[GAY NEIGHBORHOODS]Comment
Chris Goodridge
Guest Blogger, QueerGam
The people, not the neighborhood. Everything has a natural cycle. That’s why neigborhoods get gentrified in the first place. Gay are usually the only ones who will move into a blighted area and see past the grit. Personally, I think the “gay neighborhood” is over. Many of my friends think it’s vital to a healthy gay community to have a so-called gay neighborhood. I am a lesbian who thinks The Gay Games, The Great Gay Round-up, and Gay Pride are all things that are OK, but I think they are politically irrelevant. It’s a means of self-exclusion.
Gay couple celebrating Pride in 1979 in Castro, San Francisco.
If we as gays and lesbians want to be treated the same within mainstream society, then it’s time for us to join mainstream society in numbers, not put ourselves in ghettos where we are only comfortable with ourselves. Any type of self-exclusion defeats the entire purpose of cultural acceptance. If you want non-discrimination, if you want to be given equal rights to everything, if you want to be proud of who you are or identify with, then get out there and join the world. Don’t lock yourself within your own walls. The gay community is a idea. Not a place, not an event, not an organization. The walls we build around it keep threats out, but also lock us in.
Chris Goodridge
Guest Blogger, QueerGam
The people, not the neighborhood. Everything has a natural cycle. That’s why neigborhoods get gentrified in the first place. Gay are usually the only ones who will move into a blighted area and see past the grit. Personally, I think the “gay neighborhood” is over. Many of my friends think it’s vital to a healthy gay community to have a so-called gay neighborhood. I am a lesbian who thinks The Gay Games, The Great Gay Round-up, and Gay Pride are all things that are OK, but I think they are politically irrelevant. It’s a means of self-exclusion.
Gay couple celebrating Pride in 1979 in Castro, San Francisco.If we as gays and lesbians want to be treated the same within mainstream society, then it’s time for us to join mainstream society in numbers, not put ourselves in ghettos where we are only comfortable with ourselves. Any type of self-exclusion defeats the entire purpose of cultural acceptance. If you want non-discrimination, if you want to be given equal rights to everything, if you want to be proud of who you are or identify with, then get out there and join the world. Don’t lock yourself within your own walls. The gay community is a idea. Not a place, not an event, not an organization. The walls we build around it keep threats out, but also lock us in.