Reflections on Pride 2008
And with one more week of gay pride left this month, here's my reflection on gay pride this year:
About a week and a half ago, I read that cartoonist Alison Bechdel said that she was going to stop drawing her comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For after a 25-year run of being featured in dozens of gay newspapers. That got me thinking about the state of gay culture at this point of time. It concerns me that gay culture might be dying since gay kids today are thinking that we don't need gay-only culture like gay bars anymore since mainstream society has starting to pay lip service in accepting gays. But I'm afraid they have a false sense of security really, considering that there are still a lot of people in this country that will doing anything to denying us gay people our rights, which we still don't have. We still don't have any national anti-gay discrimination laws, and there are upcoming ballot iniatives in Califronia and Florida this fall saying that if these are passed, anti-gay marriage laws will be written into their state constitutions. I'm afraid that if gay media and culture dies and then the cultural gatekeepers will end up deciding that they they won't feature gay people in the mainstream media anymore, and then us gay people will end up being gas-lighted culturally and nothing left to see the reflection of our lives. We really can't rely on the mainstream media all of the time; us gay people need to learn to do it ourselves and create our own media and culture to service and reflect the gay community. Just get the job done yourself, Daddy isn't always going to be around to help you tie your shoelaces.
And in the meantime, Happy Pride.
UPDATE: The Divine Ms. Jimmi has posted on his blog his response after reading this post. Interestingly he mentions that in history there have been enlightened cultures that accepted gay people, but then they collapsed and more repressive forces took over (like 1920's Germany giving way to the anti-gay Nazis). History does not always move forward. Definitely check that out.
About a week and a half ago, I read that cartoonist Alison Bechdel said that she was going to stop drawing her comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For after a 25-year run of being featured in dozens of gay newspapers. That got me thinking about the state of gay culture at this point of time. It concerns me that gay culture might be dying since gay kids today are thinking that we don't need gay-only culture like gay bars anymore since mainstream society has starting to pay lip service in accepting gays. But I'm afraid they have a false sense of security really, considering that there are still a lot of people in this country that will doing anything to denying us gay people our rights, which we still don't have. We still don't have any national anti-gay discrimination laws, and there are upcoming ballot iniatives in Califronia and Florida this fall saying that if these are passed, anti-gay marriage laws will be written into their state constitutions. I'm afraid that if gay media and culture dies and then the cultural gatekeepers will end up deciding that they they won't feature gay people in the mainstream media anymore, and then us gay people will end up being gas-lighted culturally and nothing left to see the reflection of our lives. We really can't rely on the mainstream media all of the time; us gay people need to learn to do it ourselves and create our own media and culture to service and reflect the gay community. Just get the job done yourself, Daddy isn't always going to be around to help you tie your shoelaces.
And in the meantime, Happy Pride.
UPDATE: The Divine Ms. Jimmi has posted on his blog his response after reading this post. Interestingly he mentions that in history there have been enlightened cultures that accepted gay people, but then they collapsed and more repressive forces took over (like 1920's Germany giving way to the anti-gay Nazis). History does not always move forward. Definitely check that out.
Labels: cartoons, gay culture, gay rights
posted by Chris Krakora at 6:14 PM
1 Comments:
I so agree with you on this. I am bereft at the lack of gay culture that exists now as opposed to when i was young. of course, a lot of the gay culture then was still based in the 60's Counterculture Movement and didn't reach me always as a gay punk. Still, we had a group of Gay Punks who were political as well as partying. I am not sure where we go from here.
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