Pride or prejudice? (or) I's OUR rainbow, biyatch!

[Liar]

I heard this on the radio today. Dran's thread made me think of it, so I thought I might share. This is a from memory transcribed version of what was said:

-----

Stockholm just finished it's yearly Pride festival, a big festivity with a plethora of parading, artist preformances and love and tolerance in the air.

Or so one would think. Shopkeeper Bengt Mellgren had an entirely different experience. He runs a paint- and hardware store located just next to the park where the main Pride arrangements were held. All weekend he's been having young people in his store sneering at him, shouting profanities from the street, and when they were closed today, he came by and found grafitti all over his window. Even people representing the arrangers have been in the store complaining. And even though Mellgren explained that no offense was intended, they asked him to comply not to upset the crowds passing by.

So what was his sin? He has a huge poster of a rainbow striped wall in his window. In front of the wall is a man and a woman with paint brushes. They hold hands and smile at the camera. It's an ad for a brand of house paint, but the testier parts of the attending GLBT crowd claims the smiling straight couple is an attack on their lifestyle. Or in some cases, it seems they just object to the choice of colors.

"They say I've hijacked the Pride colors," Mellgren says. "Either to make a statement againt them or to commersialize and make money from their beloved symbol. The accusations seem to vary a great deal."

He is not about to give in to the loudly delivered demands though.

"I'm not taking it down. It's just colors on a wall and people are being silly about it."

Mr Mellgren is openly gay and runs the store with his life partner and an adult daughter. "But it's nothing that I shout from the rooftops I never told them this when they came harassing me. My lifestyle is nobody's business but mine and shouldn't affect how they view me. They if anybody should respect that."

----

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

One's sexuality doesn't prevent one from being thoroughly stupid.

Fighting against heteronormative stereotypes doesn't mean you should harrass the hetereonormative or those with simply heteronormative art.

I hope a lot of people felt silly later on in retrospect.

 

[Liar]

Sadly, I know just how that guy feels. I can't speak for the pride movement anywhere else, but here it has become more and more an elitist club than a celebration of individualisty and diversity. The more-alternative-than-thou posing is the fad of the year, and anyone not playing the game is looked down upon.

Hell, it's even supposed to be for me, as I'm the B in GLBT, but I felt nothing but left out when I decided to pop on over and see what was going on. As a bi man there with my girlfriend, I got called a conformist and a pushover more than once.

This does of course not allpy to most participants, who seems to be nice people with big hearts, but the sneerers and posers are more than ever this year.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Sadly, I know just how that guy feels. I can't speak for the pride movement anywhere else, but here it has become more and more an elitist club than a celebration of individualisty and diversity. The more-alternative-than-thou posing is the fad of the year, and anyone not playing the game is looked down upon.

Hell, it's even supposed to be for me, as I'm the B in GLBT, but I felt nothing but left out when I decided to pop on over and see what was going on. As a bi man there with my girlfriend, I got called a conformist and a pushover more than once.

This does of course not allpy to most participants, who seems to be nice people with big hearts, but the sneerers and posers are more than ever this year.

The thing is such elitism is only going to destroy their whole point. By fighting internally for who is gayer or more non-heteronormative than thou, they create a picture of unwelcomeness for borderline supporters or even supporters in general, reinforce negative stereotypes among ultra-conservatives, and shrink the pool of those "allowed" to fight for rights. While this may seem more cozy, it flies in the face of the point of Pride which is acceptance of one's sexuality and a statement to the world that one exists and will be asking to be treated like normal human beings instead of some "non-human".

But I suppose some people get too wrapped into the carnival affair to understand the point. Or they're just bigoted idiots.

 

[Aurora Black]

I'm sorry, I'm still cracking up from the thread title.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Sadly, I know just how that guy feels. I can't speak for the pride movement anywhere else, but here it has become more and more an elitist club than a celebration of individualisty and diversity. The more-alternative-than-thou posing is the fad of the year, and anyone not playing the game is looked down upon.

