Why do we still need Pride?

wakka12 wrote: »

One of my american friends recently visited from Florida and said he didnt enjoy his trip to ireland at all, he said it was beautiful and had so many interesting sites but the people were terrible, especially in Dublin. God nasty looks when holding hands with his boyfriend and even had homophobic abuse shouted at him on a number of occasions.
Said he didnt suffer any abuse outside of Dublin, funny isn't it. So much for Dublin being the liberal accepting place I thought it was, Im so angry and sad and just disappointed this happened to him.

Wakka I don't think anyone, certainly noone here except for yourself ever tried to portray Dublin as a homogeneous liberal wonderland. I am sorry for your friend, I am a little shocked to be honest I see gay people holding hands without issue on most of the main streets (also the most touristy ones) in Dublin everyday at this stage. I guess the lesson is not to allow ourselves mistake anecdotes with evidence and not to let one horror story overly colour our impressions.

hotmail.com wrote: »

16 or 17 year olds who were probably drunk..and you seem to want to condemn them for being "wrong". It sounds judgmental to me. And it was a hand job, not sex.

Anyway, I don't think we're going to agree on the lack of significance of the event, that's even if it happened.

You do realise that judgement when reasonable and equitably applied has a very worthwhile place in our society?

hotmail.com wrote: »

. And it was a hand job, not sex.

Anyway, I don't think we're going to agree on the lack of significance of the event, that's even if it happened.

Isn't that what a former U.S. president said?

jobbridge4life wrote: »

Meanwhile I reiterate my call for Pride to be utilized to;

1. Help raise awareness of the rise in unsafe sex practices;

2. Promote safe sex;

3. Remind people that although HIV is now a treatable disease it is still a disease;

4. Fight the stigma for those living with HIV.

The situation is rapidly reaching a crisis point in London, 1 in 8 gay men in London are HIV positive according to the following article,
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/london-chemsex-parties-face-gay-club-scene-with-hiv-fears-1.2271564

Think about that. 1 in 8, thats worse than many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. If we don't make an effort now it won't be long until the statistics for Dublin mirror that of London.

I agree though people need to have a lot more cop on about HIV risks and just because it's treatable doesn't mean it's a particularly pleasant way to spend your life.

I honestly think gay marriage and being open has a lot of important impacts on this though too.

If you keep pushing people underground, you're going to get risky behaviour because being open about being gay itself was risky! Pulling gay couples into the mainstream helps a lot by bringing a lot of boring stability and good role models, and totally different aspirations.

I mean when you think about it it's ridiculous that a lot of gay people could only ever have aspired to a hushed up relationship, hidden away ... Always sneaking around.

There's been a bit of a culture of drug taking, heavy drinking and zero inhibitions developing in the straight community too in recent years though.

How many sexual assaults seem to involve being very, very, very drunk for example?

I'm not excusing the assaults (tanking advantage of someone who is totally incapacitated is pretty vile behaviour) but people need to play things safely to minimise risk of disease, assaults and also just addiction and physical damage from substance abuse.

On a side issue how does anyone get % for the gay community though? There has to be a bit of self selection bias in clinics where people who are coming for testing are probably a percentage the people who are most aware of being at risk.
There may well be a large number of boring hay couples who simply aren't at risk because they're monogamous and don't actually appear in that stats at all.

It would just seem to me to be hard to get accurate pictures on the size and shape of the gay community (particularly when you might extend it to anyone who's ever had sexual contact with anyone of the same sex rather than just those who identify as gay) and various reports have various biases.

Regardless though, the HIV figures are way too high to be complacent though.

We do need to change two aspects of culture here:

1) An aspect of gay culture, which I do think has developed because of long-term historical oppression rather than from something being in anyway different about how gay people behave.

Without being moralising or preachy, I don't think saunas etc should be part of a "general gay culture". They're a sleazy and pretty high risk aspect sexual entertainment, in the same way that straight equivalents would be and I actually object to the way they're kind of thrown into "culture" as if every gay person agrees with the concept or partakes in their use.

There's a big issue due to legacies of oppression and I think it's one that actually is going to have to eventually be addressed. It's not 1955 or even 1995 and you can actually have a same-sex relationship without resorting to picking someone up in dodgy circumstances in exactly the same way as a straight person can do the same.

Gay people being visible and mainstream is absolutely vital to reducing that risk of pushing people into underground stuff and I'm sure I'll probably offend a few people by saying this too.

I'm not saying we should all turn into boring 1950s model households, but there's definitely a need to see more people being more relaxed about doing normal 'coupley' things and it is happening and it's really good to see!

High risk sexual behaviour will only go away when it's a non-issue taking a bloke to your grads when you're a bloke or taking your first girlfriend home when you're a woman or when you can hold hands across a restaurant table, lean on your partner's shoulder in the cinema and nobody gives a damn. Until it's *that* normal, there's always a risk of sexual behaviour being associated with sleaze and pushed underground.

2) General drug / drink culture. Looking at stats for Ireland and Britain over the last few years, we've had a generation gone out of control entirely with substance abuse, especially alcohol.
Whatever about HIV, we're going to need a hell of a lot of spare livers for transplants in the next 30-50 years.

Deleted User wrote: »

I have mixed feelings toward Pride in its current manifestation but seeing - link - really hit me today and reminded me of why a movement for LGBT visibility is so important.

I normally don't get affected by these kinds of things but that picture really moved me. And this is in New York, quite a liberal city for the most part; if a boy is so scared there, how must it be for young LGBT people his age in Russia, Uganda or the Middle East?

I didn't got to Pride this year (I didn't want to go by myself, and was feeling pretty crappy that day anyway) but I'm not too surprised to read some of the comments about it here. There definitely needs to be a fun element to it but it can't be just another piss-up when there are such serious messages to get across.

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

That picture bothers me a lot.

He's about 10 or 11.

He now has no control over who does or doesn't have information about his sexuality. And who has given the control of this information? The boy is upset about how others might treat him because he is gay. So he might be fine with a stranger knowing, but maybe not with his whole class in three years time. His privacy has been stripped by this.

I accept it's awful and homophobia should be challenged. And I'm fine with what is essentially a form of art having a political stance. But I don't think I'm fine with making a child a martyr to the cause. I don't think that should have been a decision that any parent made for their child. Because it won't be one he can undo.

Before I clicked on the link I knew it was going to be that post. It has been everywhere lately and to be honest, I don't know if that's right. He's very young, Joey says 10 or 11, I agree with that, possibly even younger, and now he's all over facebook, all over the internet and the world feel like they own his sexuality.

I wonder how HONY operates when it comes to kids, do they get a parent's permission, do they even need to? I would be very worried about that boy if he was my child.