Wanting more than "a bit of rainbow window dressing"

June 14, 2023 6:55 PM

There’s an idealized version of a Pride Night in my head: one night a year where a ballpark truly becomes a place where straightness is the exception and not the norm. - No Straights at Pride Night Lauren Theisen, writing about Pride Night at baseball games, the nice things that we're painfully aware we can't have, for Defector.

...the expectation that queer people are supposed to respond with a passionate defense of the thoroughly underwhelming gesture that is a typical Pride Night has left me a little cold. I like them. They remain a date for me to circle on the calendar as a fan who attends just a handful of games each season. But they feel like an inessential afterthought compared to events and spaces run by and for queer people.

I read this last week, and haven't had the chance to post it here, but damn, this just sounds nice. A world that goes beyond safe spaces into the dream of truly welcoming ones.

posted by Ghidorah (23 comments total)

Archive link
posted by hippybear at 7:08 PM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I want Citi Bank to shut the fuck up about how they accept everyone's money. I want genderless bathrooms with flattering lights.

I love the sentiment of this piece overall, and these details in particular.
posted by EvaDestruction at 7:30 PM on June 14, 2023 [11 favorites]

I often fantasize about queer takeover events. One of the things I've enjoyed about Pride in the places where I've lived is it is one of the few times my people are dominant. The demolishment of the gay bar scene has taken away a lot of OUR spaces. It's kind of sad.

One of my favorite queer takeover moments was when I went to Pride in Santa Fe one year. The Rainbow Family Gathering was taking place outside of Taos that year, and was overlapping Santa Fe Pride. Well... the Radical Faeries decided they were going to come into town for the event, with all of their incredibly fey rainbow sparkling energy. And after a parade through the city and speeches on the steps of the state capitol, everyone marched back through town to the Plaza. That place where all the Native craftspeople have their wares for sale, and all the tourists end up? Well, that turned into a giant queer dance party of several thousand people from Pride, and a whole lot of tourists who had their lovely vacation plans suddenly changed.
posted by hippybear at 7:32 PM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this. I stopped going to baseball games a few years before I came out as trans partially because I realized that I find baseball kinda boring and largely because I had multiple unpleasant experiences of being gender policed at them, including people saying things to me that they didn't say to my cis male companions (I was presenting female at the time). I felt very ashamed and a couple of times I even cried. I would love more spaces to be safe and inclusive and actually celebrate queerness and queer culture in the ways the author outlines instead of tolerating it. I liked this more than I thought I would as someone who's not a huge baseball fan and I appreciate you posting it.

One nitpick, and I hesitate to bring it up because I don't want to grind an axe and I'm aware that this issue applies to very few people, is that I wish people would say "cishet" instead of straight if that's what they mean; I'm trans but I'm also straight and I don't want to center myself too much but it's crummy to feel erased in queer discourse that way. Not a dig at the author! I really liked this, it made me yearn to realize this vision! Just something that's hard for me as a queer person. Now this disclaimer is probably longer than the actual comment so I'm sorry about that too, but I wanted to express my personal queer experience and sometimes that takes a lot of context and explanation if you don't want people to get upset with you.
posted by an octopus IRL at 7:32 PM on June 14, 2023 [33 favorites]

So, kinda like this then?

I do appreciate this vision though - it's a principle that applies well beyond baseball. Inclusion requires a lot more than rhetoric and marketing.
posted by cubby at 7:37 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I want to say that's a beautiful vision of belonging, but I feel like if that if they had the actual, real deal luxury gay communism baseball night, the second somebody tried to come for one of those luxury boxes because they felt they were owed a donation, there would be a letter fight the likes of which has never have been seen before. The rainbow would break apart like Skittles and there would be enough cops at this Pride to fill a station. If anyone outside was feeling curious, they'd be scared straight for a while because community unity is nice but season tickets are forever.
posted by kingdead at 7:46 PM on June 14, 2023

"It’s more important to fight for a better world than it is to just anxiously protect the table scraps we're currently thrown."

Mood. These seem less like a Pride event as much as an event for LGBTQIA+ folks. Real Pride events are actually organized by the queer community or communities, finding Pride in ourselves, and standing together. Straight cis allo folks, if they are welcome, are there as allies and guests.

Whereas Pride Night at a ballpark... well we are the guests. It's like the difference between an office birthday party and a party thrown for you by the people in your life. The former is fine. The latter is the real party.

So I value events much more not where we are included, but where we get to decide who to include.

