinguishes us from the mundanes is how incredibly, obsessively enthusiastic we get about the things we like. So even though some of us are primarily enthusiastic about science and science fiction, if you can get us interested in your show— even one that doesn’t have any discernible science-y aspects—we’ll talk about it. We’ll set our DVRs to catch your premiere. We’ll mention that it’s coming out to our less nerdy friends. We’ll make and post fan art or create and share silly memes based on photos from your show.

We will be your viral marketing campaign. And because tens of thousands of us are willing to buy memberships at SDCC each year, that means some of us are paying for the privilege.

Apart from other branding considerations, I think that’s why for the foreseeable future they won’t be replacing the “Comic” part of the name.

“So, why isn’t your husband here?”

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I’m sharing a table at the vendor’s room of EverfreeNW, a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic convention.

I love going to conventions. I love going to conventions in order to spend time with friends who I don’t get to see as often as I like, to see and occasionally buy cool and odd things, to get away from mundanity for a few days, and sometimes to learn new things. Because I am a big introvert, I don’t really do well at the kinds of convention activities where one is required to interact in an open-ended way with a lot of strangers.

Oddly enough, I have discovered that the best way to see all the cool costumes, nifty artwork, and so on, while avoiding too much stranger interact is to staff a table at the convention and try to sell stuff. This may sound like a contradiction, but the structure of the dealer’s den means that generally I am only interacting with strangers in a limited number of ways. I am usually simply answering questions about the merchandise at the table. I’m not a hard-sell kind of guy. I will try to make eye contact and smile or greet people who are looking at the merchandise, but then I let them make the next move.

It is easy to spend the time when people aren’t asking questions writing. The last many years I usually have either my Macbook or my iPad with a bluetooth keyboard. Previous years I would have a notebook and a pencil. I wrote the first draft of one of the funniest, horror/epic fantasy/Christmas ghost story cross-over pieces ever entirely by hand in a dealer’s den in Chicago one con, for instance.

I got a lot of writing done on the first day of EverfreeNW.

I also had a lot of cool conversations. One of things I’m selling are a bunch of our duplicate 2-inch vinyl pony toys. We bought several extra boxes of them last year to do our pony-themed Christmas tree. So I had a box full of them which people were picking through looking for their favorite characters. One woman kept holding up some of the obscurer (“background ponies”) characters and asking me their names. I had to confess that I don’t recognize a lot of them, either.

At one point I said, “I’m sorry. My husband knows the names of most of the background ponies, not me.”

“Why isn’t your husband here, then?” she asked.

I pointed to the enormous line of hundreds of people waiting for registration. I had been hearing stories all day that people were waiting in line for hours to buy their memberships. I said, “My husband is on registration staff. I don’t know when I’ll see him again.”

“Oh, yeah, you may not see him again until the con is over.” She went back to looking at the ponies. “I must say, even though they’re being slammed, the people who waited on me were all very nice and helpful.”

She bought about half a dozen ponies.

Several other fun conversations were with younger kids about buttons. My husband has recycled a lot of the packaging material for some of the pony toys by turning them into pin-back buttons. The buttons are popular with lots of folks, but the kids seem especially enamored of the buttons. Most of the conversations centered around which is their favorite character, and what the best picture of said character was that we had on a button.

I noticed that the younger kinds most liked the inch-and-a-quarter size. Though the slightly older ones would pick the small buttons, then realize that the price was the same for a big one, and go looking for a large one with the same character. Because the buttons have been made by cutting out pre-printed packaging, we seldom have the exact same pose in both sizes.

One girl tried to talk her younger sister into switching to a bigger one of the same character. “No! This one’s better!”

Can’t argue with that!

Why ponies?

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I’m a fan of lots of things, and I’m used to most people not quite understanding my obsessions. Many of the other kids watched Lost In Space, for instance, while it was running in prime time during first and second grades, but didn’t understand why I still liked to watch the reruns in sixth grade. And none of them seemed to be watching Star Trek when it was on prime time, so I got a lot of blank looks if I talked about it, until years later when it became a big hit in syndication. Similarly, all the kids knew who Superman and Batman were, but thought I was weird for reading the Avengers and Doctor Strange.

