Being ostracised by friends over kink at Pride

[TheEverlovingFork]

Ok first of all I am a) completely willing to be told I'm in the wrong and b) bisexual myself, but I am also a fairly conservative churchgoer and I'm aware my feelings might be really outdated.

Basically some friends and I were talking about Pride month and I said I didn't agree with explicit kink in the public parades, like the more extreme leather fetish gear and puppy-play and so on, because I think that no matter what your orientation is, being proud of your sexual identity doesn't equate to simulating/practising it in public. If i saw a straight couple in leather underpants grinding on each other in public I would wonder if they were unwell.

I completely understand the being able to kiss and hold hands and show romantic affection in public as that is an unthinking privilege heterosexual people have and it should be ok for all LBGT people. I've come in for a lot of homophobic abuse myself over the years for holding hands with a partner. I really get that aspect.

I just don't feel explicit bedroom antics are ok in the parades, and now I'm being told I'm a reactionary and not supportive of the community. I'm a member of the community myself, am I supposed to meld into the new acceptable groupthink as a bisexual? Didn't get the memo.

Anyway, maybe I am just uptight because of my religious beliefs. I don't know. If i had children I would not want them to see some of the the things I've seen in parades.

I'm bored with it and I am
apparently part of the community.

Being kinky is about as exciting as shepherds pie. It is however really tedious to see people exhibiting themselves as sexual fetishists.

I'm pretty conservative, but I disagree with you. Its a parade, so should be seen in that context.

We've had parades and people dressing up for centuries in England and all over the world. Yes, if people are simulating sex its OTT, but dressed in leather or cosplay? No.

At the Notting Hill Carnival , very hetro, its perfectly fine to have women with hardly a stich on, we've had our own Lady Godiva festivals in England for 100's of years with half naked women on horses.

If my 4 year old or even 10 year old saw people in in fetish gear , in the context of a parade, I think they would think its carnival and people just dressed up.

You should head down to the Lewes Bonfire carnival - burning crosses, white people blacked up pretending to be Zulus with in-authentic nose rings ( This one the locals recently dropped) images of politicians, burnt in a bonfire, complete decadance, but a great family day out. The Lewes bonfire night was banned at one point by Oliver Cromwell at one point they were so outragoeus.

But it continues because its a carnival at the end of the day, a spectacle.

I've had someone absolutely lose it at me for having the same opinion as OP.

It went from me saying that I thought bondage gear, ball gags and people crawling on dog leads is inappropriate to all of a sudden that meaning I am homophobic/transphobic/etc etc

Kink gear has no place amongst consenting adults and children. It is literally violating consent... Something that reasonable kink community people are very strict about.

That shouldn't trump the safeguarding of children. As several PPs have said, kink relies on consent. Kids cannot consent and adults in public spaces have not consented to witnessing kink. Carrying out sex acts in public is not a civil right.

Agree - the whole point of Pride was to garner support for Gay love and relationships to be normalised and celebrated. And whilst I completely agree that it doesn't have to be completely sanitised - it was a protest against discrimination after all - and have no problem with leather and flamboyance which has always been part of the identity of many gay people, the fetish aspect is (I think) counter productive.

In many ways it feels like those in furry costumes or on leads with dildos taped to their heads (yep - seen this) are being as lewd as they can as a sort of 'test' to see how shocking they can be before the Home Counties Daily Mail readers 'prove their prejudice'. When actually, it was supposed to be about demonstrating the normality of same-sex love and relationships. I think they are actually creating a barrier by showing themselves purely as niche and fetishist.

Also off putting for families with small children who WANT to support Pride.

FWIW it's actually got nothing to do with their sexuality. I would be equally irritated by attention seeking hetrosexuals feeling the need to demonstrate their bedroom preferences whilst walking past McDonalds on the high street.

Kink gear has no place amongst consenting adults and children.

Based on the rest of your post, you meant "non-consenting adults".

YANBU re simulating sex acts, outlandish costumes are fine if all done in good fun. "Prude Month" is bloody funny though!

The ward clerk on our ward was saying this a couple of days ago. He won't go because of all what you said, he feels like the gay community has been hijacked by this.

I agree with you @TheEverlovingFork and others , been able to celebrate your sexualty is great and it's about time that it is ok to talk about it.
But all the kink is way over the top , I worked in large bar on pride route for many years but the last few years I was there there was a big shift in the look and attitude of around 30% of the customer.
Yes there was always holding hands , snogging, and some fumbling around particularly once it got late night/ early morning.
There was also some fetishism but only a small group and mostly just 'normal' leather gear.
Now it's completely different, the last time I was in the same area during pride their were men and women stimulating ( and no doubt actually having ) sex in a park where kids were playing in full view , some were wearing lots of bondage gear like ball gags , whips chains on genitals. There were also furries simulating sex and some definitely engaged in oral sex.
This was all at 4pm

I am definitely no prude but I did not know which way to look !
And for pp that said 'you don't have to go' I was on my way to work , what about those that live near by or like me have to work in the area.

I dunno. I'm as plain vanilla as it gets, but Pride has always been about pushing society's boundaries to make it more accepting and inclusive of what is not plain vanilla at that point in time in society.

