Companion photos can be found here.
I get loud from time to time, but it tends to be more in the context of in-the-car at people-who-don’t-pull-into-the-intersection-to-turn-left. I did both marches in New York City this weekend, and Sunday’s event was hell. Possibly literally. And the Dyke March, though not heaven even if there was such a thing which there isn’t, was pretty great. But don’t everyone go. You’ll ruin it.
Not really. Go.
The Dyke March has never applied for a permit. Never asked permission. I imagine the city knows it’s coming by now, but the beauty of it is that they know the same way as anyone else. People have shown up at the same time, at the same place, every year for twenty-six years. It starts on the sidewalk, then we step off. And there’s something in that of the rebellion and maybe the rage of Stonewall.
There are no companies. I don’t love how corporate Pride has become, but the problem isn’t Sunday’s commodification of queer and genderqueer energy per se. The part of me that votes with my dollars and supports local business and companies that pay a living wage and use ecologically sound practices, that part of me is fine with MLB and HSBC sucking up to the homos. The part of me that wants a shorter, more impactful Pride procession wishes they would sponsor a Port O Potty, though, instead of fielding twenty-three blocks of corporate floats with AED bass beats so loud they are resetting my heart rhythm. I wish I could hear the live performances of MCCNY singing “Believer” and “You’re Beautiful, Dammit.” I wish I could hear the chants from the Sylvia Rivera Project and the Resistance Contingent.
At the Dyke March, you could hear every syllable of “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous, don’t fuck with us.” Every word of “When the dykes go marching in.” Each line of the Church Ladies for Choice again singing, “God is a lesbian, she is a lesbian. God is a dyke, send her victoria.” Every beat of the drum corps, calling, leading, announcing, drawing and driving us forward. Except for that corner where the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps was, but I’m not complaining.
The banners:
Burn in the hellfires of my dyke rage.
Deport Jeff Sessions to hell.
Lesbians are miracles.
Love thy neighbor, no exceptions.
Dykes against borders: Welcome to my cuntry.
Support queer sex workers.
Queer as in abolish prisons.
LGBTs against border walls and family separations.
Trans dykes against ICE.
The patriarchy isn’t going to smash itself.
Justice and liberation, not capitalist assimilation.
How dare you assume I’m straight.
Lesbians against white supremacy.
President Gaslight, there’s a baby jail ready for you!
The first Pride was a riot.
No cops at Pride.
They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.
It’s not possible to get behind every sign. Banning police from Pride forgets that cops are queer, too, on the street with “us” in and out of uniform. As exciting as it is to imagine a queer, female New York State governor, I’m more excited by the idea of people discussing ideas and policies and what is the most best for the most marginalized people than polarizing into candidate constituencies. Mocking Trump’s body plays into the same framework of beauty and value that is used against masculine women and trans women and leather bears, that promotes passing, that promotes rape. Even if Trump’s only value of women is their sexual utility, measuring him by his own yardstick still serves on some level to validate that warped, violent yardstick.
I don’t agree with every sign or every dyke in the march, but that’s part of the beauty of it. There were a lot of us in all the ways we do and look and dress. I was representing, for example, the earnest, square portion of genderbent soft-masculine tranny dykes. That happens at Sunday’s thing, too, maybe more so. I love that salacious, sordid, half-naked, tatted and studded and body-painted part of us. (It’s okay if kids find out we have bodies. Jesus, it’s okay if kids find out that bodies feel good. They already know. Take the opportunity to talk about consent instead of covering their eyes. Or don’t. Don’t listen to me; I don’t have kids.)
I watched small group of homophobes travel south with us for 34 blocks carrying signs with surprisingly bland verses about God and the bible. I watched a dyke doggedly follow them block after block to stand next to them with her sign, “Closeted Homosexuals” and an arrow. And somewhere around 14th Street, I saw her talking to the God-bible sign guy, listening to him make his argument about our salvation. It’s not that Sunday’s event doesn’t have room for that, probably, in the sense of heart and generosity. It just doesn’t have room for that. It’s a press of people jammed together, more this year maybe than ever with that bogus horseshoe route that quarantined us to Chelsea and the West Village. I have so many swears about that.
And you couldn’t count all the signs protesting ICE and immigration policy, white supremacy and patriarchy. The collection from this year’s march was to benefit RAICES, that provides legal services to immigrants and refugees in Texas.
Bottom line, it probably comes down to ratios. Sunday is a celebration with some dabs of protest. It’s a party, a parade. And that’s fine. A bunch of people like to crowd together for a party in Times Square every year, too, and dance and watch the ball drop.
The Dyke March I think, still, is a protest. It’s still a march. And that is the celebration.
Rev. Miller Hoffman 