Pride In Our Consumption

Ten years ago, on June 2nd, President Bill Clinton declared June as “Gay & Lesbian Pride
Month.” (President Obama just recently did the same, only renaming it “LGBT Pride Month.”) Every
year, throughout the month, members from across the LGBTIQQA community come together to
celebrate life, art, and culture. There are parades and parties and memorials and all manner of events
centered around the theme of being out and proud. In some of the country's larger and more liberal
trending cities, the parades can stretch on for blocks and blocks, effectively shutting down whole parts
of the city. It seems that rainbows appear out of nowhere.
I started participating in Pride celebrations ten years ago. Initially, I would spend the weekend
going from one party to the next, marching in the parade, and eventually finding my way home before
work on Monday morning to peel off the layers of glitter and rainbows I had collected over those few
days of bacchanalia. The community was small, insular, and almost tribal. But, most importantly, for
the purposes of this article, there was almost no corporate advertising or slogans or vendor booths at
any of the events, which were mostly free. The corporate sector was only just beginning to enter the
nitch market of the Queer community.
In the past ten years, I have seen Pride change significantly. Now, most events are sponsored by
one or two or several corporations selling everything from alcohol to cruises to new cars to bank
accounts. Advertisements that featured a hetero-normative married couple only the month before are
reworked to feature two men or two women apparently enjoying the product just as much as their
straight counterparts. Company logos are reworked in the colors of the rainbow. And, now companies
march in the parades, showing off their inclusive and progressive corporate culture. Everywhere a
person turns, there is a corporate logo to behold. (I still remember being handed a package of condoms
that were sponsored by a vodka company.)
In the early part of the 20th century, consumerism was nonexistent. People would buy a product,
use it, repair it and keep it for most of their lives. Soon, however, companies realized that they could
make more money selling new products instead of stocking parts to fix old ones and consumerism was
born. Everything from cars to dishwashers to sewing machines became disposable. Along with
disposable products, here today gone tomorrow, people's expectations, desires, wants and needs became
easily replaceable too. People's identities began to change; becoming more and more aligned around a
particular product or brand. And, soon, people themselves became advertisements for the very products
they consumed.
Like the macro culture at large, this same trend can be witnessed within the Queer community
as well. Brands like Subaru, Home Depot, Prada and the like call to mind certain types of people within
our micro culture. And, this is never more clearly seen than each year at Pride celebrations across this
country. What was once a celebration of freedom, of liberation, of community has morphed into a
celebration of brand identities and consumption. Whether through trickery or through taking advantage
of people's apathy, companies have slowly convinced the LGBTIQQA community that they are for us;
that we matter to them. They portray themselves as allies and as partners; as caretakers of our identities.
Their message is simple: be proud that you're consumers too.
As we all know, Pride has its roots in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Shortly after the riots, a
group called the Gay Liberation Front organized themselves and a march. The march's purpose was to
call for an end to discrimination of LGBTIQQA people. Their mandate stated that they were organized
“against conformity to arbitrary standards, for an open society in which each of us may choose his own
way of life.” The Front didn't last long and several groups were born out these first faulting steps of
activism. One group was the Gay Activists Alliance. They published the Gay Activist newspaper until
1980. Their charter stated that the GAA's goal was to “secure basic human rights, dignity and freedom
for all gay people.” Out of these early marches and protests, our current Pride celebrations were born.
 These early Queer activists weren't organizing to be able to buy rainbow colored versions of the
products their straight neighbors were buying. They weren't organizing to be considered a wealthy nitch
market for companies. They were organizing for dignity, for freedom, for the right of each person to
choose their own way of life. The marches and the protests were designed to raise awareness, to call for
solidarity, to bring together queers of all stripes to fight for self-determination. In 1990, activists from
ACT UP formed Queer Nation. One of their famous slogans, coined by Miss Jane in San Francisco,
was “We're Here! We're Queer! Get used to it!” This organization was centered around protesting anti-
queer violence and for seeking greater representation of Queer life in the arts and the media. In other
words, it was carrying on the work of the GLF and the GAA. In fact, it was Queer Nation that started
the reclamation of the very word “queer.”
This month, as you watch the Pride parade or party at a Pride event, ask yourself this question.
Is this what we have been fighting for? When you look around at company logos and corporate brands
flashing rainbows at you, think about how many LGBTIQQA people still don't have basic human rights
or dignity or freedom. Ask yourself what happened to the fight to end conformity to arbitrary standards
and the freedom to live a life shaped by self-determination. When the local car salesman asks you if
you're interested in buying a new car as you walk through the park, ask him if he's interested in ending
the oppression, murder, slavery and poverty of the Queer community. For my part, I think it's time we
started chanting a new slogan at Pride. We're here! We're Queer! And, we're not buying it!