It’s Pride Month once again, and June is burstin’ out all over.
Rainbows flags flutter in the breeze, spectral colours adorn shop windows, DART carriages and buses are prismatically decorated, shops and businesses display ‘welcome’ signs, and those who have a mind to can engage in ambulatory celebration by walking backwards and forwards on the ubiquitous polychromatic once-upon-a-time Zebra crossings.
And yet…some questions spring to mind. What exactly is it that’s being celebrated during this month? What are we supposed to be proud of? And who are the ‘we’ that is expected to be flushed with pride?
And of the seven deadly sins, why pride rather than, say, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy or sloth? There are times in my life when I’d happily be in favour of a Sloth month and I have a sneaky suspicion that Gluttony takes up considerably more than a month.
Are all the options represented by the Pride alphabet-soup LGBTQQIP2SAA equally celebrate-able by all? Haven’t there been rumours that all is not well between the LGBs and the TQQIP2SAAs, especially between the LGBs and the Ts, with some LGBs apparently issuing Unilateral Declarations of Independence?
On Twitter, @the LGBgroup tweeted, “We [LGB] don’t even want Pride Month anymore, we just want to be separated from the TQ+ cult.”
Crossing the Liffey earlier this month, I noticed that there were Trans flags (blue, pink and white) fluttering in splendid isolation from the Pride flag, reminding me that last year in Dublin, the two groups had separate marches. Will there be two separate marches this year also?
And why celebrate for a month, rather than just a day, or even a week? Who gets to decide these things?
Is there a UN Committee or a division of the WEF that decides what is to be celebrated and for how long?
Truth to tell, it’s not just a month. There’s also Agender Pride Day (19 May); International Asexuality Day (6 April); Bisexual Awareness Week (16-22 September); International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (17 May); Drag Day (16 July); Lesbian Day (8 October) which is not to be confused with Lesbian Visibility Day (26 April).
Then we have National Coming Out Day (11 October); Trans Awareness Month (November) and, within that, Transgender Day of Remembrance (20 November). And then there are the more exotic days and weeks: International Day of Pink (2nd Wednesday in April); Genderfluid Visibility Week (17-24 October); Pronouns Day (3rd Wednesday in October); and my own personal favourite, Pansexual & Panromantic Awareness Day (25 May).
But of course, there are many, many more for, as someone online remarked, “Gender Ideology is full of holidays—one or two in every calendar month, except August. (No need for a celebration—it seems—when there is no school.)”
If we are to have an entire month for non-heterosexual prideful celebrations, shouldn’t we, in the interests of diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE), devote the remaining eleven months of the year to heterosexual public celebrations, with, I suggest, the proud—no, strike that—the humble display of this completely boring and colourless flag?
Or—and I know this is a completely mad suggestion!—perhaps it might be a good idea if we cancelled the days, weeks and months of celebrations and remembrances, stopped putting out the flags, de-painted our public transport vehicles, and made our Zebra crossings once again black and white, and just got on decorously with our private lives
Gerard Casey is an Irish academic and is a Professor Emeritus at University College Dublin