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sabotabbyI was going to comment on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eumelia's excellent post (which says it all: "LGBT rights are human rights") but what I have to say is probably too long, convoluted, and angry to fit in a single comment. And people—co-workers, even, and I do try to keep politics and my own cultural identity out of the workplace!—have been asking me for my opinion on it, so here goes:
I marched with QuAIA last year. I know most of the people in it; it's a fairly small group. Most of them have been at every Pride March, long before CAIA started affixing -AIA to every Palestinian solidarity group in the city (but that's a different rant). Before there was QuAIA, there were joint contingents between Salaam, the Muslim queer group, and Jewish Women Against the Occupation (now Women in Solidarity With Palestine), a group largely led by and composed of Jewish lesbians. The "No Pride In Occupation" slogan is not a new one. Most of the folks who marched with QuAIA last year have a long history of activism within the queer community.
Most of the people protesting QuAIA's inclusion in the march do not. We met counter-protesters who had been bussed in from the U.S. Most were straight, a few shouted homophobic comments at us. These are not people who would have otherwise attended Pride. I've noticed in some of the less carefully worded complaints by them, there is also the usual rage against the inappropriateness of TNT Men. (Link is NSFW.)
The City of Toronto (and I'm not just talking about the government here) has always had an uncomfortable relationship with Pride. Pride started as a protest, led by the most marginalized members of the queer community, the least co-optable. It's held when it is to commemorate the Stonewall Riots. It's also the largest tourist event in Toronto and it brings in far more money than it costs. In order for it to be the event that almost everyone in the city (and the many people who come in from outside the city to celebrate) enjoys, it has to be a mess of strange bedfellows: corporate sponsors and angry activists, white middle class men in sweater vests and street-involved sex workers, unions and banks and religious groups and community groups and—everyone.
But those primarily interested in money and public image over human rights would prefer to forget the history. We're not Sonoma County, we're not Fulton, Mississippi. We're fine with Kyle fucking Rae making the neighbourhood safe for yuppies. We're fine with the hot TD boys dancing in their skivvies and we're fine with lesbians taking their shirts off and making out in the streets, as long as both are appropriately appealing to the male gaze. We're less fine with elderly wrinkled dudes showing their elderly wrinkled dongs, and we're certainly not cool with any group bringing up politics.
Hence the position in which we find ourselves now. The Pride Committee is in an impossible situation, and I am going to be sympathetic regardless of what they decide. On one hand, they stand to lose their funding if they take a correct stand on freedom of expression, and Pride cannot continue to be what it is without City funding. They never asked to be embroiled in the politics of Palestine and Israel. On the other hand, if they do this little thing now, it's a terrible precedent. It's essentially allowing special interest groups to dictate what is and what is not acceptable speech. Pride will no longer be a community-based event, but one in which free expression must be vetted by outside interests.
I am also utterly disgusted at how the mainstream media is covering this. While I am chuffed that Haaretz covered it (My city! Making world news! And I was there!), the local media is buying lines fed to them by Israel advocacy groups hook, line, and sinker, without doing any sort of research on their own. If a claim is made—for example, that someone in the QuAIA contingent last year was wearing a t-shirt with a swastika on it—how hard is it to find a picture? There were lots of pictures of this dude, clearly showing the t-shirt, which had a crossed-out swastika on it. You have to be extremely stupid or extremely disingenuous to claim that this is an anti-Semitic symbol (I mean, it's a swastika in the way that a "no smoking" sign is a picture of a cigarette), but journalists seem to be nodding their heads along to it. Next came the claim that the use of the term "apartheid" is hate speech, which I'm thinking will be news to Desmond Tutu.
This has a lot to do with broader issues—the North American Zionist community is pretty much shitting themselves over the thought that the unfortunately named Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement could actually have an effect, and have turned their efforts almost entirely towards wiping out CAIA. But it also has to do with profit and co-option and making events like Pride palatable and non-controversial, reining in the snowball of progression and tolerance so that there's still someone excluded and marginalized.
