In the “wild” that’s called life, and the “prize” is you don’t die that day. Living another day isn’t an accomplishment.
You’re confusing “living” and “lasting”. Completely different things, machines can do the second but never get to do the first.
Sometimes living another day is a miracle. Like the OP you are sticking with one definition of “pride” and ignoring the others which play a big part of what Gay Pride is.
I explained how pride is not the opposite of shame. I’m using the definition which is, if I’m being honest, the only one that matters. What gay pride is seems like just another corporate advertisement opportunity, or a costume for the world if I’m being honest. It’s not a reflection of the reality of the community.
Living another day isn’t a miracle, it’s called life and there isn’t a prize for it. In fact it could be argued that it is what life does, until it doesn’t anymore.
It was a silly and arbitrary “explanation”:
Words have complex and sometimes contradictory connotations. In actual usage, being proud of something is typically considered the opposite of being ashamed of something. That fact doesn’t change just because you’ve got a different interpretation of the relation between pride and shame that you think is inconsistent with it.
It’s more like an understanding of the root of an emotion. Pride is concerned with proof or trying to convince, while humility doesn’t care about proving something, it’s acceptance. To me pride isn’t opposing shame,while it is typically associated with that it’s not. It’s more like a mask. If you are trying to prove it’s nothing shameful then you are still in a sense ashamed of it. The Pride celebrated in June is, to me, trying too hard.
Says who?
Whereas to many other people, it is. Hence the notion of “Gay Pride” as a pushback against the pervasive cultural assumption “being gay is something to be ashamed of”.
But for people who do think of pride as opposing shame, it isn’t. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but your opinion doesn’t invalidate theirs.
I think it does. Because to me they are trying to prove something. The way I see it if you have to prove to the world it’s nothing to be ashamed of, deep down you aren’t quite over it. It’s not pushback, now it’s just been absorbed into the mainstream. It’s permitted but doesn’t really change much, like most forms of social justice these days. It’s another product to sell. Humility doesn’t sell, but it’s more powerful than pride because it doesn’t seek to prove.
Yeah, ok. Tell that to Matthew Shepherd’s loved ones.
Emotional appeals don’t work on me.
I hope I can interject here. First the definition of using pride as the opposite of shame is spot on. This is, in my opinion, the fundamental misunderstanding of the OP.
But to, maybe, help those who are appalled by the “heartless” and offensive stance by the OP let me see if I can articulate where I think the discord lies.
The OP may not live in a world where gay people are largely oppressed, murdered, downtrodden or resented and shamed. Imagine your personal convictions and experience where you personally don’t discriminate against your gay citizens. If you truly believe in your own sphere of acceptance, where all of the citizens you encounter don’t think that being gay is a big deal…or any deal at all. It’s just as ridiculous and confounding as saying people with black hair should feel proud of who they are. They didn’t accomplish anything, they were just born with black hair…big deal. Now I now there are societies and cultures that haven’t yet been as enlightened, but perhaps to understand the OPs position is to consider he lives in a world where being gay just isn’t a big deal anymore.
And you consider this to be a strength?
Then you fundamentally miss the point, by over analysing your own interpretation of the word pride. Gay Pride isn’t some meek celebration, it’s a protest. It’s about coming out from the shadows, owning the streets and telling all the bigots they can fuck off. Scuse my language, but it’s that really. It’s about shoving our gayness down your throat, to be frank. It’s a challenge to the world to deny us our rights and our place in society. We’re here, we’re queer and you better get used to it. And finally, it’s about us, not you. It’s not an emotional appeal to you.
THAT’S gay pride.
Given that the first Pride Parade was to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, I’d think “surviving” counts as an accomplishment. Ya know, gay people still die in America just for being gay.
I think it’s kind of, “Hey We’re gay and we don’t have to feel any shame for that.”
"Yeah! Let’s call this Gay No-Shame Month!
“Nah. Gay Pride sounds better.”
Sigene, just last week I’ve been told that “since those people aren’t discriminated in Spain any more, there is no reason to have that Pride thing here.” Maybe I’m too thin-skinned or something, but I think that the choice of words is already dismissive. “Those people”, “that Pride thing”.
The idea that “if something doesn’t happen in my sight, it just doesn’t happen” is wrong in so many ways words fail me. By that standard, most crimes would never be prosecuted, as they don’t tend to take place in the middle of High Street at noon. It’s so completely shortsighted. Why care about anything or anybody other than what’s right in front of one’s nose. Why give a shit about the harassment and discrimination that a lot of the people in the parades have been subject to, whether it was where they now live or elsewhere.
At the very least, because if nobody had given a shit about what happened beyond the next hill, not a single one of us would be here today. And that’s without even getting into actually being humane and not merely a member of the biological genus homo.
The same person later mentioned in the conversation that during work interviews he makes chitchat asking about the interviewee’s family as a way to obtain information on sexual orientation, marital status and whether they have dependents. He sees nothing wrong with that. Maybe he doesn’t then discriminate by reason of any of those things… nah, I happen to know him in person; he’s a jackass. He discriminates all the time both in his social and professional life, but alas, what he does isn’t “discrimination”; it’s merely, dunnow, “being discriminating” or something.
This is a common revisionist tactic used by people who are ashamed of being on the wrong side of history. Recall former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour claiming that black people didn’t have it that bad in the Jim Crow south.
Hopefully the shameful story of Alan Turing will help some posters understand better the reasoning behind Gay Pride.
Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
He played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted Nazi coded messages and in so doing helped win the war.
Despite these accomplishments, he was never fully recognised in his home country during his lifetime, due to his homosexuality, which was then a crime in the UK.
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; “gross indecency” was a criminal offence in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment as an alternative to prison.
In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for “the appalling way he was treated”. Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013.
Your posts are full of this sort of opinion marker. Which is fine, but it suggests that you’re a lot more interested in spouting off your opinion than in genuinely trying to understand what other folks are saying.
Take the phrase, “If I’m being honest,” which you’ve used repeatedly. Nobody’s questioning your honesty. That phrase implies something odd: why wouldn’t you be honest? Are you actually saying, “Given how brave I am, I’ll say the thing that less honest people refuse to say”? Are you suggesting that your opinion is the only honest one? What gives–why would you even say that?
Sure, pride doesn’t resonate with you. That’s special. But, and you may have noticed this, your experiences of the world, emotionally and otherwise, are a bit out of the mainstream. If you enter a conversation like this, it may be worth spending more time listening, and less time denigrating other folks’ experience.