(no subject)

[olivermoss]

So, I know this is a weird year for it, but I am trying to make Pride not suck for me. I don't want to be the sad, lonely grumpy one while others are having fun. Makes me feel like the Grinch.

I have a little rainbow section in my bujo for each week where I plan to write down things I did that week involving Pride. First week, I had a few small things. This week so far I got nothing (unless I decide to count this post).

The first week, I posted to FB about Pride not ever being good for me and asked for responses about what other people get out of it. Basically, those who enjoy it, how? What? I mostly got people saying they don't engage in Pride or feel good going ... which while not helpful was validating. And, for context, one of the responders runs peer support groups and doesn't go to Pride. It doesn't feel safe to him. Not because of cops or kink or anything, but the overarching LGBTQ+ community itself doesn't feel good or safe to him.

At some point there will be a in-game Pride Parade in GW2. The dates haven't been announced yet, but it's usually in late June and only announced a week beforehand. I'll probably do that when it happens.

I gotta say, and this is purely anecdotal / only representative of the spaces I hang out in, but when I see people being happy that it's Pride month it's because a family member bought them a rainbow insulated coffee mug and they feel all accepted or they are going out with a romantic partner to have dinner in celebration of pride. Family and partners, things that don't exist for me. So, maybe it's just not for me, but I am like trying to find ways to engage in it because I don't like feeling like the grinch.

Maybe next year will go better for Project Made Pride Not Suck For Me.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I think this is an atypical year for it, for sure.

I *do* tend to enjoy Pride, and it's probably that it does feel validating for me, despite me not being completely out. I'm not completely sure I can articulate why, because I ALSO don't have any strong connections to the irl queer community here. But I also don't want to spew ramblings about it onto your post, haha.

Project Make Pride Not Suck For [You] is a worthwhile endeavor, and I do hope next year is an easier one.

[olivermoss]

I can't fling myself to the center of Alaska every June, as much as I'd like to.

Maybe Pride here is just a particularly bad mix of cliquishness and ~experience community, find your tribe~. Everything I hear about Pride doesn't seem to match reality for me, and to be fair, it doesn't match the reality of anyone who responded to my post.

[mistressofmuses]

I feel like cliquish + a veneer of ~find your community~ is a super toxic mix, and it's one I've seen a lot of groups fall victim to. (Geek spaces often felt similar to me - "We like quirky and weird and bonding over media... but also reserve the right to shun you if your interests get too mainstream/not mainstream enough/you talk to the "wrong" people/you disagree with the group about a piece of media or an interpretation of it/etc.") So it doesn't surprise me that Pride as a whole could absolutely get mired in that.

I think that Pride becoming the commercialized monster that it has been (which is absolutely a thing here, too) is part of what makes the whole thing feel kind of shallow, and a genuine sense of community that much harder to find. I don't think that's the ONLY issue by any stretch, but it certainly feeds into a lot of it.

[olivermoss]

That, plus Pride tends to send people and groups into burnout. When I was briefly in a group that does plan a good chunk of Pride, I mentioned about all the groups that present there like book clubs, or peer support, etc are all unreachable after and they just laughed at me. Apparently 'That's just Pride.' Everything shutting down for like a month and a half after Pride is just typical, if it doesn't cause the whole group to just disband after. But they don't think that is a problem of Pride, that is just the way of things.

They are literally setting up any community building stuff up to fail, but they think they need to focus more on having displays and events to commemorate tragic events, including ones not aimed at LGBT people, because 'logically, some of the POC attack were also LGBT so we should consider this historical event to also be an LGBT event'.

Apparently, community building is for losers, the problem is that they need to focus the event on the Vanport flood.

And yeah, I don't think they get the barriers commercialization brings. Even before it went online there was a lot of 'this event is free ... just give us all your data and let us connect to your facebook including posting permissions or install this app on your phone'.

[muccamukk]

barging in. This is interesting, because I've always I think come at it from the opposite way: Into pride as part of an existing group. So it's basically all the groups' year end bash, rather than a foundational thing. I don't think I ever thought of it as anything other than ephemeral. I can see this as being immensely frustrating with a different set of expectations. Or maybe it's just run pretty differently, I'm not sure. I've admittedly never been that involved in organising Pride other than trying to remember which cupboard the parade banner is in.

[olivermoss]

This might be purely a local thing with our Pride, but we have a lot of people moving here all the time for queer community. Pride is billed as the way in, and it's not. A lot of groups are represented there, it's almost like a club fair as a high school in places. When I've been there in person, most of the space was about promoting groups. I don't know how it's currently run. Since I've only done Pride here, I've had that assumption that Pride is about onboarding newly arrived, newly out, newly realized-things-about-themselves people. I mean, I wouldn't expect that at a Pride in a smaller city, but that's how Pride bills itself here and the assumption I'd make about major queer-friendly cities.