It's my sincere hope that the Pride Committee calls the City's bluff on this. I don't think that the City will cancel funding—Pride is just too profitable, and in the end, money will trump ideology every time. Pride is in an apparent no-win situation, and it's going to get worse. If the City thinks that it can dictate political expression in Toronto's queer community now, what's going to happen if Rob "you can't get AIDS unless you're gay" Ford is elected mayor?
eumelia's excellent post (which says it all: "LGBT rights are human rights") but what I have to say is probably too long, convoluted, and angry to fit in a single comment. And people—co-workers, even, and I do try to keep politics and my own cultural identity out of the workplace!—have been asking me for my opinion on it, so here goes:I marched with QuAIA last year. I know most of the people in it; it's a fairly small group. Most of them have been at every Pride March, long before CAIA started affixing -AIA to every Palestinian solidarity group in the city (but that's a different rant). Before there was QuAIA, there were joint contingents between Salaam, the Muslim queer group, and Jewish Women Against the Occupation (now Women in Solidarity With Palestine), a group largely led by and composed of Jewish lesbians. The "No Pride In Occupation" slogan is not a new one. Most of the folks who marched with QuAIA last year have a long history of activism within the queer community.
Most of the people protesting QuAIA's inclusion in the march do not. We met counter-protesters who had been bussed in from the U.S. Most were straight, a few shouted homophobic comments at us. These are not people who would have otherwise attended Pride. I've noticed in some of the less carefully worded complaints by them, there is also the usual rage against the inappropriateness of TNT Men. (Link is NSFW.)
The City of Toronto (and I'm not just talking about the government here) has always had an uncomfortable relationship with Pride. Pride started as a protest, led by the most marginalized members of the queer community, the least co-optable. It's held when it is to commemorate the Stonewall Riots. It's also the largest tourist event in Toronto and it brings in far more money than it costs. In order for it to be the event that almost everyone in the city (and the many people who come in from outside the city to celebrate) enjoys, it has to be a mess of strange bedfellows: corporate sponsors and angry activists, white middle class men in sweater vests and street-involved sex workers, unions and banks and religious groups and community groups and—everyone.
But those primarily interested in money and public image over human rights would prefer to forget the history. We're not Sonoma County, we're not Fulton, Mississippi. We're fine with Kyle fucking Rae making the neighbourhood safe for yuppies. We're fine with the hot TD boys dancing in their skivvies and we're fine with lesbians taking their shirts off and making out in the streets, as long as both are appropriately appealing to the male gaze. We're less fine with elderly wrinkled dudes showing their elderly wrinkled dongs, and we're certainly not cool with any group bringing up politics.
Hence the position in which we find ourselves now. The Pride Committee is in an impossible situation, and I am going to be sympathetic regardless of what they decide. On one hand, they stand to lose their funding if they take a correct stand on freedom of expression, and Pride cannot continue to be what it is without City funding. They never asked to be embroiled in the politics of Palestine and Israel. On the other hand, if they do this little thing now, it's a terrible precedent. It's essentially allowing special interest groups to dictate what is and what is not acceptable speech. Pride will no longer be a community-based event, but one in which free expression must be vetted by outside interests.
I am also utterly disgusted at how the mainstream media is covering this. While I am chuffed that Haaretz covered it (My city! Making world news! And I was there!), the local media is buying lines fed to them by Israel advocacy groups hook, line, and sinker, without doing any sort of research on their own. If a claim is made—for example, that someone in the QuAIA contingent last year was wearing a t-shirt with a swastika on it—how hard is it to find a picture? There were lots of pictures of this dude, clearly showing the t-shirt, which had a crossed-out swastika on it. You have to be extremely stupid or extremely disingenuous to claim that this is an anti-Semitic symbol (I mean, it's a swastika in the way that a "no smoking" sign is a picture of a cigarette), but journalists seem to be nodding their heads along to it. Next came the claim that the use of the term "apartheid" is hate speech, which I'm thinking will be news to Desmond Tutu.
This has a lot to do with broader issues—the North American Zionist community is pretty much shitting themselves over the thought that the unfortunately named Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement could actually have an effect, and have turned their efforts almost entirely towards wiping out CAIA. But it also has to do with profit and co-option and making events like Pride palatable and non-controversial, reining in the snowball of progression and tolerance so that there's still someone excluded and marginalized.
It's my sincere hope that the Pride Committee calls the City's bluff on this. I don't think that the City will cancel funding—Pride is just too profitable, and in the end, money will trump ideology every time. Pride is in an apparent no-win situation, and it's going to get worse. If the City thinks that it can dictate political expression in Toronto's queer community now, what's going to happen if Rob "you can't get AIDS unless you're gay" Ford is elected mayor?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-26 04:21 am (UTC)There was a case this year where an animal welfare group were rejected because they hadn't clearly indicated they were a queer/gay/lgbt group on their proposal. They wen't to the press and made a big fuss and ended up being included.