We’d been told on day 1 that we would be marching in the Pride Parade with a contingent called Straights for Gay rights; this organization was begun by one of the Institute’s original members, Janice Epps, and has been marching in the Parade since 1977. Things have changed a lot since 1977 (understatement), when it was revolutionary to “come out” as a straight person supportive of gay rights. These days, while there is obviously still a lot of homophobia, someone in the SAR pointed out: “Everyone who was at the Parade and straight could have been called straights for gay rights.”
From the beginning, I was quite uncomfortable with this being the group we were designated to march with. In the first place, it discounted the voices of SAR participants who were not straight. By marching under a banner that labelled all of us as straight, it effectively negated their personal identity. In the second place, I feel like there are enough spaces where straight people, as the dominant culture, can have their voices heard. A Parade for queers by queers, a place to celebrate queerness, is one place where, honestly, I feel like straight people (and I am one) should butt out. I mean, go if you want to be supportive, but marching in the parade under a banner that basically says “Hey, pay attention, we support you!” felt…disturbingly like we were asking for cookies.
I marched anyway, though, and met up with Sky and some other friends to eat vegan salad and prowl the Civic Centre. Our SAR group met back up at IASHS at 4 to process our feelings around marching in the Parade.
I started by bringing up how difficult I find the increasing corporatization of Pride. Float after float by banks and Facebook and businesses that have never made any effort to include images of queer people in their advertising…it seems quite obvious to me that these businesses are participating in Pride solely as a marketing technique, to break into the lucrative LGBT market. As more businesses put a rainbow on it, it seems like blatant product placement to encourage and allow them free access to marginalized pockets. The LGBT subgroup, after all, is more than what they buy.
this was not a popular opinion with other SAR attendees, and I had to explain myself many times. I also brought up the Free Bradley Manning protestors I had seen; many SAR attendees did not know who Bradley Manning, the contested ex-Grand Marshal of SF Pride, was, and no explanation was given.
In small groups, we discussed these issues in more depth, and I learned that participation in the Parade with the SFGR contingent was not mandatory for SAR participants, as we’d all thought it was. Our small group leader said she would bring this up to the Institute.
Overall, it was a challenging day, and I felt like there may not be much of an effort to include intersectionality in this SAR process.
Claire Litton, Sexologist & Coach 