sistawendy: a cartoon of me looking angry (angry cartoon)
I've been spending too much time on the internet again, so I'm seeing a lot of the usual, almost ritual grousing about recent Pride celebrations, to wit:
  1. Big Bidness has discovered that queers can be customers, and so Pride is now too commercialized.
  2. The greater queer rights movement ignores or marginalizes or otherwise defecates upon [insert your particular subgroup of the queer population here].
Let me take these in order. First, if the degree to which certain industries - I'm looking at you, alcohol and tobacco - have glommed onto Pride bothers you that much, get involved. Become one of the event organizers. I'm sure it isn't that hard, because people burn out at non-profits like that pretty regularly. Talk to businesses. Talk to the press.

ETA: Don't forget that Microsoft paid for my sex reassignment surgery at a time when very few employers and no private insurers would do so. (Oh wait, that time is still here.) Those people marching in the corporate contingents? About 95% queer and 5% true blue allies, judging from what I saw as a Microsoftee. They are us.

As for the greater queer population being x-phobic for your value of x, yes, this definitely happens. We also need each other. If you're trans, cis queers outnumber us around twenty to one and out-earn us by more than that, qualities that are really handy in allies. If you're cis & bi, the homos & trans people have visibility outside the queer community that you have yet to acquire. If you're cis & homo, the bis can about double your numbers if you include them, and they're a much-needed reminder of the complicated truth about sexual orientation. And we out trans people are walking reminders that assimilationism is bunk.

In other words, do what you need to do to get what you want, and spare me your whining & cynicism. It's worse than useless.

Besides, you know I love to party, and this is the big queer party. That alone is still reason for me to go to Pride events. If you need more, party to let the x-phobes know that we're queer, we're here, we're fabulous, we're better people most of the time, and we're having way more fun than they are. Party to let queers in India or Texas or Everett, WA or Rainier Beach high school in Seattle know that there is a better place for them, and if it's too far away, they can make one of their own.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Date: 2015-06-25 11:41 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] staxxy.livejournal.com
but but... I WANT THE REPRESENTATION OF MY SPECIFIC FLAVOR OF QUEER TO MAGICALLY APPEAR ACROSS ALL MEDIA WHILE I SIT BACK AND REAP THE BENEFITS!!! I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PUT EFFORT INTO GETTING WHAT I WANT!!! EVERYONE SHOULD MAGICALLY KNOW MY NEEDS AND DESIRES AND BRING THEM TO ME ON SILVER PLATED PONIES!!!!

/sarcasm

your pains, I feel them sister. My demographic is under represented but I am not going to bitch about it. my demographic is one of the easiest to blend into normal society, and if I really want representation I am perfectly capable of making myself SUPER VISIBLE about it. It is, however, not my current priority as I literally have more important issues on my plate than social justice for a demographic that is just under represented and not actively *oppressed* really. I wish more people knew the difference there; so many people seem to see under representation as actual oppression and the two are so radically different that it actually sabotages efforts to end oppression for those that really do experience it. It infuriates me.

Date: 2015-06-26 01:40 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] trystbat.livejournal.com
My favorite times at SF Pride were in college bec., well, duh, picking up chicks!, & then again when I worked Yahoo!'s booth 2 years in a row. For exactly the reasons you said about MS. I was dame proud to be at one of the few companies that supported LGBT rights & backed it up in every way possible, plus we handed out purple feather boas, a big hit.

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