I've been thinking a lot about pride, and allyship lately. I have a friend, and people who think they are allies told this friend they are staying away from Pride events, because they fear violence, for them and their kids.

But people should understand, Pride is when we as a community are strong. The first "Pride" events were actually riots, because Pride is the anniversary of times when we fought back when they came for us: to harass us, to abuse us, to extort us. Pride is where we say we are people, we live our lives to serve ourselves and those we care for, not to comport to others' comfort, and we aren't going to take it. Pride is safety and community and love and togetherness en masse, to hold us together for the times when we are alone. There is no safer time to be there with the queer community.

It really makes me worry. I want people to remember, Pride is not the only time people are LGBTQIA+. We are LGBTQIA+ all the time: at home, at school, at work, on the street, in a car. And oftentimes we are alone in being that.

For "allies", if you can't show up when we are united in celebration because the mere possibility of violence absent any specific thread has terrorized you, it calls your allyship into question. How can we know you'll show up when someone attacks us on the street, when someone passes us over for a promotion, or when someone suggests they don't want us around their kids?

"It’s more important to fight for a better world than it is to just anxiously protect the table scraps we're currently thrown." That's what people with privilege need to awaken to as well. Because if you can be fired for standing up for someone who is different then you are being harmed by that injustice too.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 7:49 PM on June 14, 2023 [19 favorites]

Disappointed but unfortunately unsurprised to read that the Rangers don't even bother with a Pride night.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:40 PM on June 14, 2023

Honestly, given the threats at Target (to which they caved!) and the general atmosphere of violence and particularly transphobia these days? I'm faintly gratified by the cynical corporate displays. It's not that I think they're not pandering to me. It's not that I think the corps have anything but profit in mind. It's a reassurance that it's more profitable to be seen to accept me than to be seen actively ostracizing my community.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a transgressive social event. There's a reason I stopped bothering with Austin's very corporate Pride parade only a couple of years in, while making a point of hitting Queerbombs every summer: the best celebrations involve sincerity and effort, which are in short supply in the marketing department.

But the corporate Pride stuff is a bellwether of social approval as assessed by the most cynical fucks in the business. I'd rather see the cheap catering lip service than have it go absent.
posted by sciatrix at 8:59 PM on June 14, 2023 [31 favorites]

Yeah the only thing worse than being pandered to is being deemed unworthy of pandering because either you're assumed to be too small in numbers and/or short of cash to bother with, or your cash is so tainted by your social-pariah status that nobody's openly going after your money. These young whippersnapper queers don't appreciate what it means that corporate pride is a thing. Yeah it's annoying and dorky and cringe, but it means people aren't scared of your dollar anymore.

I loved the article, to be clear. It was utopian in the best way, brought a tear to my eye and a smile to my heart. But I do feel like a lot of younger people should be careful what they wish for. Nobody is really thrilled to see their bank at the pride parade. But when banks stop showing up at the pride parade it's time to really worry about the status of your community. In late capitalism you mostly figure out who matters by who gets pandered to by advertisers. These people boycotting Bud Light and attacking Target employees know that on a visceral level. We forget it to our peril.
posted by potrzebie at 11:54 PM on June 14, 2023 [16 favorites]

But when banks stop showing up at the pride parade it's time to really worry about the status of your community.

Facts. For all the Target kerfuffle, they were marching in our local Pride parade in a pretty large group. I haven't been inside our local stores lately to know whether or not they're still displaying Pride merch here, but it was somewhat surprising to see them.

(Two groups in front of us was an Episcopal church in a fucking van and if you want to give hundreds of queers simultaneous heart attacks, drive your church van into the parking lot where we're staging for Pride. Oy.)
posted by uncleozzy at 3:43 AM on June 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm having trouble finding the source, but I remember an essay about "I wish we could all be purple for one day just so we could see how many of us there are" (I'm paraphrasing, since that exact quote yields zero google results, and even without quotes, Google eludes me cause ... well, Google) regarding the LGBTQ+ community and - while I'm a cishet dude - reading that brought happy tears to my eyes, and I love referencing it.

I kept feeling like we were inching forward to progress and, now, it... just fees like when LGBTQ+ / BIPOC characters are written into media, I'm like "okay, cool, tell me more - should I hate or love this character?" (I mean I know I should *hate* Gus Fring, but how can you not also love his story and portrayal?) some folks are like "WAIT A DAMN MINUTE, WHY ARE THEY (insert minority) HERE?!? THIS (series/movie/channel/website/brand) HAS GONE WOKE!"