[mistressofmuses]

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think I only ever tried to kind of join up with one group after picking up a flyer at Pride one year, and it was just *crickets.* I can absolutely imagine that putting SO MUCH effort and planning and energy into one event would wipe even the best organizer out for quite some time after.

I'm all for intersectionality, and the importance of it, and understand having some acknowledgement of events that have largely impacted the queer community but... that also seems really uncomfortable in a lot of ways. To put the focus on tragedy (even unrelated tragedy!) to the exclusion/diminishment of anything else?

I feel like Pride should absolutely be about community building/strengthening, and seeing the big events forgo that in favor of some frankly weird decisions is not great imo.

That's it exactly: give us your data! free swag if you give us your email and phone and address and make a social media post and tag us while we look over your shoulder to make sure you do it!
Plus in 2019 there was a lot of outcry about how many independent artists and vendors were priced out in favor of Verizon and Target booths, and every suburban police department with a booth of their own. There still WERE art/indie publisher/community groups there, which is what I enjoy the "festival" part for, but... It's certainly still A Thing, and money>community undercuts the whole thing in a lot of ways.

(So I do enjoy Pride, but I've also got a lot of criticisms.)

[olivermoss]

I get that looking back at Vanport and thinking 'some of those people were part of my minority group' is a an important thought, but I think they trying to commemorate Vanport at Pride isn't going to hit the way they are thinking.

I don't know how it is in other cities, but in Portland, Pride month tends to saturate everything. That is part of why I try to line up my yearly break from the city and the internet with it. So many flags on the houses, so many sidewalks get covered in chalk, so many stores suddenly all rainbow... This year it isn't as intense, but usually it's like I can't buy a cup of coffee without running into 5 Pride related things. When the event and the local community feels alienating and like it excludes you, it's a lot to wade through.

[mistressofmuses]

I agree that it's worth remembering that any large-scale event is almost certainly going to impact the community to some degree. I also don't want to say that tragedy should be ignored, by any means. But focusing on tangential tragedy seems like an unfortunate choice in a lot of ways.

Around Denver it definitely does seep into a lot of areas, though I'm not sure to the same extent as Portland. But lots of flags on houses and merch in stores. While I like seeing the flags, because pride flags have a positive emotional connotation for me... I can also absolutely understand it not feeling that way when you feel alienated from the community. I don't feel *alienated* from the community here so much as just not a part of it, if that makes sense.

[olivermoss]

The Pride flags might be positive for me, but here is gets so, so saturated. At least in my section of Portland. It's possible that a lot of my annoyances and other problems are due to Portland-specific things.

Yeah, that makes sense. I feel alienated for a number of reasons that include local groups and even the local LGBTQ+ center being exclusionary of certain groups.

[mistressofmuses]

Exclusionary attitudes are absolute garbage, and queer groups that are exclusionary upset me so very much.

[muccamukk]

Given that I live in the woods, Pride is usually "the month all the queer history books come out/are on sale." My reading habits shift form "pretty gay" to "entirely gay."

But when I lived in town, I did like the parades (which I was usually in with one group or another), etc. I think I liked the feeling that I could be queer in public and it was fine, and just seeing everyone be weird and happy. I did tend to go to the pride and the word poetry nights etc, more than the danceathons. I think I've been to maybe one pride thing with Nenya, usually I was single sans family.

IDK if that's helpful.

I hope you find a practice that works for you. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a grinch about it either.

[olivermoss]

It's good to get some actual perspectives on it. I mostly just hear a bunch of shouting about it and local groups being super intense about it.

I used to go to the parades and was excited because I thought someday I thought I was at the start of something, all that wonderful found family and dating people go on about so much. Now it just makes me feel lonely.

Being a grinch is valid, but I'd rather be one of the happy people.

[muccamukk]

I totally have had the experience of crying in a bathroom at a queer event because I didn't know anyone and I was therefore going to be lonely forever. So I totally hear that. It's really hard to break into communities, especially long standing ones, and pride is not, I think, maybe the best time to try. I think maybe the best time is September, after everyone's sobered up, and the groups are getting going again.

[olivermoss]

I haven't tried to do that at Pride-the-event in ages. I've long since abandoned the idea that Portland Pride is anything like what it says it is. I've just tried to engage some people about that disconnect between how they bill themselves and reality, but they aren't interested. I've tried lots of ways at lots of times of year to find community and it hasn't worked. There is no in for me.

