Speaking of In Your Face Homosexuals…
It’s not the homosexuals who’re in someone’s face…
I’m with silenus and Ethilrist: every group has its attention whores.
If you think that’s off the wall, Folsom St. Fair would make you faint from shock.
In SF, the leather contingent has a fair amount of straight folks in the mix, too. And they can and do march in Pride parades in full leather. I don’t think this has anything to do with gay sexuality per se than it has to do with the fact that GLBTI folks are a HELLUVA lot more comfortable with all types of sexuality in general. Shoot, once you face the fact you are sexually attracted to your gender, whips n’ chains look pretty tame in comparison. In a lot of ways, especially in the big cities, queer pride has a fairly sizeable subset of just plain sexual pride folks from all walks of life.
Besides, they’re a lot more fun to watch than a dozen members of “Left Handed Lesbian Lithuanian Accountants” all walking behind a hand-made banner. Believe me, if you’ve spent the 6 hours it takes to watch the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade where 90% of the entries are pretty much like that, even the most radical of lesbian separatists would welcome a colorful float full of guys in tighty-whiteys. 
Whips and chains and stuff may be tame - I tend to agree - but comfortable? Not the time I did the fitting at the Mod-Fair, I can tell you. The blisters from the jackboots still haven’t healed.
I admit I haven’t read even half of the thread above, so I’m possibly sort of restating someone’s point. If so, sorry.
This reminds me of the South Park episode when everyone goes “metrosexual” and Mr. Garrison gets confused, because he thinks everyone’s gay. He complains to Chef (does Chef have an actual name?) that the straight guys have been stealing “gay culture” from the gay people, and Chef says (paraphrasing a lot here) “Well, when white people stole our culture, we just had to keep changing it. We used to say ‘in the house’ but then white people started saying ‘in the house’ so we changed to ‘in the hizzouse.’ When white people started using ‘hizzouse’ we moved up to ‘hizzizzouse’ and then ‘in the hizznatch’ and when white people took THAT away from us, we just switched to ‘in the flibbity-flabbity-floo’” (At the end of the scene, Mr. Garrison leaves hurriedly, saying that he has to get to someone’s flibbity-flabbity-floo immediately, to which Chef responds, “No! Don’t say that!”)
The point being that people do what’s expected of their “group” (gays, Jews, blacks, Asians…) because they want to really feel like they’re a part of it, like they really “fit in” to a particular cross-section of society.
This is from the perspective of a high school student, but I imagine the point is still somewhat relevant in real life. People who don’t know who they are as an individual, assure themselves that they DO know who they are as a member of a particular group, and they act/dress/speak in such a way that everyone can easily see that. So if a certain look is established as “looking gay” then many gay people are going to do that as if to say, “Look! I’m gay!”
Without a few qualifiers like “some” thrown into this statement, it prompts a :dubious:.
Although it might seem like a large amount of folks at any given Pride festival/parade are either half naked or covered in glittery liquid latex, if you take a closer look you’ll see such folks are more than likely in the minority. There are subcultures within subcultures, and I’ll agree that within any subculture there are bound to be a few folks in identity crisis. But that certainly doesn’t mean that everyone within that subculture “doesn’t know who they are as an individual” and are using the group as a assurance of their identity. I’d counter that these behaviors at Pride are more often seen in people who are very aware of who they are as individuals, and who make individual choices to unite in a statement that is simultaneously individual and tribal in nature. That’s the thing about diversity. It isn’t limited to a static number of categories, but involves the line in the sand being constantly re-written.
You’ve answered your own question. It’s often the same motivation as for a lot of goth teen-agers, or people with enormous purple mohawks, or Marilyn Manson, or even (at the extreme) Phred Phelps. Any attention is better than none.
Regards,
Shodan
Just to add one detail to all the rest: some people wear masks at Pride because they don’t want to be identified. Lots of my friends have done that. I haven’t, and have ended up, with my daughter, in at least 5 documentaries (because my daughter looked so cute).
applauds Sampiro’s speech
Thank you. It was better than I could have said it.
(You’ve actually known people whose pets have been killed? I’m not doubting you, just reeling from shock. I thought I was familiar with every expression of homophobia out there, but this is a new one on me :()
And if I can say, I do like seeing the leather boys, Dykes on Bykes, and drag queens with the gigantic headdresses at Pride, not only for the important political reasons Sampiro mentions, but just for fun. Just like I like seeing the fireworks on Canada Day or the costumes on Halloween: because I don’t see them every day.