Today I was reminded that many many years ago I was the volunteer coordinator for childcare for a Toronto Pride, back in the 90s.
There’s a fight ‘in the community’ right now about Pride, all across the western world. Not so much in the parts of the world where being openly gay gets you beaten and murdered and being openly lesbian gets you ‘correctively’ raped. Anyway this first world fight is about ‘children at Pride’ and how a substantial minority of gay people who support Pride want the leather daddies and bondage enthusiasts and folks who whatever they sport amidships aren’t long on clothing to just…. cover up for Pride.
Now I think I established, with my childcare cred, that I do indeed care about children and want them to be safe while their parental units or some fraction thereof want to partay on the streets of the city; I also know that Pride started when among the most marginalized of the rainbow community, black transgender women, decided that they were tired of being subjected to raids and police harassment every fucking weekend, and started throwing bricks at the cops.
So for all the shrinking violets who have finished their days of LGBTQA+ activism and thus want all the rest of us to behave like tv housewives, this is le extended middle finger de moi.
For all the parents who want the leather daddies to cover up, fuck ya.
For all the parents who want to take their kids to pride, how about memorizing some easy answers about the costumes …. and lack of them?
The event is for ADULTS. Children are to be expected, and allowed for, and cared for in context of the parade and events, but they aren’t to be CATERED to. No more than the fucking cops or beer companies.
Having cops at Pride is bad. Having kids at pride is not. Having bigots try to tell activists how to dress is bad. Having bigots publicly struck hard in their rhetorical goolies is good.