We usually have this conversation after PrideFest.
After reading the local media coverage on the parade and the festival, coverage which usually includes at least one visual image of a drag queen and a throwaway reference to a scantily clad man in leather. People start grumbling about the way we are portrayed in the media wondering about the absence of "normal" looking homosexual images. But rather than stop at a diaologue about the media, we fall headlong into our own internalized homophobia to complain about the presence of individuals who are not normal. Or more not normal than the rest of us. Or don't pass for normal. Or something like that.
Its a predictable as the rain.
A different twist on that same discussion involves the queer/gay dynamic. As young members of the community come into their own, they are bringing their queer identities with them. And their queer sensibilities as well. They are looking for something more from PrideFest than perhaps the gay community has been able to provide.
Frankly, I like PrideFest the way it is but I can definitely see areas for growth. I enjoy wandering around booths and talking to vendors. I appreciate their support in attending the event, especially the service providers. I like some of the homespun entertainment. I'm perfectly content to grab some food, flop down on the hill and be entertained for a few hours with all the hokiness that comes from a community festival. It recharges my batteries to just be gay in a sea of homosexuals.
I'd like to see more political speakers, not just politicians. I'd like to see edgier talent, especially tapping into the emerging queer performance collectives. And I'd like to see the vendors grow and grow because economic might translates into social power.
As always, sides will coalesce on these dialogues. The people who work very hard to put together PrideFest will rightly point out that the committee is open to any interested person and that PrideFest is defined by those who organize it. The people who voice discontent will rightly point out that PrideFest doesn't belong to any one organization, it is bigger than the institutions which manage it and its fair to expect it to represent the true scope of Pittsburgh's LGBT community.
The age-old debates about sponsorships, holding the event on Father's Day weekend, supporting local LGBT stores versus bringing in new vendors and so forth will continue forever.
My hope is that the dialogues continue as well. That as the young gay generation grows from organizing Girlcotts to PrideFests, we find an infusion of queer energy that rejuvenates all of us.
I've still got this really nasty taste in my mouth from the Mary Cheney interview.
So I'm trying to figure out this MySpace thing b/c someone from the Steel Queer N'At collective posted my post about their performance ... there. That's a horrid sentence. But you get the point. Anyway, I'm trying to figure it out and I notice that one of the acts from the collective is performing this Friday at Quiet Storm.
They are Thrive, three poets The Black Ass Bombshell..aka Vanessa German, Sweet Thunda aka Bekazela Mguni and Savannah Montana..aka Becca Cooper
We were very impressed by their acts. The Black Ass Bombshell did this wicked piece about Jorge and I was so enthralled by their outfits that it took me at least two minutes to realize who Jorge was. Then tonight I discover that Vanessa German is the woman who won the national SLAMBUSH contest. And I think I heard her at the Peace Rally in 2005. Where I was very impressed but it ended up I had been marching on a broken foot all along so the incredible pain sort of edged everything else out. That's right -- I marched for peace on a broken foot. Then I went to Starbucks.
So it all sort of swirls together to prompt me to go to The Quiet Storm this Friday at 8 PM to see Thrive perform en masse. After marching for dykes on a never really gonna heal from being broken foot. Then I'll march for Pride Awareness on that same foot.
Thank god my father wants to spend Father's Day at the movies. At least there'll be no marching.
I would greatly appreciate if there could be a blogging for peace/equality/healthy feet/Starbucks event in the near future.
(I'm keeping this at the top of the blog throughout PrideFest. Scroll down for other current blog posts since Monday)
Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - Pittsburgh City Council will approve the PrideFest Proclamation, 10 AM, City Council Chambers.
Thursday, June 15, 2006 - The 3rd Annual Pittsburgh Pride Theater Festival, a showcase of eight one-act plays with lgbt themes, will take place June 15-25, 2006 at the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Co., 542 Penn Avenue (at the corner of Penn and 6th in Pittsburgh's cultural district), downtown. Tickets for show times are $10 in advance and $15 at the door. You can contact the box office at 412-288-0358 or email them at pittsburghpridetheaterfestival@yahoo.com for more information.
Friday, June 16, 2006 - Pittsburgh's 1st Dyke March kicks off at the Carnegie Mellon lawn at Forbes & Moorewood Avenue. Gather as early as 5 PM to mingle, make signs and meet the organizers. The March itself kicks off at 6:30. We are bisexuals, trannydykes, lesbians, boi-dykes, femmes, butches, femmedykeboi's, butchdykeboys, multisexuals, brazen femmes, soft butches, genderqueers, and many more ...For more information, dykemarchpgh@yahoo.com.
Friday, June 16, 2006 - Pride Movie by the Pittsburgh Lesbian & Gay Film Society. "Say Uncle" 7 PM at the Southside Works followed by after-party at Tuscany (with ticket stub). For more information, www.plgfs.org
Awareness March - kicks off at Ross Street at 12 PM, winds through town and the Arts Festival then across the Roberto Clemente Bridge to the festival location on the North Shore.
Festival - 1 PM - 5 PM at Riverfront Park on the North Shore (near Heinz Field) Performers, tons of vendors, a DJ second stage, and a chance to see all the homos who come down to Pgh once a year to mingle in a big family friendly homo loving environment (my words).
Pride Night at PNC Park -- come out and be part of the homo-contingent rooting for the buccos. How gay is that! Tickets will be on sale at PrideFest (yes, the Pirates are setting up a booth). A portion of the sales go to the GLCC.
Sunday, June 18, 2006 - Family Pride Pancake Brunch at East Liberty Presbyterian Church. 10 AM worship; 11:30 am brunch.
