Walking Downtown with a Million of my Closest Friends

[bcholmes]

I marched in the Pride Parade today. First time ever.

It was an experience mixed with frustration and... well, pride. I was marching with the IBM contingent. Ldot works for IBM and several years ago, I used to work for them, too. We arrived four and a quarter hours before we really started walking in the parade. Most of it was standing in the sun -- blazing hot 35 degree Celcius weather with brilliant sun. And IBM really hadn't planned what they were going to say to people: no discussion about the route. No expectations about timing.

Add to that, the fact that I'm extremely ambivalent about IBM marching in the parade. On the one hand, yeah, it's cool that a Big Company is in the parade saying, "We support our employees, no matter what they are." That IBM is practically the hallmark for stuffy conservativism makes the statement all the more profound.

But...

IBM, in my opinion, doesn't really understand queer issues. We were walking along holding placards about diversity and "e-proud" (gag), and I thought to myself, Really, how up-to-date is IBM in terms of the major issues of the queer communities? Does IBM understand the huge fissures between the mainstream and radical elements of queer culture? To what extent does IBM acknowledge the profound heterosexism of corporate culture? What does IBM really do to manage the complexities of events in which employees are expected to bring partners? So I really wasn't sure I wanted to wave the IBM banner.

But when we were marching down Yonge street, I was just euphoric. Last year, we had one million people at Pride; the street was packed with faces of people. At times, I'd catch eyes with someone, and we'd have a conversation with our eyes.

Somewhere around College street, my neighbour, Robert, waved at me and blew kisses. There were str8s and leather daddies and drag queens and dykes on bikes and bears and furries and tinkerbells and a big truck of young hot asian boys from the Gay Asian Network bumping and gyrating on the float in front of us the entire parade (I'm starting to notice a passing appreciation for the male body).

Certainly, by Dundas I'd had enough. It was around five thirty by then, and we'd been handed our placards at noon. The final leg of the parade took us back over to Church, and we dropped off our stuff and disappeared into the crowd.

Comments

[missshirley.livejournal.com]

IBM, in my opinion, doesn't really understand queer issues. We were walking along holding placards about diversity and "e-proud" (gag), and I thought to myself, Really, how up-to-date is IBM in terms of the major issues of the queer communities? Does IBM understand the huge fissures between the mainstream and radical elements of queer culture? To what extent does IBM acknowledge the profound heterosexism of corporate culture? What does IBM really do to manage the complexities of events in which employees are expected to bring partners? So I really wasn't sure I wanted to wave the IBM banner.

I've always sort of thought this is the case with most of the corporate sponsors. It's not so much that IBM or Captain Morgan are supportive of gay issues or of their gay employees, but that they see a huge potential demographic of untapped disposable income. There are a few companies that have been there since the beginning and have done great things for the gay community (MAC Cosmetics, for instance), but in recent years, I've found Pride, specifically the parade, to have lost a lot of its grassroots feel in favour of a more corporate agenda. I understand that the event needs these sponsors to make the whole thing happen; all this stuff costs money to do, but as a parade spectator, I'm more inclined to cheer for community groups, politicians who make the effort to be there, or groups that are supportive of the community more than just the one day a year when they have a million captive spectators.