Related thoughts on National Coming Out Day

A friend recently posted about National Coming Out Day and in so doing brought up the question of how Pride Parades do/don't fit into the current social trends relating to LGBTQIAers.

Her post is here: http://fragmented-shilpagogna.blogspot.com/2010/10/national-coming-out-day.html


And....this was my response:

(I've been told that I sound angry, offensive, and that my response is an ad hominem attack. I have mixed feelings about this, but surprise is definitely one of them)

I think the instance of Pride Parades are a slightly spurious topic that serve as an outlier in context of the "homosexual community" which is why, as you said, sociologists are "stumped" by it. Because it is a rather particularistic phenomenon, that is very much not representative of the "homosexual community" (I keep using air quotes because the existence of such a community could very well be debatable) and thus to say "if there's this movement of acceptance and respect then why are there displays like this?" is a statement that suggests a correlation that really doesn't exist and thus is a question that really can't be asked.

I'd argue that putting these two things side by side is an invalid approach and that there are three possible reasons for this.

First, that Pride Parades are an absolute outlier and thus not related to the image that the "homosexual community " is attempting to project. Homosexuals are a highly public topic in (especially) American society, particularly in the media. This gives the opportunity for a lot of representation while at the same time grossly condensing the range of that representation to the most shocking and attention getting. We don't cover nudist conventions in the news as much as we do pride parades. This rather myopic image, manipulated by the media, then seems to be a bigger issue in the context of the larger image of the "homosexual community" than it might actually be. There are millions of homosexuals, there are mere thousands that participate in pride parades.

On the other hand, rather than take the outlier approach, it could be argued that the incidence of pride parades is at the very center of the homosexual community. Out of the millions of homosexuals, this is the spark that has risen to the surface. If that's the case, a couple of questions need to be asked, primarily why? and how? You mentioned a movement for "acceptance, respect, and normality" and then further presented Pride Parades as if they were a contradiction to this. But are they? You seemed to determine that they were given that these displays would be deemed highly unrespectable for say, the work place. What if, to the homosexual community, things like respect and acceptance involve seeing Pride Parades as perfectly respectable and acceptable. So much of the dialogue among LGBTQIA voices that I have heard stress values of freedom to determine and identify oneself. Given the primacy of desiring to achieve this, do you really think they're all that worried about what they're employer is going to think? What our society deems as acceptable is largely rooted in heterosexual patriarchy. To me, much of the homosexual community's vision involves the removal of the imposistion of these values, which are seen as limiting and constraining to one's identity. Isn't judging what is and isn't respectable similarly constraining? You referred to the upswing in promiscuity and sexuality as a result of National Coming Out Day......who is defining what IS promiscuous? who is adding value judgements to what IS sexual? You questioned how they could possibly gain respect in the face of displays like this.....but maybe the goal is PRECISELY to gain respect on these terms. To see displays such as this AS normal, rather than conform to what society currently does and doesn't consider "ok."

In line with that, another point to consider might be that you mentioned the great strides towards acceptance and support of homosexuals in society. Who measures this progress? Maybe the homosexual community feels like heterosexuals haven't accepted homosexuality as as normal. Consequently, the need for greater, more radical, exposure is needed through things like Pride Parades.

A third response might be to go between the bull horns. Maybe there is a rift; the more conservative side that projects that image of respect and acceptance that you started your post with, and perhaps a different perspective, as observed in your presentation of Pride Parades. Thus to hold them next to each other and go, "this doesn't make sense, this seems discontinuous....why?" well, maybe the answer is that it seems discontinuous because....it is. Maybe there's competing ideologies pertaining to "the image" that "the homosexual community" is trying to project and what their goals are regarding societal acceptance, and the media is only picking up on bits and pieces of the dialogue surrounding these ideologies and consequently, there's room for confusion about what is really going on here.