Me as a baby gay: I can’t wait to sneak off to Pride and see men kissing and guys in jockstraps!
Baby gays today: Pride is for THE CHILDREN! Why do you grown men want to show minors your bare asses?
I remember walking through the men’s underwear department at K-Mart and getting warm looking at the models. The thought of MEN ALMOST NAKED DANCING IN THE STREET was so liberating to me. I wanted to be one of them one day, spirited and free and to hell with Puritanical straights.
I don’t think Gen Z has that. Even closeted kids from rural areas can go online and just see gay people existing on Twitter and Instagram. If I wanted to see gay things, it was on the family computer listening for any creak in the floorboards so I could X out before Mom or Dad came in.
I didn’t have a frame of reference for life as a gay adult or life as a gay person just going about their day. Pride was this almost mythical event where gay people came out from under the rocks to frolic with each other and be sexy and joyful. They weren’t thinking about KIDS. The last thing they cared about was CHILDREN and FAMILIES.
Those were the people making them live under rocks in the first place. They couldn’t kiss in public at home, because “not in front of our CHILDREN!” Children were the oppressors, not directly because they have no power, but “think of the children” was always the reason why queer people had to hide. Gay marriage is the wrong example for children. Gays on TV will make the children gay. Gay affection scares the children. Parents would say “I don’t have a problem with gay people personally, but I shouldn’t have to explain homosexuals to my five year old,” as if queer existence should be dependent upon your ability to talk to your offspring.
But Pride didn’t care about the children.
If you don’t wanna explain men holding hands? Don’t go to Pride. If you don’t wanna see women shaking their tiddies? Don’t go to Pride. If you don’t wanna see a jockstrap and a harness? Don’t go to Pride.
Pride meant “I don’t care about your children and families today.”
But Gen Z has decided Pride belongs to them, because for them, Pride is a big event for STRAIGHT people to see how fun and fabulous the gays are, so they will like us, so they will give us rights, so they will let us hold hands back home. For Gen Z, Pride isn’t the mythical event where queer people can be free. Pride is the corporate event where straight people can see how harmless the gays are. Pride isn’t “to hell with the establishment!” Pride is McDonald’s and babies with rainbow stickers on their cheeks.
I think it’s wonderful that the kids have grown up in a country so welcoming that Pride isn’t a protest for them, because they don’t feel the same sense of urgency to show a middle finger to power. Gen Z has grown up with public support for gay marriage. The #1 talkshow host has been a lesbian for their entire lives. Gay people deliver cable news. A gay man ran for President, and did well! They have reality TV, movies, social media. A gay movie won Best Picture. Gen Z has seen the NYC Pride March on television, which is just BEYOND to me. It was nominated for an Emmy TWICE! The Pride they know is not the Pride we mythologized and couldn’t wait to experience when we were their age.
I can’t tell anybody how to feel about Pride or the sanitization of Pride, but Gen Z doesn’t have the same attachment to Pride being a Protest or queer people being radically anti-establishment. They’ve grown up with so much more visibility and freedom to live. And I’m glad the kids aren’t growing up in the dark like some of us did, but “think of the children!” as a means of oppression and censorship has never served any marginalized community well.
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