Worldpride 2012

I went to London’s Worldpride parade on Saturday. There were problems with it*, but it was fun. So here's my first post on it.

There are people who think we should stop doing Pride. For two reasons: Firstly, because there are people who don’t think aces fit under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Personally, I’m of the opinion that, regardless of whether we technically fit (I think we do), links to LGBT can be helpful. Asexuality was recently added to the training of the Trevor Project in America. That’s a good thing, and it comes from the association.

The other thing is more interesting. There is an argument that Pride is actually a negative thing – this Onion article is a good illustration – I know it’s the same publication which published the articles ‘Ann Romney Says Husband Has Deeply Principled Side Noone Ever Sees In Pubic’ and ‘Study: Red Meat Takes Years Off Of Cow’s Life’, but that doesn’t mean that the argument isn’t seriously made. Now, asexuals have a pretty good way of avoiding that one, since one of our main concerns at this point is visibility, on the basis that an asexual surrounded by sexuals who doesn’t know what ‘asexual’ means can quite often feel broken and alone. That’s why we’re included on a suicide prevention hotline. Pride is a good thing for us to take part in because, regardless of what else you say about it, it’s pretty hard to be completely ignorant of someone who’s marching down the street blocking traffic and singing ‘Asexy and I know it’. This argument, however, is less effective for other parts of the LGBTAQA+ spectrum, as quite a lot of people do seem to know what being gay is. Indeed, this could be seen as being part of the problem. So if it’s not about raising awareness, what is Pride for?

Well first off, it’s for raising awareness. The thing that’s generally known about gay people is that they exist, and what they are. One of the big purposes of Pride is raising awareness of other things – like the tendency of some countries to have gay people beaten up, imprisoned and/or executed**. Pride exists as a protest march against that kind of thing. It’s also a giant ‘fuck you’ to the people who do that kind of thing in the first place – being proud because there are people who’d like us to be ashamed.

It’s also a symbol of respect to the people who allowed us to do that kind of thing. They worked hard so that LGBT people could just be themselves, and even though we might not be there yet, getting together and doing this kind of thing as hard as possible is to some extent a mark of respect to the people who worked and suffered so that we could.

It’s also fun. Seriously, it’s a great sense of community, with everyone getting together, marching together, talking together, standing around for an hour and a bloody half doing nothing… no, I will not let that go. And you get to meet people like you. I’ve written before about why sexuality is so important to someone’s identity, but it’s still true. And at a pride parade, you’re surrounded by people like you, who’ve been through similar experiences to you, who you can sit around with eating cake and telling stories about how silly straight people are (OK, we didn’t actually do that – though we did eat cake).

And, obviously, it’s a protest march. We do it in countries where homosexuality is legal, because it was long ago discovered that large public gatherings of gay people in countries where being gay is punishable by death, whilst effective in raising public sympathy, tend to be poorly attended –at least the second time. But it’s a way of telling people, even those that are already aware of what the issues are, that we’re not very happy about things. Everyone knows that gay marriage is illegal in this country – even if you happen to be in a church that wants to perform the ceremony for you. But it’s got a pretty good chance of being dismissed as a minority issue if we don’t have people making it clear that they do actually care about it… actually, scratch that, it’s got a pretty good chance of being dismissed as a minority issue that noone really cares about anyway, if the current government of the UK is much to go by. With international issues, too, it’s a way of putting pressure on whoever’s nearby to try and encourage countries in which homosexuality’s still illegal or stigmatised to bloody well get over it already.

OK, maybe that was the tiniest bit soap-boxy, but it’s all true. And you might think that a lot of that has little to do with asexuality. Asexual stigma certainly exists, but I have yet to find a country in which it’s illegal. And, of course, guys who show no interest in women don’t open themselves up to any misunderstandings at all. Mostly, our work is on public opinion, so pride is an opportunity for visibility and to hand out leaflets. Though it might be nice to get rid of that bloody bit of law that lets you say that marriage totally doesn’t count if your partner refuses to have sex with you. But honestly, there’s a massive debate among ignorant people as to whether asexuals are ‘pure’ or ‘broken’***. Which rather suggests that it might be a rather good idea to get rid of as much homophobia as possible before we become public knowledge, out of enlightened self-interest, if nothing else (and yes, there are a hell of a lot of other reasons to want to get rid of homophobia). Minorities have been protecting themselves by allying with slightly smaller minorities since the dawn of time.

*Mainly the fact that 11AM and 12:30 are not the same bloody thing.

**Presumably to avoid the unfairness of the British system, where gay people are beaten up, imprisoned and/or executed completely at random, in an incredibly disorganised fashion.

***The answer is neither.