Goodbye pride
it's over
To quote the fêted public intellectual known as Mariah Carey, “it’s tiiiiiiiiime.”
Yes, it is the month of June, also known as “Pride Month.” But those of us based gods, goddesses, and goddxses—especially those of us living in New York, the capital of the world from which all culture and coolness flow downstream—are done with Pride. To use drag parlance, “pride? gurl bye.” Or to quote that great philosophe once again, “pride…
In short, pride is over. In the ten years since gay was officially made ok in the US, all things rainbow-related have been rendered passe, cringe, and, well…g*y. We tried telling you this last year in our infamous essay on the post-gay era. If you haven’t read it yet, then consider yourself ignorant, irrelevant, and positively uncool.
Welcome to the Post-Gay Era
It’s the summer of 2011, and the gays are just around the corner from their long-awaited liberation. Pop stars are churning out formulaic bubblegum dance-pop songs about embracing who you really are. Those who have been rejected, outcast, or bullied…made to feel less-than, abominable, intrinsically disordered…who have been perpetually victimized by archaic, closed-minded social and moral standards are about to have their day.
Now that the laws have ratified marriage and other legal protections/benefits for the gays, there is nothing left to fight for. All this rainbow stuff now comes off as utterly useless and a waste of energy. Furthermore, people are getting tired of pretending that love is love, that homosexuality is not at all different from heterosexuality. It gets exhausting to keep up the act, to not cringe, balk, or barf when people hold up the image of a pristinely coiffed gay couple—you know, the kind that have corporate jobs in Manhattan, go to Equinox, get Restylane injections, etc—standing in front of their vacation home in the Hamptons on par with your average straight couple.
The world is free once again to acknowledge that homosexuality is positively not normal. And the gays are free to be their counterculture, fabulous selves once again. We all see that the emperor is wearing no clothes [and might we say, he is slaying in his birthday suit. Go off queen (I mean, empress)!].
Some of you wrote to us last year to tell us that we were wrong to announce the death of pride; rainbow flags and pro-LGBTQIA++ language-policing have yet to disappear from the circles you live in. That is probably because you live in an irrelevant, uncultured part of the country (ie anywhere outside of NYC…you know, like DC, LA, Appalachia, and other cultural backwaters).
In all seriousness, here’s what we’re trying to get across to you: In New York’s gay circles, pride is no longer cool. It has come to be associated with megacorporations, impersonal bureaucracies, and soulless straight white girls. Slowly, this distaste for pride is trickling down to mainstream culture. Some corporations and retail businesses are catching on that pride is out, as are some elite universities (though some within them are desperately trying to cling on). But this is will eventually trickle down to non-elite circles and cities (again, very slowly).
The fact of the matter is that Pride (and DEI’s excesses) has yet to fully pass through non-elite institutions and the country’s “back row” regions. Poor people, low brow cultures, and minorities have not undergone the rainbow wave…and perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if they did. As much as we believe the the true antidote to homophobia and gay bashing is not to normalize homosexuality but to teach Christian charity, mercy, and hospitality…it would probably do homophobic lower-income and minority/immigrant communities some good to have their homophobic pendulum swung the other way. Of course, doing so often serves to exacerbate tension between gays and their family members in those contexts…but still, somebody’s gotta stop parents from beating or abandoning their gay-identifying children.
But anyway, the point is, the whole country will eventually follow NYC’s cue and come to see that rainbow is cringe, and maybe will adopt a multivalent social imaginary that allows for gays to channel their deviant impulses in spaces of anti-structure—whether “superior” ones like monasticism or the arts, or “inferior” ones like the “underground.”
So brace yourself for a hell of a month, during which we’ll be dropping takes so hot you’ll think you’re in the 5th circle of Dante’s inferno (the one where the sodomites are).
Fabulous!
Speak for yourself. Who says NYC gays are over Pride? You can live outside the mainstream and still enjoy celebrating Pride month…