The Message of Pride Celebrations Has Changed, and I’m Cool With That
Musings of a mildly cranky middle-aged dyke
I was filled with joy at the proliferation of Queer Pride last month as I attended Pride in Woodstock, IL. The population there is 25,630, and it’s most famous for being where Groundhog Day was filmed and where Orson Welles got his start.
In the Chicagoland area, there’s the main Pride attended by nearly a million people in a neighborhood that can barely handle the influx, a Reclaim Pride protest that resulted from the merging of the Drag March for Change and Pride Without Prejudice, Chicago Black Pride, Aurora Pride, Naper Pride, Buffalo Grove Pride, and many other celebrations. For those unfamiliar with the Chicagoland area, Aurora, Naperville, and Buffalo Grove are Chicago suburbs, none of which come to mind when thinking of places with large numbers of LGBTQ people.
When I think of Aurora, I think, “Party on, Garth.” That town’s main claim to fame is that it was the setting for Wayne’s World.
Even Dixon, IL, where Ronald Reagan grew up, will have its first Pride this year.
I was thinking about going to that one, but as a former ACT-UP member I would have a hard time not doing something rude at Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home, which is open to the public.
I’m too old to get arrested these days.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of Pride celebrations within driving distance of my Chicago home, but periodically when I discuss the proliferation of Pride celebrations, there will always be someone who says, “I really miss when we were all together.” This is invariably said by a middle-aged white gay man. You can draw your own conclusions about that, but I have several things to say about it.
We were never really as together as you thought we were.
Yes, there has long been one big Pride Parade in Chicago on the last Sunday in June. I’ve been there many times, and I’ve never forgotten my first in the early 1990s. That event is now in its 51st year. It’s grown from 100,000 people marching to Lincoln Park to watch political speeches and a locally-owned lesbian gym’s self-defense demo to a multi-day party with nearly a million people and hundreds of massive floats.
I hope it continues, but Black Pride has been happening in some form for decades. Even if there wasn’t an official event, Black queers have historically gathered at Montrose Harbor after the big main parade. The Chicago Dyke March started in 1995 before it was buried a few years ago by its own anti semitism.
The big main parade has grown so large that it can be a challenging experience for many people for many different reasons. I have some health limitations that make the main Pride parade impossible without significant planning. I’m sure there are many other reasons for avoiding it: sensory issues, mental health, too far away, too hard to get to, and too expensive.
There were a lot of families and teens at Woodstock Pride, a modest event of a couple thousand people. I’m so glad we have more choices now. The big main Pride used to be so important. It was just about the only time you saw same-sex couples holding hands outside in public. The rest of the time our main opportunities for being ourselves were inside lesbian bars.
We used to complain a lot about lesbian bars and openly wished for somewhere else to socialize. Now, everyone complains about not having a lesbian bar to go to. Be careful what you wish for, but I digress.
The more important thing to note is that the proliferation of Pride events represents a change of our overall message. We gathered in large groups in the 1980s and 1990s to send the message: “Look how many of us there are.” Now it is safer, although still not always safe, to gather in smaller groups. We also used to say, “We are everywhere.” The proliferation of Pride events backs those words with action. It proves that “We are everywhere.” We are in New York and Chicago and San Francisco and Dixon, IL. I hope Ronald Reagan is burning with rage over this or otherwise suffering. We are in Buffalo Grove and Naperville and Aurora. We know we were always there. Now we can really see it. We can see us — all of us.