Once we finally moved to a town big enough to have a significant sci fi contingent (10th grade), I started feeling a little less like a freak. And when, that summer, the original Star Wars came out, it seemed for a while as if everyone was at least a bit of a freak. Though I still got some funny looks and rolled eyes when people found out that I had driven to a large screen theatre in another state 13 times just to see Star Wars on the highest quality screen and sound system I could find.

And so for the last couple of years I’ve found myself having to explain the appeal of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a show originally intended for little girls.

The truth is, I resisted watching it. When I first heard about the Brony phenomenon, I thought it was mildly amusing, but more because other people were making such a big deal out of young adult men watching a kid’s cartoon. Then one of my friends started showing episodes to my husband while we were all at a comics con together, and though I tried not to watch, I couldn’t resist.

The answer to “why ponies?” is simply that the scripts were well written. Yes, Lauren Faust, the producer for this relaunch of My Little Pony, had wanted to create a show for little girls, but specifically she wanted to get away from the sexist assumptions of most toys and shows aimed at little girls. She wanted a story that treated girls as humans, not little princesses who are only interested in dolls. So the six main characters, all female, are written as six young adults with diverse interests and occupations. We have an athlete, a baker, an animal caretaker, a farmer, a designer/seamstress, and a librarian. The emphasis, in the first season, at least, was less on outlandish mystical villains (though, yes, there are a couple of those) and more on personality conflicts, misunderstandings, and mundane misadventures.

More importantly, the writers don’t generally talk down to the audience. Instead of writing stories that will appeal only to children (or what some adults think would appeal to children), they write character-driven stories.

It reminds me of a theme I read again and again back in the days when I regularly read Writers Digest and The Writer magazine: a good children’s story was a good story, period. Every established children’s author or editor of children’s publications has tons of stories of meeting aspiring writers who have the mistaken notion that writing for children is a good place to start, because children’s writing is easier, because children are simple, right?

Children are people, they just don’t have as much experience as adults. Yes, there are areas of the brain that don’t reach full development until mid-to-late twenties, there are topics that children may not have the emotional maturity or context to handle easily, and there are topics that society generally agrees aren’t appropriate to share with children. Their priorities and perspectives are different, but they aren’t stupid and they aren’t simple-minded. Their stories, therefore, shouldn’t be dumbed-down versions of adult stories.

And that was certainly the case in the first couple seasons of the show.

Another thing I like about the show is the utter lack of cynicism within the stories and so far as I can tell in the execution of the series. It’s just a fun, often joyful experience.

I understand why some people don’t like the show. I understand why some people think it is strange that adults follow the show, organize conventions to talk about it, and so forth. But then, I also think that more people should ask just what the appeal is to so many otherwise intelligent adults of the by-the-numbers, totally unchallenging, practically sleep-written Law & Order franchises.

Come on! What’s with that?

Why I’m proud

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“If it’s just who you are, why be proud about it?”

It seems like a reasonable question, right? I mean, if we’re born this way, what is there to be proud of? It’s not like we did it, right?

If you’ve ever asked that question, or been tempted to ask it (especially if you think it’s a clever question) here’s what I need you to do: imagine one of the really big St Patrick’s day parades. Imagine a very big, bearded, slightly inebriated Irish American in that parde. Now imagine yourself wearing a t-shirt with a British flag printed on it, and some slogan such as “The Irish are all terrorists!” in really large print. Now imagine yourself confronting the inebriated Irishman in the middle of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and demanding that he explain just what it is he has to be proud of, anyway, just because he was born Irish?

If you are a straight or straight-identified person living in our society, having grown up going to schools that encouraged your childhood crushes, that held dances that celebrated your teen age boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, watching movies where 99.9% of the plots include at least an element of either boy-meets-girl or boy-rescues-girl or woman-gets-her-man, et cetera, much of your existence is the result of a system of privilege which is the equivalent of that t-shirt.

So that’s the first thing I have to be proud of: I haven’t been crushed by the forces of homophobia, I didn’t commit suicide in my teens, I survived all the beatings, I managed to avoid being driven into addiction or a life of loneliness by all of those people, assumptions, and cultural expectations that said I couldn’t love, and if even I could my love didn’t matter, my very self was false.

I survived all of that and became a productive member of society. I found a man who promised to love me and stay with me the rest of his life—and he did! And after he died, I was lucky enough to be found by another wonderful man who somehow isn’t put off by all my obnoxious personality traits and has the audacity to love me!

