Anyone else feel Pride is really toned down this year?

[Moonandstarz]

I was shopping yesterday evening in my local shopping centre & besides Primark & Schuh no other stores had a pride window display or even a sticker on the window. Flying Tiger had rainbow merchandise on the window but not specifically pride.
Precious years we had rainbow crossings in the car park, rainbow flags everywhere. Nothing like that this year.

In my opinion this toned down pride is much more inclusive & is signalling everyone is getting on with their lives & co existing. May just be my area but I found it very refreshing.

Pride was great as a parade or weekend with parties, gigs, and events for same sex attracted people and their allies. As a connaisseur of electro pop I have several fond Pride gig memories. And I thought the organizations did great outreach within the community and fundraising while it was on. Always happy to support.

However. A whole month laden with coorporate rainbow tat and events for families and children mainly catering to TQ goofys? I simply don't see the point of it

out of fear.

This I don't get.

There has never been a better place (the West) or a better time to be gay.

Full rights, full acceptance and a day each to celebrate that.

Gay couples on TV, gay sex after 9pm, gay kissing before, gay families celebrated in book from Kindergarden up

Why the hell would anyone be afraid in this day and age?

That is so bloody unfair.

Oh stop @Astralitzia

It is the same pain in bum as Christmas.

Christmas in and of itself can be nice.

Months long IT'S CHRISTMAAAS with all the forced gaiety, forced thinking, forced spending gets everyones back up.

Just becasue it is exhausting.

I think at some point in the last few years the public perception of Pride is that it has become less about being 'out, visible, accepted and proud' and swung towards a sense of exhibitionism and demands to be considered 'special' by the TQ+ part in particular. When you combine that with everything that's been going on with compelled speech, silencing of women's voices and men in women's prisons etc the whole thing has become synonymous with oppressive and bullying behaviour, rather than any kind of shared celebration.

I feel there is nothing at all to celebrate in the regressive stereotype of a man in drag doing 'womanface'. And my lesbian and gay friends already know they are loved and accepted - at home, at work, and in their wider community.

Well put.

So you marched as a lesbian who defends her right not to sleep with men who identify as women? I find that surprising, given that the Pride movement now explicitly characterises that as "hate".

This was the Pride statement, after a group of women did that in 2018.

Apologies - that was the 2022 incident. There was a similar one in 2018.

No, I avoid anti-trans stuff as much as I can. I think a lot of people have been brainwashed into it and I don't like it.

I'm not going to be drawn into a debate on this one; it isn't worth my time.

The idea that 'straight' people are conventional, boring, dullards and not fabulously 'queer' has long worn thin. Sexual orientaion is no indicator of personal unconventionality, creativity, originality or anything inbetween.

I guess you must spend a lot of time guarding against wrong-think or the merest hint of critical thought, too.

No. I did a lot of critical thinking. I used to be fairly gender critical, but then I saw it being taken over by people with ties to the far right, and people using it as a Trojan Horse for homophobic agendas. Plus the usual group of people who just want someone to punch down on. And I found myself aligning more and more with people like Finn MacKay, who manage to be both conscious of gendered violence and its biological base, and capable of imagining a place for trans women in feminism.

(And having said I wouldn't be drawn, I was ... but now I should go pick my daughter up from school.)

There are two things making people less interested from what I see.

One is the connection to stuff that seems dodgy, be it compelled speech or men in cock-socks wandering down the sidewalk. So that has made some back off in a very deliberate way.

The other is just over-exposure, rather like Christmas as some have mentioned. It's like it's everywhere, not just the parade, but shops, all the banners in the city, library displays, crosswalks, etc. And then you have all the other LGBTQ+ stuff through the year too. Or other kinds of awareness months that become lgbtq focused.

I also think all the other causes contribute as well - it feels like we are constantly having another day of awareness or month of whatever, all the time.

And altogether it just overwhelms people, and they stop caring or noticing, or even find it makes them annoyed.

A classic 'I can't make a coherent argument against you but, but ...' line there.

Nope. It's a play the ball, not the player post.

If your right to express your own sexuality and not to be coerced into heterosexual sex isn't worth your time, what is the point of going to Pride?

And this is what you are defending.

No, it isn't.

Those things are very much worth my time.

I am not clicking an unknown link. And I am not interested in conspiracy theories.

There's a really nasty homophobic undertone to 'they don't feel the need to celebrate themselves as they are ordinary people' - did you mean to imply that other gay people who do attend Pride must be 'celebrating themselves' and therefore not 'ordinary'.

I think English's flexible word order gave rise to a mis-perception.
I took the phrase as " they themselves don't feel the need to celebrate...".

It's a link to Twitter, not to an unknown site.

And it is not a conspiracy theory, it is video posted by a transwoman who identifies as a lesbian, in her own words, stating that lesbians who won't sleep with TW are bigots.

Carry on sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending you can't hear the lesbophobia all around you. Fortunately, there are women with more integrity and courage, who are standing up for your rights, even while you slander and undermine them.

I’ve seen few comments pretty much saying this.
And all the denial of racism in general.
And I have to add the anti asexual rhetorics, the fuck did they ever do get people so mad!
I’ve been confused what this place is about.

I think people now probably think there are much more deserving causes which could benefit from a similar amount of corporate investment and PR.
Despite all the claims to the contrary, the UK is one of the safest and most accepting places to be LGBTQ+.

Personally I'd like to see a high profile awareness week for child poverty, domestic violence or the burden on unpaid family carers...

You may not have an issue with the inherent homophobia in transactivism, but plenty of people do.

If gender is The Thing, then there can be no such thing as same-sex attraction.

(Actual, real, genuine) Lesbians are the ones being most thrown under the bus by transactivism.

No. I did a lot of critical thinking. I used to be fairly gender critical, but then I saw it being taken over by people with ties to the far right,

Who? Which far right people have taken over the GC movement?

You came out with the usual tropes about 'right wing' 'homophobia' and so on. When in fact there is evidence aplenty of dipsplaced and even direct homophobia within transgendersim. and if by 'right wing' you mean authoritarian and autocratic then you don't have to look too far from under your own nose, either - because radical trans activism is predicated on nobody questioning it, and on having to kow tow to its every whim.

Men have no place in women's single sex spaces, nor in lesbian spaces - unless invited. Colonising the spaces, and the very integrity of another historically marginalised group is no basis for a liberation movement.