Pride or Get Bent?

No apologies for linking to Confidential yet again because this piece on Manchester’s Gay Pride event this weekend is very interesting.

Time was Pride was the only gay festival in town but in recent years there have been alternative events springing up. There is a growing resentment against the official Manchester Pride – in fact it’s grown to the extent that the official Pride opening has been gatecrashed by young gay demonstrators. Performance artist Joey Hateley argues that the festival has become too corporate and mainstream. Pride supporters point to the festival’s charity contributions.

Personally, I’m inclined towards Hateley’s view. I used to go to Pride every year but it has developed into an expensive, over-regulated open air event of the type you avoid like the plague.

There are too many events of these kind – access by wristband, areas cordoned off seemingly at random, massive police and security presence and queues for portakabins and four-pound pints (served in plastic glasses, naturally). The whole thing seems geared to generate money for the city’s leisure industries and tourist board and the event’s sponsors rather than to give the populace a good time. This is why I didn’t shed a tear when DPercussion left town.

I mean, why bother, when there are so many alternative events with better company and atmosphere?

The comments on the Confidential article are worth reading. A couple of interesting samples:

‘Anonymous’:

And Pride includes what for people who don’t drink or who don’t like pop or loud clubs and bars? What about the majority of LGBT people who are over 35? We’re not all teenagers. Walk around the village with a Trans person or anyone who looks slightly different from the ‘norm’ down there and experience the abuse. Much worse than 20 years ago in Manchester, despite the hype! It may come as a surprise, but for lots of us life is about more than getting smashed and off your face. This isn’t a lifestyle, it’s a marketing scam aimed mainly at gay men who have money. If one person ends up HIV+ due to this weekend of partying (and alcohol is a factor in many HIV infections), the total charity amount raised in 2006 (£65,000) will pay for just five years of treatment for that ONE person. The tiny amounts are a joke. The businesses make 22 million pounds each year. We’re funding a tourist event. There is no need for tickets. Make it free and let’s see the organisers put on some cultural and other events that cater to the entire LGBT community and not just those who have the most money.

Another surprise for some of you is that the people who are in the village during Pride are a minority of the ‘LGBT community’ as you put it and not a cross section. They are mainly young gay men with a high disposable income, who like to drink and party and their straight friends. 35,000 tickets are sold, some to locals, but many to the same kind of well-off young men from outside of Manchester. The population of Greater Manchester is 2.4 million. If 6.5%; of the population is LGBT, that is 156,000 LGBT people in Greater Manchester. So please don’t pretend that this event represents anything other than an unrepresentative and small minority of local LGBT people. It is far removed from the origins of Pride.

‘Vic’:

Manchester Pride can say it is about showcasing the LGBTQI communities and making our lifestyles acceptable. Well it might be making someone’s lifestyle acceptable but not mine. I agree with anonymous, being a queer woman with friends and a lover who are also queer, but who fail to meet the stereotype, I see nothing in Manchester pride that does anything to ‘promote’ my lifestyle. It isn’t about pride, it’s about money and beer and companies who have nothing at all to do with me. Ticket prices might be trivial to some, but to those struggling on a low income or unable to work – are they not allowed a measure of Pride? Good luck to the queer youth protesting, it’s great to see some politics in them. Lets not rest on our laurels people, in Manchester in 2008, you’re only ‘acceptable’ and proud if you’re under 30, attractive, mainstream, able bodied and affluent. Everyone else can go to hell. You don’t look right? You have an alternative queerness? You’re trans? Disabled? Older? Forget it. The LGBTQI community is not Queer as Folk or Sugar Rush. We’re a diverse group of people who need to fight for liberation and acceptance of WHO WE ARE, not what people think we’re palatable as.