Personally, I love this "No Straights at Pride Night", the same way I love "Ladies Night" at a bar meaning "no, cishet dude, you're not allowed in" (alas, it does not mean that). Exclude me! That's fine! Seriously, you have more than earned so many safe spaces.

The trouble is in legislating it legally in a way that the cishets who rule this country would agree. If there ever is such a night, livestream it so I can watch with happy tears.
posted by revmitcz at 3:44 AM on June 15, 2023

Nobody's stopping you from buying all the spare tickets to a Mets game and showing up en masse to express your own frankly very limiting view of what it means to be queer. The Mets will happily take your money. Those college jocks? It's 2023, they all have gay friends. Why you'd want to pay to see the Mets is an entirely other question: they're the most underperforming team in baseball and get their lunch eaten by the Braves six times a season. It will be nice once American men's pro sports gets over the "all players have to present as straight" thing, that's for certain.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:51 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I liked the article. However, this sentence jumped out at me: If you expect Pride Night to be anything more than the giveaway and the anthem and whomever you bring with you, however, you're likely to be disappointed.

Rhetorical point aside, is there anyone who would expect "Pride night" at a baseball game to be anything else at this moment in time? Things change -- it wasn't all that long ago that a Pride night at a major league sports event would have been completely unthinkable, so maybe slightly in the future it will become equally unremarkable to have the kind of queer-centered sports event that the author describes. I sure hope so; that's the only situation where I'd jump at the chance to go to a baseball game.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:05 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

So, having lived through the era of the emergence of Pride night or whatever they might be calling it, the point at the time when these things were new, at least for me as a queer person, was that it was maybe ONE night I could go to the ballgame and let my guard down a tiny bit and be a tiny bit more myself in a space where every single other night the feeling is generally that if I were to do that I would get the shit beaten out of me.

I'd like to think we had moved beyond that but we've clearly not given what's gone on in the US in the past couple of years. But it was really a nice feeling back in the day.
posted by hippybear at 7:25 AM on June 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

(In case you haven't been following this story: after pressure from among others Marco Rubio, the Los Angeles Dodgers disinvited the venerable queer activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from their pride night.

After longstanding Dodgers partners LA LGBT Center and LA Pride dropped out of the event in solidarity, the Dodgers apologized and re-invited them.

Latest development: archbishop of LA diocese says he'll 'pray for healing due to the harm caused by the Dodgers’ decision to honor a group that intentionally denigrates and profanes the Christian faith' before the event.)
posted by box at 7:57 AM on June 15, 2023

is there anyone who would expect "Pride night" at a baseball game to be anything else at this moment in time?

I don't think so, but the piece is a vision of what could be. It's good to have dreams.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:04 AM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

As a lifelong Giants fan this is just one more reason to say "Fuck the Dodgers". And no, while the reverse ferret is the right thing to do, it doesn't undo the disinvitation.

the Los Angeles Dodgers disinvited the venerable queer activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from their pride night.
posted by chavenet at 9:12 AM on June 15, 2023

Two groups in front of us was an Episcopal church in a fucking van and if you want to give hundreds of queers simultaneous heart attacks, drive your church van into the parking lot where we're staging for Pride.

The Episcopal Church in the U.S. was the first to offer same-sex marriage, despite (still!) taking a lot of heat from the more conservative members of the Anglican Communion for it, and was the first American denomination with a traditional bishopric to have an openly gay bishop. It's like having the U-Us show up.
posted by praemunire at 9:23 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, once we realized they were Episcopals it was cool. But a church van driving into a parking lot full of people wrapped in Pride flags?! Scary at first.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:45 AM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I want genderless bathrooms with flattering lights.

AMEN.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 10:21 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Why you'd want to pay to see the Mets is an entirely other question: they're the most underperforming team in baseball

That's a feature, not a bug. For my entire life, no matter how bad a day I've been having, I can take some small comfort in the simple fact that the Mets are having a worse day than I am. There's no challenge when you can just buy a winning team like the fucking Yankees.
posted by mikelieman at 3:16 PM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

There's no challenge when you can just buy a winning team like the fucking Yankees.

That's the joke! The Mets have a $354M payroll for 2023: they DID go buy what they thought was a winning team. And they're five games under .500 and like eight back of the Braves, who spent $208M, or less than 60% of what the LOLMets spent.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:30 PM on June 15, 2023