If it can only be about men kissing, which is not pushing any boundaries these days, then it has lost some of its purpose.

I have no issue telling my kids (teens now, but have discussed it without too much specificity since they were quite young) that some people have kinks, and that provided all involved are consenting adults it's no one else's business what they do to themselves. They seem mostly slightly bemused by it all, and don't appear to have been unduly traumatised.

Sadly the kink brigade have overtaken Pride.

the TQ+++++++++++++++

I am queer, kinky and not religious. I am v laid back and really accepting of people having the right to live as they wish. I do not like the over sexualisation of pride tough

I am bisexual and as kinky as they come, regularly attend fetish events with a man/woman on a leash etc. But I would NEVER do it in public and especially not in front of children. You have not consented to have my kink dragged through your day.

Stay prude proud my love!

I don’t want my kids to see that (or my to have to explain it to them) so I agree with you. People can explore and display their kinks is adult only environments imho.

You're not unreasonable, OP. I'm a lesbian and few of my LGB friends go to Pride. I last went about 10 years ago, was called a cunt by a drag queen and took myself off to a quiet bar where I found other lesbian escapees from the 'fun'. Pride has never been very woman friendly and now it seems to be run for the fetish-loving men and queer teenagers. It's men driving the fetish stuff. The pups, the bare arses.

A lot of lesbians, in particular, but many gay men too, are living in dread of the backlash when it comes. I was in Tesco today and they were broadcasting their Pride tannoy broadcast on a loop: all about the wonders of freedom and liberation voiced by young people who have never known real repression, never knew AIDS. An older woman was browsing in the yoghurt aisle next to me and said 'I'd like to think I'm open-minded, but they do keep going on about this, don't they?' And I, a lesbian, agreed and said I wish they'd turn it off. LGB is a very small percentage of the population. TQ+ is even smaller. If I was a straight person I'd be totally pissed off with all the attention we get.

Pride's become totally corporate. At my local Pride you have to pay to march: even individuals are asked to pay something like a tenner a head to participate. It looks like quite a big march, but the housing associations, banks, charities, insurance companies, police force, university societies, NHS, unions and so on form the bulk of those marching. I have LGB friends who are coerced into marching by their employers. Many of the people they are marching with are straight people who get a virtue-high for showing how liberal-minded they are. It's nothing like the old days, when we gathered rather nervously before unfurling our banners and walking through the streets being largely ignored (which was the best case scenario).

I think you're entitled to your opinion and your friends don't need to agree with you but they should be able to respectfully disagree and still maintain a relationship with you. No sexuality is a monolith and there will be lots of difference in opinion so it's a weird response from people who say they're you're friends tbh.

For what it's worth I agree with you. I think pride is important but it should be something that's family friendly at least during the day so that children can be involved and represented too. I also think that it plays into the negative stereotypes that some people have. I would say in my experience the majority of pride goers aren't doing anything I'd see as inappropriate but I've definitely seen what you've described as well. I have zero issue with that type of dress for a night out or house party etc but not during the day when families are present.

I think especially with all the negative commentary and scare mongering about grooming children through fetish gear etc it just plays into the hands of people who want to create their own harmful narrative.

Yanbu , where’s the line for all of this? It’s all so extreme

@Milkbottle2000 Would you be OK with your children playing with adult male puppy fetishists as though they were real dogs? Because that is what has happened already. https://objectnow.org/puppy-paedophilia-at-pride/

It's not just a bizarre parade act any more.

Pride is extremely important and should be celebrated every year to ensure we keep moving forward.

But nobody needs to display their fetishes or kinks in public. Absolutely nobody🤢

Please no more flags, there’s just way too many flags to keep track. I feel like you can’t even have the rainbow without it being completely associated with Pride Month 🌈. Instead, people should just speak out against the things they disagree with and make it more mainstream so the vocal minorities who push their own weird and creepy agenda don’t get their way.

Boundaries don't need to be pushed.

Society needs to be totally accepting of perfectly normal things like two men or two women kissing.

The public bondage/fetish/kink related stuff doesn't push boundaries, it alienates people and rightly so.

I'm not arsed what anyone gets up-to in a consenting relationship. Just keep it in private, and especially away from Pride where kids are attending and learning about all types of relationships and how they are all normal.

it should be something that's family friendly at least during the day so that children can be involved and represented

Exactly. LGB youth need a chance to find their tribe in an age-appropriate environment. The isolation and bullying when growing up under Section 28 was awful. But youth need to be shielded from the adult stuff until they are adults

The problem is that those vocal groups, usually quite small, seem incapable of seeing or respecting anyone else's point if view and become vocally abusive, not just on this topic but many others.

I’d love to go on a Prude march. I actually think that would be quite a radical thing to do now that all this outlandish, x-rated kink and furry stuff has been normalised. What could be more subversive and rebellious than walking down the street, flag aloft, while wearing a twin set and clutching my pearls?!

It's perpetuating a stereotype about what it means to be gay and it should not be the focus of pride. But it is going to be if it continues in the way that it has been. And that's sad for what should be a movement about freedom to love and acceptance.