In this comments I've kind of talked about two separate things: Portland Pride, and also Pride in general. There is the specific local event, and also the general Target-has-rainbow-shirts, internet events, month of June, fandom churns our drawings of characters draped in flags, etc Pride. I don't expect anything good to ever come out of Portland Pride, I was just trying to find ways to deal with Pride In General so June doesn't make me feel shitty and broken.

And I am conflating the two things a bit because if PDX Pride didn't suck for me or if I had a person to go to local Pride with, at least long enough to walk around and maybe have a beer, my feelings toward Pride In General would be very differet

[nenya_kanadka]

Following Mucca in, hope that's okay.

When I'm in town/when I'm in the city at the right time, I go to the big parade. I like seeing all the floats and flags and bright colours and people making noise and the downtown area being a sea of visibly queer and queer supportive people for an hour or so. Partly because life in general can be pretty hetero/cis most of the time even if one does have queer friends. It's an excuse to tie a rainbow flag around my neck like a cape. After the parade there's like stalls set up with various groups handing out swag or selling art or handmade jewelry or whatever, and I like wandering around there for a bit and seeing if there's anything I want to get (leaflets with information but more often "my old rainbow bracelet broke and I want to replace it"). Then I usually go home? I don't generally go to other Pride week events because stuff like poetry readings or events in loud bars are pretty inaccessible to me (I'm super hard of hearing).

It's definitely more fun if I have someone to go with or meet there, even if it's just a casual acquaintance. I've felt lonely at Pride parades a lot, sort of alone in a crowd of other queer people who all seem to know someone. But I also usually end up running into a couple of people I know somewhere throughout the day. It's varied, from my first year or two when just being there felt daring and a little scary, to the year I went with Mucca when we were first dating (or just before?) and felt on top of the world, to the year before we got hitched when we marched in the parade and she wore a "bride to be" sash, to years when it's just been me (even after we were together, I've often gone alone). On the whole I enjoy that day of the year and make an effort to go when there's not a pandemic on, but yeah, I've had to revise my expectations down a bit from what TV seems to show. There's no, like, barbecues or afterparties or a roving group of friends I go with who make it a huge social event, and I'm not involved in any committees or organizations. I just kind of go, the way I might go to a Canada Day parade.

Socially--I made a queer friend the first week of my retail job in 2009, and they were the kind of person who talked nonstop and knew a million people. So I met many many queer people through them, a couple of whom stuck as friends. A year or so later I ran into a trans lady in the laundry room of my apartment building and she turned out to be my neighbour and we liked the same kind of scifi and we've been friends ever since. Groups are much more intimidating; I went to I think 2 or 3 sessions of a bi-and-lesbian meetup group, then made 1 friend, and neither me nor the new friend ever went back again because we had a better time talking to each other every so often than going to the awkward meetup. (The same thing used to happen when I tried to get involved with churches when I still did that--newcomers groups and whatever did fuckall, but occasionally I would meet one person I clicked with, and if that friendship took off it often outlasted whatever vague attempt I'd made at "joining the community" by years.)

Weirdly, if I can't make the transition from face-to-face to online (exchanging emails or Discord handles or something) with someone, it's harder to build a friendship, because SO much of my life is conducted online. I'm not even constantly on social media or anything (lol ask me the last time I updated my DW!) but I'm so deaf and, now, so rural that that's just how I talk to people.

I have friends who don't do the whole Pride parade thing at all. Whether that's because crowds are majorly stressful, or transportation/finances are an issue, or issues with other parts of the community (beef with someone specific, or feeling that trans people weren't prioritized, etc), or they think of Pride as being for newbies/activists/"professional gays"/people who are Really Excited About Being Queer and they see themselves as just...living their life and not needing a parade, or they've gotten out of the habit, or...there are a million reasons to not go or not get anything out of it. It's absolutely valid not to, IMO. Though it does suck in a personal sense to feel like there's all this celebration of one's identity going on and yet somehow it doesn't feel like it's celebrating you or has a place for you. That's pretty alienating!

Wow, this got long.

[olivermoss]

It's fine to follow Mucca in!

Pride is very intense in Portland. It's like you can't go 15 feet without a house having just put out a flag or someone having done rainbow chalk all down a sidewalk or a store decked out or a bar running Pride Month specials. A lot of the yard skeletons here are wearing rainbow skirts. And it all feels alienating to me. I don't have a place in the community, or partners or friends. Part of why is that the local queer community traditionally excludes a lot of people. If I lived somewhere else, maybe it wouldn't get to me at much. As it is, I like to have my yearly break from the internet / cell phone range to line up with the start of it all. Sadly, in 2020 and this year that wasn't possible.