Allan Jay: July 2015

I was, until recently, fully intending to go along to the Free Pride event here in Glasgow. The event buys into all the things that are important to me and are missing from the 'mainstream' Pride event happening on the same day. In case you're not aware of what they are I'll repeat them here:
against the commercialisation of Pride
making Pride more inclusive
Pride as a protest
All three of these are aims that I support.

But one decision has made me realise that the Free Pride event is likely to be lacking the one thing that I want from a Pride event - actual Pride.
Free Pride has cast aside a core group of the queer community and has chosen to be exclusionary rather than seek compromise in order to include. It has taken on a policy of having no drag acts (their statement is here).
Where's the pride in telling a group of people that they are welcome to attend but not to perform? Where's the pride in acknowledging a group's contribution to the history of the community but telling them they aren't wanted anymore? Where's the pride in recognising and accommodating the multitude of the queer community?
By excluding drag performers the Free Pride reinforces the binary notion of gender and gender expression. Drag performers are as much a part of the colours of our queer spectrum as transgender people. This policy position turns pride to shame and inclusion to exclusion. It's no longer an event that I could go to or support.

Was it really beyond the abilities of the organisers of Free Pride to have a particular time slot for drag performers? Or to have drag performances on a specific stage, or room? Attempting to do any of those things would then enable the organisers to give the audience a ''trigger warning" of what was up next. To enable those who dislike drag (for whatever reason) to choose to go do something else instead with the time. Because let's be clear, not every person in the audience is going to like, or want to see, every single act that appears. Some people (myself included) would clearly benefit from a reason to go do something else at some point - giving other parts of the event more exposure to as many of those attending as possible.
(In case you're still wondering, this post is not any kind of attack on transgender folk and how they feel about drag, but instead a call to the organisers of Free Pride to seek ways to be inclusive of the whole community.)

Drag performers are a mixed bunch. I've seen many bad ones over the years, where the performance is outright misogynistic and lacking in any kind of understanding of the gender norms at play. I've also seen some very, very clever ones who understand that a man is not supposed to say certain things, and can only get away with saying them when presenting as a women - the role reversal of gender, the twisting of the norms and the expression of insights are more powerful than they would have been if it was a man presenting as a man.
Mix that in with a performer who is engaging and entertaining - the inclusion of the audience without being nasty, snarky or rude is in itself an art - and you can have an emotionally powerful act that entertains and makes you question assumptions about gender in one go. Does Scotland really not have a drag performer who ins't the former and can achieve the latter of these? If not then that's a pretty poor state of affairs.

It's quite down heartening to see how most drag acts have been pushed aside and their role in our community reduced to not much more than presenters of karaoke and novelty acts. Actual clever and insightful humour isn't encouraged and the concept of cabaret and drag as burlesque seems to have almost disappeared. (Both cabaret and burlesque have a fascinating role and history in entertainment and a sense of that might have informed the policy decision.)
Maybe Free Pride should have focussed on this, the dying art of drag, than on excluding an already marginalised group. Instead they chose to reinforce the marginalisation and erasure of drag.

The decision itself goes against two principles of being 'free' that Free Pride references - not under the control or in the power of another & not constrained, restricted or bound. Free Pride, in making this choice, has controlled what is and isn't entertainment and has restricted access to the possibility of free expression and enlightening entertainment.

Good drag can, at the same time as being entertaining, pack an emotional punch as much as an intellectual one. I'd have thought that that kind of entertainment would be right up Free Pride's street. That it'd be the kind of radical and non-commercial entertainment that would suit this type of event. But maybe those involved in organising Free Pride don't want the entertainment to challenge their pre-set notions of gender, sexuality, expression or politics.
No challenge means no questioning, no thinking, no chance to consider the experiences of others and how we, all of us across the queer spectrum, can share a space.

If some are excluded from that space then it no longer becomes shared.

There is no balance here. No seeking to accommodate. No inclusion. No celebration of the joy, insight and downright power to be had in intentionally playing with gender norms. Instead it seems that Free Pride has opted for a pretty picnic instead of an empowering celebration.
Which is as bland and conformist in its own way as the 'mainstream' pride event it was set up to be the alternative to.

For a reminder about the impact a good drag act can have try this: