LOL just a bit. So about them gay parades..
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Well about pride parades....I find them offensive too.....and i feel it hurts more then helps....but hey what do I know. People love em so have at it.
Mick
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Here's my take:
Like most discussions, this all comes down to a matter of personal choice. Therefore EVERYONE is entitled to their own opinions and all of them are valid. One of my often-used sayings is, "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink." LOL Having said that though, everyone's opinion is also valid ... for them.
I understand the dislike of the highly sexualized nature of pride parades. That is an opinion that comes from within and nobody should have to justify that. But I would like to point out that there is a double standard here.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in Rio put gay pride parades to shame as far as the amount of sexually charged atmospheres, and they are primarily straight celebrations. If you don't like pride parades then you will hate those celebrations as well. And that's okay.
But many of the same people who would condemn the overt sexuality of a pride celebration would also not bat an eye at the straight behavior at Mardi Gras. THAT is a problem. There still seems to be a double standard for gays vs straights. Why is it that society doesn't view all straights as sexual deviants following the behaviors exhibited at Mardi Gras?
I have been to more pride parades than I can count in a number of different cities. As time has gone by, I have actually seen pride parades get more and more tame. San Francisco (and other large cities) are probably the exception, not the rule. And that might be a reflection of our increased acceptance overall.
But lets not forget our past either. The modern gay movement was not started by a bunch of guys wearing three-piece suits. It was started by a bunch of VERY flamboyant drag queens at Stonewall who were tired of being abused. Pride parades sprang from that fight and were originally called "Gay Liberation" parades or marches. In the early 80's, these events turned into "Pride" celebrations and became less about a political movement and more about embracing a space and time for the LGBT community to have fun and make its presence known.
The 80's and 90's saw pride parades turning into more and more flamboyant expressions and the sexually charged nature became more and more important. Part of this was a community-wide thumbing our nose at AIDS and the devastating effect it had on the community. It was kind of a natural evolution of expressing an unwillingness to let a disease, or a society that used that disease against us, determine our fate. It was a figurative screaming back into the face of society that we would NOT be silenced.
Thankfully, we have survived that period of time and come out of it much stronger than we were before. Pride parades are gradually softening and becoming much more mainstreamed as time goes on, and that is a good thing. We don't need hyper-sexual images to define who we are as LGBT individuals. The pendulum IS swinging back the other way and as we achieve more equal footing, our pride events will become more and more reserved.
So... if you don't like pride, don't go. But everyone in our community should at least try to understand where the pride celebrations came from and why they evolved the way that they did and why they are important and why they were important.
OMG! I just read back over this and realized that I am frickin' old! I have lived through all of these changes. <sigh>
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for most developed countries gay pride is for different generation
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Mardi Gras - Spring Break... Need I say more?
Do you know the difference between Gay Men and Straight Men?
Woman.
We live in a world where a man who has 100 partners is considered a 'stud' yet a woman who has that many, and even far less is called a slut. We live in a world where men still want to marry a virgin and want a 'good girl' while men are supported if not applauded in conquering in bed as many partners as possible.
Straight men are tempered by the needs of Woman - Woman needs to be prim and proper if she ever wants to marry or be a 'pillar' in her community.
If you stick around enough, or just go through the posts here on this forum you will find that the majority of guys who want to know if they are gay focus on the sex part, porn, what the are attracted two, while women tend to focus on their feelings, the attending emotions. This difference in thinking is a predominate force that affects how 'straight people' operate - at least publicly.
But then there are Mardi Gras and Spring Break...
Gay men are not tempered by that, instead you have two men striving for stud-hood - there ain't no brake system to slow down the process.
The other problem facing gays is that their condition is called homoSEXual - heavy emphasis on the sex part. Typically when people talk about the gays the terms cock-sucker and 'fudge packer' (amongst many others) emphasize that being gay means Sex - Homosex.
The Gay community is pushing toward 'normalcy' as in a couple with kids who are married and living a monogamous life.
So it is changing, its just going to take a while since recent LGBT history has been heavy on the sexual side of things with militant attitudes to force straights to accept us.
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Depends on your notion of extreme flamboyancy, Solemboy,
Annoy? More like make me go ape-shit berserk! (I'm not getting at you lad, I'm getting at the event... Sorry if it comes across otherwise).
(As in my case) With placards stating "Give us your children, we don't "eat" them we fuck them", which very nearly destroyed my foster application? (you'r 17, put yourself in my son's shoes.. 14, No parents, in a home for over 7 years, 3 previous broken placements, and a last chance to make a family for yourself... Then pass judgement.
Sometime I'll do a story... Never mind...
Parading with strap on dildos?, naked? or otherwise sexually / fetish explicit?
Is that also acceptable?
What about youngster's who are grappling with coming out to their folks who sit in front of the TV and pour derision on queers poefter's, moffies arse F*#@kers and the like because that is what they see and therefore believe all of us are like?
Where does the line get drawn?
I very much doubt that any kind of behavioral "standards" can be set or even enforced. There is only one solution The event must go. As part of gaining true acceptance & pride in ourselves we should distance ourselves from the event entirely.
Trial by error
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