Pride marches are now sponsored by big corporations with dodgy politics and even worse labour practices, but they also inspire vulnerable queer youth to imagine futures that aren’t crushing dead-ends. Playing straight, playing for straights — at-risk queers have long learnt how to make heterosexuality and capitalism work for them to survive. But let’s also not kid ourselves in thinking that the respectability politics that underlie the progress of the LGBTQ “community” has uniformly made it better for all, when sex workers and saunas are swept away to make space for parties and wedding proposals. Gay districts are safer, more open and more profitable than ever before, but for whom?
“I still get excited when you come in the door every night. It’s not new; it’s better.”
Heather’s Fosters 216 recap is full of emotional orgasms and feelings.
Gay districts are constructed as havens, as sanctuaries, as places where expression and identity can freely tumble forward in messy, drunken messes. But this glosses over the realities of those of us who are policed for not being gay enough or for being too queer, for dressing wrong, for looking wrong, for being wrong; this doesn’t confront the complexities of police and policing at the intersections of queerphobia, racism, sexism and classism. This picture simply moves on past the interruptions that unruly bodies present, the disruptions to social norms that gave rise to gaybourhoods in the first place. This picture prioritises comfort over challenge, compromising the promise of safety and welcome that these neighbourhoods are supposed to stand for for those of us who aren’t white cis gay men. Who are the ‘gays’ for whom gay districts are built (around)? Who gets to decide?
Forming and finding community can be terrifying, especially for those of us with multiple intersecting identities. There’s a lot at stake — so much to gain but just as much to lose. And so there’s a special feeling for being rejected by people who claim to be a part of you, and you a part of them. In white queer communities, I felt unseen. In this queer community of color, I felt seen but unheard. I felt that community had been discovered, claimed, conquered, owned. A new social hierarchy had arisen, and we called it separatism. A line had been drawn around it, a skyscraping metropolis built in the center, and I was on the outskirts, alone, pressed against the barbed border, not good enough, not brown enough, quiet again. In biological families, we are not bound by blood; in QPOC identities, we are not bound by flesh. Shared identities do not make us one. At best, they make us “other,” together. And that’s where we were then. Was this community? Is this what was missing? I sat in the audience, surrounded by strangers or friends.