Their press release was full of the kind of womyn-goddess-sister-spirit rhetoric that usually makes eyes roll–the Women’s Action Coalition and the Lesbian Avengers have decided to “Girlcott” this year’s Lesbian & Gay Pride Parade over allegations of past sexual harassment. While both groups will participate in Saturday’s “Dyke March,” they’ll stand on the sidelines during Sunday’s Pride Parade, passing out leaflets and armbands instead of joining in.
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The men on the tape look gay and are for the most part drunk–two assumptions on my part, but I’ve been gay for years and drunk on numerous occasions so I feel safe in calling them as I see them. As with most hurtful things that leave only emotional scars, verbal harassment is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Where WAC saw attacks and “a sputtering drunken display,” I saw a couple of drunks, a few guys who probably learned something, and some garden-variety jerks. But I’ve lived in Indianapolis, where the official motto of the Indy 500 is “Show me your tits!” Differentiating between life-threatening harassment and drunken idiots is a matter of common sense. The guy shouting “You used too much tape” to a topless woman wearing tape pasties is probably not going to jump her in a dark alley later on.
The very first Gay Pride Parade was held on the first anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York. The queerest of the queers–drag queens and butch dykes–decided they’d had enough police harassment and humiliation, and they rioted for two full days after a raid on the Stonewall bar. The gay community’s most obvious had long taken the brunt of harassment, and those same people were the first to fight back. Gay Pride was founded by sissies and bulldaggers, and to this day the parade remains a celebration of our most outrageous and courageous. But the political bent has largely disappeared from the current homo free-for-all. Klein complains the parade “has lost all political meaning,” and she’s right. So has the Fourth of July. We don’t want to remember the ugly part; we want to celebrate the part where we win.
