Pride doesn’t represent me

[Vegansausageroll]

Just been watching Joe Lycett’s big pride party.
It was all sexualised smut. It’s ‘furries’ , kink, drag, sex and innuendos galore. This isn’t all what pride is about! It’s supposed to be about our sexuality and our rights and not being ashamed of who we are. But there is no representation for young people like I was! I want people to be themselves and express themselves but it all just seems so extreme now!

I’m a middle aged gay woman. I like books and countryside walks!

I am very worried about equal rights and the way they are, once again, under threat.
I have nothing in common with the people that now dominate ‘pride’. The last woman’s group I went to has long been shut down, as have the lesbian groups I used to attend back in the day. I’m worried gay youth are being sent a message that their sexuality must be linked to a certain type of ‘lifestyle’ when many of us just want to live a regular life the same as our straight friends - the only difference is the sex of our partners 🤷‍♀️.

Can I ask what what connection you think MPJ, a gay man, who wasn't at the Stonewall Inn when the riots started, has to trans issues & the Stonewall riots?

As you'll know, MPJ suffered from many MH issues, with numerous arrests for drug possession, & as such, wasn't involved to any great extent in any activism.

My db has never been interested in the whole pride thing, or the rainbows etc. he's just a normal guy into normal things that happens to fancy other guys rather than girls. He's very boring, likes the drama channel and not very adventurous beers. (Love him but he's so not what pride has turned into)

not smug, just more than tired of bullshit claims that trans people had anything other than a marginal part in the gay rights movement. As for saying, as you do "Rad fem politics are a slur"-you must be mistaking me for someone that gives a flying fuck what you think

Why do you expect a programme by Joe Lycett to represent everyone?

Marsha P Johnston was a drag artist, who was not at stonewall on the first or second night of the riots. "She" has retrospectively been included as a trans icon, but was not trans and did not identify that way.

Pride is activism and now that the original aims have been met, equal jobs, opportunities, marriage etc it has become overrun with advocating for kink. And trying to make us feel this should be acceptable to all.

Of course it's perfectly reasonable that gay, lesbian and bisexual people should have the same rights in society as those who identify as straight = the original aim of Pride.

Now furries, erotica, children in drag shows, augentophiles and even MAP (minor attracted persons -so- -paedos- trying to creep in at the edges all in the name of activism. And noone is allowed to say STOP I don't want this in my society.

From speaking with the gay man who organised the 1st Pride march, the goals were three-fold - to put political pressure on Govt's to end discrimatory laws, to show that gay people weren't the scary people they'd been portrayed as & to celebrate gay culture.

In the intervening 50 years, Pride marches have become a very different thing. Certainly the ones in cities.

And the rainbow washing that Pride now represents with big sponsorship is not lost on anyone.

Yanbu x a million.
It's utterly grim.

This thread is incredibly homophobic

I'm a lesbian who hasn't been sexually attracted to a trans woman before. That doesn't mean I dictate who other lesbians are allowed to find attract. How about respecting and accepting the identities of others? Just because they may have different boundaries to you, you tell them they're not who they are? It's weird as it's the rad fems I come across who want to erase others, far from the other way round.

So what are the corporate supporters doing about it? Was there a banner ‘we support our LGB brothers and sisters in Saudi’? Where was the ‘activism’ beyond the ‘f* T**Fs’?

this is activism lite. It’s play acting. It’s Mardi Gras, Halloween and St Patricks day with glitter. People go to dress up and have a laugh - some to have a go at others.

Ye gads. Marsha P Johnson was a gay male drag queen who was not only not trans, but also wasn’t anywhere near the start of the riots. Do educate yourself a bit more about gay history please!

OP - I’m a middle aged gay woman who is similarly from that boring old time when gay people wanted to be seen not as “queer” (strange, funny?) but just like everyone else, with the right to be our partner’s next of kin and share pension rights and get married and go to work events with our partners and not be thought of as people obsessed with sex but just as the normal boring couple next door. All that boring old sort of stuff like being considered just like everyone else.

