Big City or Small Town… At Pride, Dignity Triumphs Over Shame
Pride isn’t, as the media has so often portrayed it, a purely exhibitionistic circus sideshow.
Admittedly, I was way late to the Pride party… physically, emotionally, and intellectually.
I have no way of knowing if I was the oldest first-timer at Portland’s 2022 Pride. But certainly, at 72, I had to be among the celebration’s most seasoned newbies.
I’d been out as queer for more than a decade. Yet, I’d never seen the importance of attending a Pride event. Quite frankly, it didn’t seem worth the effort… the traffic, the parking, the crowd, the inevitable chaos, not to mention the threat of falling victim to a hate-inspired attack.
Admittedly, my reluctance also had to do with an initial general impression about Pride imprinted on my psyche years ago, a pervasive notion that continued to be reinforced year-after-year by coverage in the media.
Pride’s superficial image…
The visual images of Pride I’d always seen on television, in print, and online, invariably featured certain queer clichés: shirtless men in leather captain’s caps and spangled jock straps, gaudy drag queens, audacious displays of androgyny and gender-bending.