We have a circle of friends who run the spectrum from straight through bi and gay, and contrary to what I was told again and again throughout my childhood, how lovable or worthwhile any of them are has absolutely nothing to do with their orientation.

I’m proud not just because I’m still here and I’ve survived, but because all of those people marching in Pride Parades all around the world have survived. From the freaks to the wallflowers, from the lesbian moms and gay dads to the queer aunties and uncles, from the straight parents of lesbian & gays to the straight kids of gays & lesbians, from the queer soccer players to the queer sci fi nerds (and there are a lot more of us than you think!), from the drag queens to muscle daddies and gym bunnies, from the dykes on bikes to the queer corgi owners club (sometimes one of the largest groups in the parade), from the go-go boys to the clog-dancing lesbians, from the queer quakers to the gay service members, from the cyber sluts to the snap queens, from house spouses to the queer executives… in short, every bi, gay, trans, lesbian, gender-non-conformist, queer, homo, fairy, butch, femme, st8-acting person or ally who has survived another year and is still ready to stand up, be counted, and throw a fabulous party.

I’m proud because we have endured hate, which has taught us how to love better. I’m proud because we have fled the shadows, and showed the world our light. I’m proud because no matter how many times we’ve been knocked down, we have gotten back up.

I’m proud because we’re all here, and we’re beautiful!

Why I watch the parade

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First, because it’s a parade, and people do some pretty astounding things when they march.

I watched my first Pride Parade before I marched in one. I was barely out to anyone at the time, and I wasn’t even sure what the parade was. I had seen (usually lurid and shocking) pictures in the papers and during the very brief coverage that would appear on the evening news.

I suspected those representations were highly inaccurate, but I had heard a few conflicting descriptions from gay people I knew.

What struck me most about that first parade was how unexceptional most of the people looked. Oh, yes there were some outrageous costumes, and some people bared a bit more skin than you would normally see on a summer sidewalk, but the vast majority were far more fully clothed than a typical beach crowd.

I understand why a lot of people think there’s a lot more nudity at Pride Parades than other events. It’s mostly because of the men. Our society is so heavily patriarchal that we don’t notice all those women in revealing clothes, provocative poses, and suggestive angles used in advertising, television shows, and the like. Women are allowed to show off their legs, a little cleavage, and much more, to show just how beautiful their bodies are. No one blinks at all the near nudity of women on floats in the Seattle Seafair Family Torchlight Parade, for instance, or the Tournament of Roses Parade, or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade—it’s there! We don’t consciously think about how much of the world is geared around appealing to the sexual desires of straight men.

We are not used to men putting themselves on display in the same way. So when the float covered in go-go boys goes by, instead of realizing that it’s no more nudity or sex appeal than what you might see on, say, the Miss America float in the Tournament of Roses Parade, we’re too busy freaking out at the Naked Boys (who aren’t actually naked)!

But what really struck me that first time, was how ordinary so many of the people looked. The various hobby-based clubs marching by in their matching t-shirts, throwing candy. The men and women, mostly in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, walking in a group with their dogs on leashes. The political groups with matching t-shirts chanting their slogans. The groups with kids—lots of the queer couples and their kids—marching with whichever group they were with. Plus lots of church or other religiously affiliated groups and lots of amateur sports leagues.

There were a multitude of costumes, many feathers, copious amounts of glitter, and a lot of rainbows. The outrageous costumes sometimes had some sort of political message. But often they were just things like big crazy headdresses that you weren’t sure what they were meant to signify, but it was rainbow colored!

Then after all the groups with their banners and fliers and sometimes matching t-shirts had passed, the parade just kept going, just lots and lots of random people. It took a few minutes for us to figure out what was happening. I learned later that it’s a tradition that’s gone from the very first Pride March in 1970 on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. After the parade passes you, you step off the curb and join it.

And that’s why some years I watch. The reason for the parade, ultimately, is simple visibility. We’re here. We’re your daughters, your neighbors, your sons, your co-workers, your friends, your siblings, or your parents. We’re not mysterious monsters lurking in seedy clubs, we’re the person in front of you at the check-out line in the grocery store, or the two gals sitting in that next pew at church, or the grey-haired guy trying to read a label on a bottle of cold tablets in the pharmacy, or that kid on the skateboard going past your bus stop, or that guy sipping a coffee at Starbucks while laughing at something on his computer.

We’re here, we’re everywhere, we’re real, and we have lives just like you.