Instead, 25 years later, we’re meant to be queering this and all LGBT++++ people are vulnerable special cases who need special treatment and extra circumstances and to be tiptoed around and (as with the asexual thing) supposedly obsessed with sex, how we’re having it, how often, top or bottom, demisexual or furry, kink-positive etc. etc.

My daughter got told in assembly this week that “people who don’t agree with Pride are unkind so in this school we agree with Pride”. Yet as a lesbian mum with plenty of middle-aged gay and lesbian friends, none of whom feel represented by all of this, I feel throughly alienated by Pride, stonewall, gender ideology, corporate rainbow-washing totalitarianism etc. - so is my DD supposed now to think that her gay mum is unkind to gay people? F+++ ing ridiculous situation tbh.

Actual gay people - with all that lived experience that gender ideologues supposedly like so much - being lectured at and told they are “phobic” by wet behind the ears young straight kids who like “kink” and are “questioning their gender identity”. I’ve had enough of it tbh.

Yes! Paragraphs 1-3 is what I was trying to say. You’ve just summarised it much more eloquently - thank you.

For those being deliberately obtuse, of course it is not just about one daft programme on channel 4. It’s the persistent and overt changing of the whole meaning of pride into one big, rainbow, sex obsessed party that incorporates a constant stream of increasingly bizarre kinks.
I don’t want to be associated with it by default. It doesn’t represent me and I don’t have anything in common with it.
They have distorted pride for their own financial ends.

Pride was about activism and then from the eighties also celebrating. Read about the history. There has always been tension between the two.

It’s usually the case for any group in society though isn’t it. A few courageous people stand up and ask to be acknowledged and respected and then everyone jumps on the bandwagon and by trying to raise awareness actually cheapens and destroys the original intention.
It’s like every one and every occupation needs to be celebrated. Nurses in the pandemic, firefighters in the bushfires, first responders in a crisis. Slightly odd topic but along the same lines.

👏👏👏
THIS!!

The corporates were invited in as Pride grew to keep it free. It was a choice by the committee.

I think his show will always be like that. There are a bunch of Pride programmes throughout the month that represent different circumstances.

I used to love pride. I first attended as an "ally" ( or closeted bi in reality) and we marched. It was scary at times, because there were homophobic protesters against us. There were risks to my employment had I been seen there. BUT the inclusion. The sharing of space and standing for our rights. The strangers who were my friends because we shared a goal, and a fight and a sexuality.

Slowly, each passing year had more and more inappropriate people. Nudity, fetishism, leather and studs- the stuff we saw in the club scene- where it's expected, welcome and part of the culture of the scene and the adults going to the club choose it, leaking onto the streets, into the March- in the day time. In front of children and non consenting people. That scene was great- I personally loved it. But it wasn't what pride was about. And to me, that fetishisation and lifestyle becoming part of the March only serves to confirm the prejudice of homophobes and further entrench the idea that we are sexual deviants.

Recently my niece said that I was too vanilla to be a "real" gay. That I just say it to seem cool. The point is that my sexuality isn't a lifestyle choice. Or at least that's what the point WAS.

Exactly. Joe Lycett is not interested in the ordinary person.

It’s just not though is it. Some of the pride attendees, however…

@kittenkipping what year did you first go to Pride? And are you talking about London?

Lots of things don't represent lots of people but
Pride is a political movement promoting equality and gay rights. No matter where you stand on the scale that is. Something to get behind

YANBU - it doesn't represent any of my gay friends either.

Why so hung up on representation? You are just talking about who turns up.

It’s having a huge impact on our teens. In all schools. It’s about time someone looked at it more logically.

I want to see more of a person than their sexuality - life is more than about sex and gender - you can be anything you want and should be equal in all areas, but it doesn’t have to be a constant.