Now there are two interesting rumors floating around. First, is that Governor Ed Rendell will be kicking off the Awareness March with a few well-chosen words possibly including "Ladies Start Your Engines!" to our very own dykes on bikes.
Second, is that the divine and delightful Margaret Cho may be popping up at PrideFest since she is in town for the weekend performing at the Improv.
Apparently, someone has their panties in a knot about a recent Correspondent post "Post Gazette Kisses White House Ass, Fawns Over Local Sibs" where I exercise my remaining freedom of speech and criticize Pittsburgh residents who make a living supporting a murderous, hate-mongering, deceitful Administration. That post has been getting an incredible amount of visitors over the past few days, indicating that someone has passed around the link so all of their friends can click their tongues in outrage, stomp their expensively shoed feet and call me a mean bitch.
They also insult my family by insinuating I didn't get enough hugs AND imply that I don't know from good ice cream. Perhaps I should be grateful the ice cream twins haven't set the FBI on me.
But the ice cream bit is just blatantly not true. We regularly have ice cream and have found that hands down the best place in town is
Shakes, floats, sundaes ... they do it all. They will even give your dog a baby cone if you bring her with you.
And, best of all, your hard earned money willl go into the coffers of someone who isn't employed by George Bush. Now that's a sweet deal!
Perhaps he's run out of things to say or perhaps he just had writer's block. Either way, its mildly annoying that the good Mr. Mervis, entertainment guru of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, had to go there. Where, you ask?
For certain people, particularly men who are a little insecure about their manhood, it might be hard to tell their friends that they are going to the Fairie Festival this weekend
It's going to arouse some snickers, but ... well, no buts. It sounds funny. Period.
That's so lame.
Scott, this whole event is screaming out "HOMO" .... faeries, queens, gossamer wings, men in tights ...in the kind of way that would give a City Paper columnist lots of satirical fodder, but probably wouldn't fly with the good readers of the Post-Gazette.
This caught my eye in the June 2006 edition of Pittsburgh's OUT, the monthly gay newspaper. Click on the image to read the full text of the ad.
We liked True b/c they had a coffee bar and were smoke free. We didn't go often, but it seemed busy enough as we drove by. And the buzz from the community meetings here in Manchester is that bars like True are much more desirable than the Shamrock Inn and other rundown unsavory watering holes.
Last night, we toddled off to The Eagle to catch Steel Queer N'At, a quarterly performance of Pittsburgh queer talent put together by a local eclectic queer art collective. For months, we've talked about going to the monthly K'vetch performances (third Thursdays at Modern Formations in Garfield), but something always came up. So this was our big chance to see what all the fuss was about.
It was awesome (except for one detail I'll get to later). The organizers did a great job staging an outrageous, sexy show that made me think and, even more importantly, made me want to take some action ... to pick up my pen, pick up my picket sign and pick my ass up off the couch.
The performers were this amazing group of rowdy, righteous, motivated babes (and a few gents) who had something important ... a whole lotta something important .... to say and did it with style and words and music and movement that left the audience panting for more. In a good way.
It was also easily the most diverse group of queer women I've encountered in Pgh. Most every gay event is pure white with maybe one or two token minorities. And most every gay event organizers claim that they don't know how to connect with gay minorities. Perhaps they should get in touch with the collective because they seem to be doing a fine job.
We loved 'em all for speaking their truth, for speaking out loud and for getting up on that stage to just speak.
The next Steel Queer N'At should be in October. We'll post it here with plenty of advance warning so you can catch the show. October is also the Celebrate the Night performance night, but we'll post on that separately.
Now here's our concern. The performers howled about women taking back control of our bodies, our sexuality, our health and our identity. They called out corporate America for filling our bodies with poisons and to society for boxing us in with few choices. It was chilling and it was the truth.
It was also done in a room filled with smoke. And there lies the rub. If I wanted to hear the message, I had no choice but to expose myself to second hand smoke for the entire evening. Every smoker in that room took away my control over the very air I breathe. To hear their message, I had to sacrifice my own ability to breath and speak. How is this inclusive or empowering?
I respect that each woman, each person, in that room has the right to choose to smoke, but they shouldn't have the right to force me to smoke, too. If someone drank too much or acted obnoxiously, I could choose to move away. There's was nowhere to hide from the smoke. I had to leave the space to reclaim my breath.
We are creating a new aesthetic and we do this collectively because it is absolutely necessary for our health, well-being and struggle.
If you take the beauty industry to task for seducing us into inserting carcinogens into our vaginas, what about the tobacco industry's well-documented coercion of smokers? Studies show that lesbians are 70% more likely to smoke than heterosexual women; 25 % of lesbians smoke. I can't find the stats on the incidents of lung cancer and emphysema for lesbians versus heterosexual women, but I'm guessing there's a statistically significant difference.
That means roughly 75% of us don't smoke. Why force us to compromise our health to be part of the Steel Queer N'At experience? Why not have a smoke-free event and ask the smokers to respect me and my choices about MY health enough to step outside? Even make the performance area itself smoke free and have the smokers go downstairs to the third floor to smoke -- its not even outside. If a few smokers choose not to attend, I guarantee more non-smokers will gladly take their seats.
A smoke-free event would rock. I want to go again and want to take my women friends with me, but they won't willingly go into an environment where they can't breathe freely. No one should.
Look for another post soon comparing and critiquing the lesbian performance experiences in Pittsburgh.
And check out the Steel Queer N'At collective for a consciousness raising jolt to your LGBT identity. You won't regret it.
Last night, we toddled off to The Eagle to catch 