I watch so that the people who are being brave and marching in their first parade will be seen and cheered for. I watch so that group of teen-agers (half of them straight and there to support their bi, gay, and lesbian friends) will get the applause that their costumes deserve. I watch so the guy who was up all night gluing sequins on his and his boyfriend’s costume will get the cheering that work deserves. I watch so that the older couple walking together holding hands will be seen and their love acknowledged.

I watch so that the ones whose families rejected them and told them never to come back will know they have another family, and we’re clapping for them right now. I watch and applaud so that the trans* gals and trans* men know they are seen for who they are and we think they’re beautiful, wonderful, and I am proud to call them brothers and sisters. I watch so that the ones who are carrying a photo or wearing the name of a deceased loved one will know that we see their grief and share it. I watch so that the straight parents who have spent countless hours explaining to friends and relatives that their queer kids have nothing to be ashamed of, and yes they are very happy, and no those things you’ve heard or read about their health and lifespan are all myths will know their efforts are appreciated by the whole community.

I watch so I can see and be reminded of just how big and wonderful and diverse and amazing our community is.

And finally, I watch so that as the last official entry goes by, I can see all the people who aren’t part of a club or organization who, just like me, stood on the sidewalk cheering and applauding.

And I cheer and applaud for all of them until finally it’s my turn to step off the curb and say to the world, “Me too.”

Why I marched the other times

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Oh, the many reasons one continues to march in Pride Parades after that first exhilarating time…

One reason I marched in so many parades was because I was a founding member of the (now defunct) Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus. Every year we marched together with our banner. Some years we had candy to hand out. Some years we had fliers. Some years we just waved. People always shouted at us to sing, but you can’t do big choral singing in the middle of a loud street. If you try, no one can hear you over the ambient noise unless you scream. You can’t hear each other well enough to stay in key or in rhythm. We tried, a few times, to get a good mobile sound system to play recordings of us singing, but that doesn’t work well, either.

So one reason I was there in the parade year after year was to march with my fellow choristers. To show people we were there, maybe get a few more people coming to our concerts. Maybe find a few new recruits. It was always a fun group to march with.

I was also there for the same reason I marched the first time. Saying to the world that I’m here, I won’t be invisible, I’m not going away.

I was there to see all the people standing on the sidewalk. Some in couples. Some in family groups. Some were there specifically waiting to cheer for a friend, family member, or significant other who was marching with one of the groups. Some were just there to cheer everyone. Some of the folks watching together had gone to more trouble dressing up than some of the people marching. There always seemed to be at least one group like that watching from a big balcony or deck overlooking some part of the parade route.

I was there, yes, so that I’d have the satisfaction each year of either glaring at or blowing kisses at that one guy who was always there at one corner with his big sign with a bible verse on it telling us how much he thought god hated us all. I never yelled at him. One year, Ray and I stopped right in front of him, french kissed, then turned and blew kisses to him. Ray kept turning around, waving, and making yoo-hoo sounds as our group marched on. Which was hardly original, but it was fun. I don’t know if it was literally the same guy year after year. It seemed like it was. He always seemed to be alone. He was very grim-faced but always silent. At least when I saw him. I like to imagine that he eventually came out, got some therapy, and settled down with a nice leather daddy in Palm Springs.

I marched to smile and wave at the people watching. To accept the applause and return it. “Hey! We all made it another year!”

I marched to show that we’re not all cute fashion-conscious young men—some of us are chubby, grey-bearded, sci fi nerds in t-shirts and tacky Hawaiian shirts.

I marched for the friends and loved ones who are no longer with us: for Ray, who promised to stay with me for the rest of his life, who loved Disney movies and old books, who danced with an abandon I envied, who even made jokes about the chemo, and whose last words on this earth were “I love you” spoken to me; for Jim, a friend from high school who didn’t come out of the closet until he was dying of AIDS, and I don’t think ever marched at Pride; for Chet, a cousin who was sent away when he came out, who vanished for years until one day his mother got a call from a hospice, and whose immediate family continued to reject him even refusing list his name in his grandfather’s (my great-uncle) obituary; for Stacy who sang like a TV version of an opera singer and loved a good joke; for Frank who didn’t sing so well, but never missed a rehearsal; for Mikey who was as tall as a pro basketball player but would rather play Dungeons and Dragons; for Scott, who was so sure that if we prayed harder we’d both turn straight, but died in a car accident before graduation; for Kerry who was always defensive about his Vespa; for David who played even the impossible accompaniments written by Mr M and made the piano dance; for Tim who sang like an angel and loved David so much it took your breath away when you caught him smiling in David’s direction; for Todd who was diagnosed with the disorder that would become AIDS before it had a name, who made the most morbid jokes about the disease, and never allowed anyone but his partner see him cry each time he saw another funeral notice for someone he knew; for Phil who was kicked out by his parents before graduation, but put himself through college despite them; for the other Todd who moved in with one boyfriend after the next, never able to keep a relationship going for more than a couple of months until he met Jack; for Glen who had problems with labels; for Mike who had problems with middle C… and for so many others who I only knew briefly.

