Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 08:41:27 +0000 Subject: ROBERTS' RULES: PRIDEPOINT ROBERTS' RULES by Shelly Roberts POINT OF PRIDE Don't get me wrong. I like Pridefest. I'm beginning to think of it fondly as the annual company picnic. I go every year. Year after year after year after year. I walk the same paths. I do the same things. I see the same people. People I usually encounter mid-year, busily performing the workaday tasks that move us toward our mission and vision statements. Only, on this weekend, they're in shorts and logo'd tee shirts. Pridefest has lately, it seems to me, become merely another meeting. Like going bowling after work. An outdoor appearance opportunity to bond while tossing ping pong balls at bowls of gold fish. No three-legged races or balancing raw eggs on spoons here, but also no proud and righteous protests either. Every year I look to see what bellwethers the pride providers have brought to clue me in on the mood of the movement. If pride is a marker event, an omen, a pride precursor of things to come, then the state of our art is in our crafts. If you want to learn where the movement's at, just go to Pridefest and check out the vendors. This year's Pridefest marketing prediction: Minimal. I saw it first in the Freedom rings. Those neck chain things that over took the triangle in about 1993, and replaced it with the rainbow. Anodized aluminum cool. Remember those? Well, this year's circular versions are about half the extent of a baby's fingernail. Wrapped around an ever-so-itzy silver designer version of the ball and socket linkage used to turn on 1952 ceiling fans. And selling like free samples. So retro. So subtle. So now. So not-rageous. And speaking of teeny, that looked like a trend. Just when you thought that there wasn't one more way to slice a sticker, rainbow retailers delivered the next example of diminished capacity. From an inch by a meter strips to half a Band-Aid's height by barely the width of a cell phone. Into oblivion old faithful three-foot striped friend. The bar has been raised. Or lowered. Obvious is out. Small, subtle and elegaynt is in. Off with the yellow captains' bars rampant on sincere-suit blue that's become a too blatant declaration of membership in our middle-management army. Yesterday's self-important. Today's already-was. Its absence now loudly declaiming that when you've arrived, your bumper sticker doesn't have to shout about it. Even our screaming Tees have calmed down to a sotto voce left chest, two inch rainbow logo-fest of suns and flowers and spirals, all of a rainbow hue, if the hottest sellers are any indication. Maybe Pridefest really is more than the company picnic. Maybe it's the annual GLBT sales convention with exhibits. The speeches have all acquired a certain corporate sameness, doncha know. With the motivating intent of whipping frenzy, instilling incentive, activating action. But we're not even preaching to the choir any more. It's more like a CEO lecturing to the lethargic. I was describing Pridefest to a supportive non-gay friend who'd never been to our party. She still had visions of debauchery and good smoke, wild eyed radicals, and Wild Turkey, and over-the-edge outrage. "Nah. It's gotten all Dockers and Tommy Hilfiger. It isn't a protest, it's more like an outing." Not that I miss being portrayed by the media as our most flagrant stereotypes, but you have to admit, purely from an entertainment perspective, it was much, much better theater. Except for the bar boys on disco floats, the most scandalous ensemble this year was some regular guy in khaki who'd accessorized with size 10, ruby slippers. Hardly a statement. Only his feet will be protesting, but probably not for a day or so. I guess I'd be more comfortable if the themes didn't still hint at an oppression hardly anyone who shows up ever experienced. In a random, and wholly unscientific survey, I satisfied my curiosity. "Ever been gay bashed?" I asked a man in Ralph Lauren. "Nope. But I could've been. I read about it in the gay papers." Oh. "Ever lost a job because you were a lesbian?" I queried a middle-class sitter near the mainstage. "No." she responded, looking at me like I was coming from a stone age she'd never lived in. "Do they still do that?" Hmmmph. "Well, legally, they still CAN in most states." I informed her, about to launch into party line on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, like she cared. "Oh." She muttered, barely bothering, turning her attention back to the anonymous acoustics of the unrecognizable performing duo on stage. I know that the political pundits amongst us really don't want to notice this. They want to stir blood to enormous feats of unity in the face of adversity. It's what keeps them in business. But, you know, frankly, we've been here and done this before. Just last year, actually. And adversity is hard to conjure any more in summer heat when your enemies make themselves look stupid, and your friends have only lived out since it was safe. Maybe it's time to surrender the speeches and call Pride what it really is now: Just another day in the park. ------------------------- (C) 1999. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved. Must be reprinted only in its entirety with permission. Shelly Roberts, an internationally syndicated columnist, journalist, and author of the 1999 Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living Daily Calendar (Spinsters Ink.)