This year, in a haze of rainbow flags and sparkly confetti, I participated in my very first gay pride parade. With a big smile and a multicoloured parasol, I hid my urge to vomit while waving to all the people lining the streets enthralled in the extravagant floats and outrageous costumes. I was uncomfortable, and I’ll tell you why.
I don’t want to be part of a queer community enshrouded in corporatization and fuelled by capitalism. I don’t want to share my queer space with Royal Bank, Coca-Cola, or political parties aiming to get the gay cut of the electorate.
I don’t want to be part of a movement whose idea of equality is a monogamous engagement ring, and I definitely don’t want to be one of those guys salivating over the next sweatshop fashion fad. I don’t want my queer identity to merge into an assimilated, quasi hetero-normative one.
Instead, I want to be part of community that sees equality as something more profound than marriage. I want to be a part of a movement that not only recognizes the connections between systems of oppression and positions of power, but also stands in solidarity with marginalized identities within the queer community.
I want to be part of a parade that flips the finger to the likes of Coca-Cola for their role in the exploitation of people and environments. I was at the gay pride parade, but maybe what I was looking for was Gay Shame.
Gay Shame is a radical queer movement that came about as a result of the gentrification happening in New York in the ’90s and the role that mainstream queers played in it. In addition, it came as a response to the consumerist nature of gay pride parades.
Like author and member of Gay Shame Mattilda Sycamore writes, “New York’s Gay Pride had become little more than a giant opportunity for multinational corporations to target-market to gay consumers.” Gay Shame created a space for queers in the periphery of mainstream pride, the ones who saw queer liberation as a multilayered, intersecting movement.
As we have seen in recent media reports, queers everywhere have been boycotting Coca-Cola for their endorsement of the Sochi Olympics in Russia, a nation known for its homophobia. The irony is that Coca-Cola is a major sponsor for many pride parades across the world, including our very own in Victoria.
So, drop the pride and bring on the Shame.