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krytella So two things: watched the move Pride recently, and then had Pride weekend.
I loved the film way more than I thought I would. I mean, not that I thought I wouldn't like it, but wow. It was just... really well-constructed. There was a lot of crying in our viewing group. And then I kept seeing pictures of this group who protested in London with a Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants banner and had happy feelings all over again.
Pride weekend, I went out to a LGBT-themed partner dance event (pretty boring, so much Country Two-Step. I'm still waiting to understand why lesbians love Country Two-Step). And an aggressively queer club night, which was intense and crowded and full of great music. It ended up being just me and![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
ohshitcircuit and we had to dance very close because of the crowding which was... not a huge hardship *g*. I skipped the Dyke March because I got lazy and my roommate was fused with the couch and didn't want to leave, and also me and lesbian events have a weird relationship because they usually try to retroactively be inclusive of all queer women but still, I'm not a lesbian so. It's not really my space, and even if it was, I feel that calling events for all queer women "lesbian" or "dyke" is pretty erasing of bi+ identities. It's why I don't go to Lesbians Who Tech events even though they're always claiming to be for all queer women.
As an antidote to all the feeling-invisible, I marched with the Bisexual Networks group in the big Pride parade. This is my second year marching with them, and I love doing it. I've been in the parade once before, with a "geek pride" group, but it didn't feel nearly as good. A lot of the groups in the parade are really nonspecific about whether their members are LGBTQIA+ or allies or corporate employees paid or cajoled to be there. I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing, but it makes participating in the parade feel like less of an act of queer visibility. Walking with the bi group, dressed as Bi Pride Captain America, feels profoundly visible. We don't have a float, just around 20 people and a banner from the Bisexual Women's Network, and I spend the whole time running from side to side cheering with and high fiving as many spectators as possible. I saw two "It's Stars AND Stripes" shirts and one obviously homemade bi pride Cap shield shirt and so many people on the sidelines with bi, trans, or ace pride flags painted on their cheeks. I love that people do that, I love seeing everyone who steps outside of "queer, not otherwise specified" to say that they're specifically something that is neither straight nor gay. And it feels like something to be out there wearing bisexual colors when I'm not fully, officially out. I hope it means something to people watching the parade who see us. In a sea of big companies and churches preaching a nonspecific "we love you" and "love is love," to be visible as something specific and still deviant in so many places is powerful. To touch the hands of so many teenagers with bi pride flags on their faces, and so many who might be questioning and need to see that we're here, we exist, we are an identity and a community.
There are a lot of queer communities. There's the cis gay men's community which has no use for people they don't want to fuck, there are women's communities at various stages of dealing with their history of transmisogyny, there's an amorphous kind of trans/genderqueer+ community that I see forming from the trans women and the nonbinary people who don't feel included elsewhere. More and more, the community I want is polysexual community. Bisexual, pansexual, multi-gender-attracted of all stripes, biromantic asexual, everyone who's into people of similar and different genders in a non-platonic way. One of the more contentious issues around non-lesbians in queer women's spaces is what to do when they have cishet men as significant others; I'm leaning more and more towards just not dating straight men any more.
I loved the film way more than I thought I would. I mean, not that I thought I wouldn't like it, but wow. It was just... really well-constructed. There was a lot of crying in our viewing group. And then I kept seeing pictures of this group who protested in London with a Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants banner and had happy feelings all over again.
Pride weekend, I went out to a LGBT-themed partner dance event (pretty boring, so much Country Two-Step. I'm still waiting to understand why lesbians love Country Two-Step). And an aggressively queer club night, which was intense and crowded and full of great music. It ended up being just me and
As an antidote to all the feeling-invisible, I marched with the Bisexual Networks group in the big Pride parade. This is my second year marching with them, and I love doing it. I've been in the parade once before, with a "geek pride" group, but it didn't feel nearly as good. A lot of the groups in the parade are really nonspecific about whether their members are LGBTQIA+ or allies or corporate employees paid or cajoled to be there. I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing, but it makes participating in the parade feel like less of an act of queer visibility. Walking with the bi group, dressed as Bi Pride Captain America, feels profoundly visible. We don't have a float, just around 20 people and a banner from the Bisexual Women's Network, and I spend the whole time running from side to side cheering with and high fiving as many spectators as possible. I saw two "It's Stars AND Stripes" shirts and one obviously homemade bi pride Cap shield shirt and so many people on the sidelines with bi, trans, or ace pride flags painted on their cheeks. I love that people do that, I love seeing everyone who steps outside of "queer, not otherwise specified" to say that they're specifically something that is neither straight nor gay. And it feels like something to be out there wearing bisexual colors when I'm not fully, officially out. I hope it means something to people watching the parade who see us. In a sea of big companies and churches preaching a nonspecific "we love you" and "love is love," to be visible as something specific and still deviant in so many places is powerful. To touch the hands of so many teenagers with bi pride flags on their faces, and so many who might be questioning and need to see that we're here, we exist, we are an identity and a community.
There are a lot of queer communities. There's the cis gay men's community which has no use for people they don't want to fuck, there are women's communities at various stages of dealing with their history of transmisogyny, there's an amorphous kind of trans/genderqueer+ community that I see forming from the trans women and the nonbinary people who don't feel included elsewhere. More and more, the community I want is polysexual community. Bisexual, pansexual, multi-gender-attracted of all stripes, biromantic asexual, everyone who's into people of similar and different genders in a non-platonic way. One of the more contentious issues around non-lesbians in queer women's spaces is what to do when they have cishet men as significant others; I'm leaning more and more towards just not dating straight men any more.
