“Why do you still need Pride?”
It’s gay Pride season and I keep seeing the tone deaf and provocative “When is straight pride?” and “You’ve got equality, why do you still need Pride?” all over twitter. Plenty has been written on why we need Pride as a community. Even now, people are protesting that children shouldn’t learn about us, as if our very existence is offensive, while some politicians treat LGBT+ people as a problem to be solved or cured. Even now attitudes are turning against us. When your existence is constantly up for debate and your rights could depend on the whim of a polarised electorate, it’s important to keep fighting to protect those hard won rights and highlight that there are millions around the world that don’t have equality. Pride means different things to different people and this Pride season I really thought about what it means to me.
I think my first experience of anything ‘Not Straight’ was flicking through my Nana’s Danny La Rue programmes. She was a huge fan. I knew I liked boys from a very early age but at that point didn’t know about this other community. I grew up in a time of no mobile phones or internet and only four TV channels, so my knowledge of gay people was limited to TV, newspapers and my local library. TV was Larry Grayson, John Inman and eventually Barry the bent barrow boy on Eastenders. All camp comedy or disgusting pervert. The newspapers were horrific in their description of gay men.
“EastEnders is turning into “EastBenders”…with two gays joining the soap’s line up.” and “A homosexual love scene between two yuppie poofs…”
Gay people were described as plague carriers, perverts and sad, lonely men that would die alone of disgusting diseases.
I remember once, prancing around the house in my step mum’s blue dance leotard which I’d commandeered as part of a home-made Spiderman costume. It seemed my movements were too feminine, because my dad mumbled something about being a pansy. I remember the feelings of shame, like I’d been caught doing something wrong when I was just a kid having fun. To be fair to my Dad, when he found out I was gay he accepted it and told me he still loved me. Even the language used around the subject is loaded with negative meaning. To be called feminine is a slur that strikes at the heart of what it is to be a man. Being accepted ‘despite’ your affliction, like I’m looking for absolution and forgiveness from my perversion. I didn’t know gay people were meant to be bad until I learned it from the adults around me, from the language used, from the stories in the paper. I learned to be ashamed of being gay before I really understood what it meant. I think all boys learn to be ashamed of the feminine in the same way. Another reason teaching children about all relationships is so important in a tolerant society.
The Library was my saviour. I scoured the central library on a regular basis for any books by, or that mentioned, anything to do with gays. There wasn’t a specific gay section that I remember, even if there were I don’t think I’d have had the courage to be seen browsing it, but I’d search the fiction section methodically. Looking for clues I remember noticing that the Women’s Press publishers were a good bet, they had bold black and white diagonal stripes on the spines so were easily spotted. Then in 1991 something miraculous happened. Channel 4 broadcast something called the ‘Banned Season’ a season of controversial films and documentaries. They showed Sebastiane by Derek Jarman and had a documentary about gay artists where I learned about Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, the creator of Piss Christ. They even got unsuspecting people to read out excerpts from 120 days of Sodom by the Marquis De Sade. It was so shocking I immediately went out and bought myself a copy. All of these new names I could take to the library and research. Making more connections to learn about this different world I seemed to be a part of.
Being gay turned me into a paranoid liar. I’d sneak around, misdirecting people, over exaggerating friendships with girls. I learned that this expression of my sexuality was wrong, disgusting, perverted. As I was being introduced to my new world I learned to be ashamed of it. I’d hide my borrowed books in case anyone asked what I was reading.
“Shame is a soul eating emotion.” — Jung
Shame is internalised homophobia, a self hatred which expresses itself in a rejection of all things feminine and seeing ‘straight acting’ as the ultimate accolade. It has taken me decades to battle the shame I learned. To accept that I am not disgusting, a pervert or an abomination. To accept that sex is good and not something to hide. That the feminine is not lesser.
So Pride for me is about battling that learned shame. Being in the same space as thousands of other people like me helped me to accept who I am. There is some criticism of Pride events being too corporate now or being too hedonistic and that they have lost their protesting edge. Yes, externally it may look like it’s all about getting drunk, wearing sequins and glitter and eating gay sandwiches, but for me an important part of Pride is internal. The bit you can’t see, the slow relief of shame and the beginnings of self acceptance. It becomes easier to fight the external battles if you’ve won the internal ones.
