{"id":9489,"date":"2014-09-17T06:55:14","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T13:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9489"},"modified":"2014-09-26T13:11:16","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T20:11:16","slug":"open-space-keeping-pride-political","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/09\/17\/open-space-keeping-pride-political\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/em>: Keeping Pride political"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gay pride? What about the rest of us!? No, I\u2019m certainly not one of those people who actually uses not having \u201cstraight pride\u201d as an arguing point. What I mean is: what about the majority of individuals in the queer community who aren\u2019t cisgender homosexual men?<\/p>\n

What started out as a radical political riot led mostly by trans people of colour\/political activists has become a heavily corporately sponsored event… it\u2019s become a parade.<\/p>\n

I recently attended the Vancouver Pride Parade and Festival and was extremely disappointed, yet not surprised, to find that the main focus of attention was on the large flamboyantly decorated corporate floats selling products to those in attendance, carrying DJs and fit gay men thrusting and dancing sexily on stripper poles.<\/p>\n

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Are Pride parades selling the “ideal” queer person? (Photo provided.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yes, Pride parades across North America seem to be selling the \u201cideal\u201d queer person. Those sexy, glitter-covered, white, middle-class, gay cisgender men.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t lie and say I don\u2019t enjoy having attractive looking people float past me dancing to club tunes on a hot summer day. I\u2019m human and that combination of things appeals to most of my senses. But is this why Pride parades are socially acceptable now?<\/p>\n

Personally, I prefer to see the community-run groups, services, and organizations supporting LGBTQQIP2SAA individuals and families throughout the year and creating awareness of and actively fighting against the many continuing queer struggles.<\/p>\n

As I sat back amongst the clapping bystanders screaming and grabbing for bead necklaces and temporary tattoos thrown by police officers and, of course, Justin Trudeau, I felt a strange disconnect… like something wasn\u2019t quite right.<\/p>\n

It felt like a distraction from the reality of something bigger than it all. Here we are celebrating \u201cPride\u201d amongst oppressors, their enablers, and bystanders. In fact, those very people are in<\/i> the parade, waving and receiving cheers of admiration from the crowd!<\/p>\n

Perhaps you can understand why I couldn\u2019t quite bring myself to cheer along with the others as the Conservative Government float rolled by and I thought about how the federal government won\u2019t allow me to correct the gender on my birth certificate until I have had invasive surgeries that I have never and will never desire.<\/p>\n

Most people like to throw on their rose-coloured Elton John glasses during Pride Week and pretend like everything is gay and merry because, \u201cGays can<\/i> marry in Canada!\u201d\u00a0Why aren\u2019t we using this privilege, this power, the countless dollars spent, and our right to freedom of speech to fight for freedom of the individual?<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re not all treated as equals. We\u2019re not all free to express ourselves and live our lives as we choose. We\u2019re not all recognized by the government, and we do not all have the basic human rights to which they promise us.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s keep Pride political!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gay pride? What about the rest of us!? No, I\u2019m certainly not one of those people who actually uses not having \u201cstraight pride\u201d as an arguing point. What I mean is: what about the majority of individuals in the queer community who aren\u2019t cisgender homosexual men? What started out as a radical political riot led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views","category-september-17-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9491,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9489\/revisions\/9491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}