I marched because someone needs to and I could.

Why I marched the first time

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Why did I march in my first Pride Parade?

Because for years I was deathly afraid that people would guess. I was certain that, if people knew I was gay, that everyone would despise me. Why would anyone want to be friends with, let alone love, such a freak?

The earliest moment I remember feeling that fear was when I was four (yes, four!). I didn’t even know there were words for what I was. I had made a linguistic error, referring to two neighbor boys my age as my “boyfriends.” At that point, I thought that the word “girlfriend” meant a friend who was a girl, and “boyfriend” was a friend who was a boy. But my use of that word sent my grandmother into a tizzy, explaining to me that I must never, ever use that word. And as she explained, so emphatically that it scared the bejesus out of me, that boys would occasionally have girlfriends, and then eventually would find the one special girl that they would spend the rest of their life with, but would never, ever have those kinds of special feelings for boys, that was when I first realized that there was something wrong with me.

Later, after getting teased at school for being a “sissy,” or because I “threw like a girl,” I started to form a better picture of what that difference was.

For years, whenever my dad was angry to the point of beating me with something clublike (as opposed to just slapping, punching, and generally knocking around), he hurled the word “c*cksucker” at me repeatedly. That’s the word I remember most when I think about the time he broke my collarbone (I was ten), for instance. I didn’t know what that word meant until I was eleven. But that simply solidified everything I had already gleaned from the notion that every bully, harasser, and teaser at school, the park, or Sunday school had already made clear: boys like me were horrible, unloveable, detestable creatures.

So I did everything I could to hide it.

When puberty hit, a few months before my twelfth birthday, any doubt that I had about why all those words kept being hurled at me was gone. I threw myself into every church activity I could, because I thought if I just worked hard enough for him, surely god would eventually stop ignoring my years of tearful praying to make the feelings go away.

I honestly can’t say which motivated me more to try so many sports in middle school: trying to find a way to appease Dad, or trying to find a way to become a “real boy” to appease the bullies.

By my late teens I had finally realized that words like faggot, pussy, queer, homo, and so forth were hurled at any guy that someone meant to demean. It didn’t always mean that they thought you were literally homosexual, it was just that that was the most dehumanizing, detestable thing they could think to accuse you of being.

But because that was the most horrible thing someone could call you, it just amped the terror of what might happen if anyone realized that I actually was gay.

Even when I stopped believing that I was going to hell for feeling this way, the terror didn’t leave. Because what was really scary was the certainty that everyone I cared for would abandon me. Even when, after applying logic and ethical analysis to the abstract concept of sexual orientation, I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with any two consenting adults choosing to love each other, I still feared that abandonment.

It took a few more years of being closeted, being extremely careful about who I let know that I wasn’t heterosexual. A few more years of telling even those few people that I was bi—it wasn’t that I was lying so much as trying really hard to convince myself. Because somehow being bisexual meant I was only half a freak, or something. A few more years of furtive attempts at having relationships with guys (and trying to do that while constantly fearing someone who wouldn’t understand might see is dreadful enough on its own, let alone all the other problems inherent with the inexperienced trying to figure out relationships)—before I was finally ready to stop hiding.

I marched because I finally realized that the sorts of people who would abandon you weren’t worth having as friends. I finally realized that my worth wasn’t dependent on their approval. I finally realized that if they had a problem with me being gay, that it was their problem, and not mine.

I marched because I was tired of hiding. I marched because I was tired of trying to be invisible. I marched because I was tired of all the people trying to make me invisible or urging me to keep it to myself.

I marched because I was ready grab the world by its metaphorical lapels, give it a shake, and say, “Hey! I’m standing right here!”