Hell, it's even supposed to be for me, as I'm the B in GLBT, but I felt nothing but left out when I decided to pop on over and see what was going on. As a bi man there with my girlfriend, I got called a conformist and a pushover more than once.

This does of course not allpy to most participants, who seems to be nice people with big hearts, but the sneerers and posers are more than ever this year.

Can't speak for over there, Liar, but here in the U.S. it seems like pretty much everything is an elitists club. Everything seems to be about whether or not someone is looked down upon, or up to, and not so much any given point to mention.

I've reached the point where I'm starting to wonder if there still is a point.

Q_C

 

[Guest]

im proposing an elistist compound of love here at the shack.
only those who can love and love as good as we love will be loved and only then on a very scale oriented basis...based on the color of your left weenus and a color wheel invented by an obscure ethiopian artist from the 1300's.

 

[Antfarmer77]

I heard this on the radio today. Dran's thread made me think of it, so I thought I might share. This is a from memory transcribed version of what was said:

-----

Stockholm just finished it's yearly Pride festival, a big festivity with a plethora of parading, artist preformances and love and tolerance in the air.

Or so one would think. Shopkeeper Bengt Mellgren had an entirely different experience. He runs a paint- and hardware store located just next to the park where the main Pride arrangements were held. All weekend he's been having young people in his store sneering at him, shouting profanities from the street, and when they were closed today, he came by and found grafitti all over his window. Even people representing the arrangers have been in the store complaining. And even though Mellgren explained that no offense was intended, they asked him to comply not to upset the crowds passing by.

So what was his sin? He has a huge poster of a rainbow striped wall in his window. In front of the wall is a man and a woman with paint brushes. They hold hands and smile at the camera. It's an ad for a brand of house paint, but the testier parts of the attending GLBT crowd claims the smiling straight couple is an attack on their lifestyle. Or in some cases, it seems they just object to the choice of colors.

"They say I've hijacked the Pride colors," Mellgren says. "Either to make a statement againt them or to commersialize and make money from their beloved symbol. The accusations seem to vary a great deal."

He is not about to give in to the loudly delivered demands though.

"I'm not taking it down. It's just colors on a wall and people are being silly about it."

Mr Mellgren is openly gay and runs the store with his life partner and an adult daughter. "But it's nothing that I shout from the rooftops I never told them this when they came harassing me. My lifestyle is nobody's business but mine and shouldn't affect how they view me. They if anybody should respect that."

----

some people need to just get over themselves, reguardless of their "orientation"

 

[Quiet_Cool]

some people need to just get over themselves, reguardless of their "orientation"

Exactly.

It's funny how we're not supposed to look at people and see their differences, when they can't go five seconds without rubbing them under our noses.

Q_C

 

[rgraham666]

Once again, "What you resist, you become."

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Once again, "What you resist, you become."

Well-said, Rob.

Q_C

 

[NoJo]

The London Soho Pride festival this year was basically a lot of stalls with People Peddling, Prising the Pink Pound from the Palms of the Punters

 

[3113]

I think every minority group goes through this kind of thing. You get the civil rights movement in America, for example, with blacks and whites fighting for black rights, and then it transforms into the black panther movement where any black person with a white person is seen as an "Uncle Tom."

You get the feminist movement which tries for equality for women and men are there helping, and then the movement starts to argue that men are the enemy.

I think the same is happening with gay rights--only thanks to the AID's epidemic, they're running a little late.

Call it the teen rebellion part of a movement where their motto is "you're either one of us or one of the enemy." To be fair, it kinda reflect a moment when the group is sick and tired of being pushed around, when they've faced so many guns and fought so hard that they start to return fire (sic).

Eventually, the groups get past it (in general) and grow up. Not that there won't always be some stuck in the "teen rebellion" camp--but the more the laws and media relax about it, the more they get the rights they deserve and have little to fight about, the more they relax and grow up about it. The radical feminists had only to start giving birth to sons to re-think that "man is the enemy" idea. And gays giving birth to kids who grow up to be heterosexual or bi will make them re-think this sort of stuff as well.

 

[Tom Collins]

This too shall pass. *sigh*