Hampy Pride!
The Human Rights Campaign pride logo this year is a cartoon eagle with painted talons and long lashes wearing a leather harness below a rainbow with the slogan “these colors don’t run.” I am so angry that I didn’t think of this abomination myself. I am also worried for the people who are readily behind the design with their “yassing” and praise. The HRC has ties to war manufacturers like Northrup Grumman and has actively silenced humanitarian calls to end the genocide in Gaza. But they do have a gay cartoon eagle in a basic gayguy harness this year. I suppose love wins after all.
Dissonance doesn’t feel like a strong enough word for what I feel this Pride. So much of the radical foundations of Pride have been coopted by gay AI generated eagle cartoons. Many upwardly mobile muscle gayguys and power lesbians have beliefs closer to our collective oppressors than they do to the queer people who suffer the most in this world. The veneer of care that many supposed do-gooders put on in calm waters fades quickly when the real shitstorm hits. While I don’t think anyone needs to be written off, I don’t want to spend the bulk of my energy getting these people to care –– I’d rather spend it supporting those who already do.
I’m still thinking about what’s at stake for speaking up and fighting back. An artist from generational wealth has little real-world repercussions for speaking up. A working class artist can lose their only source of income. Still, I see those who can lose more being the loudest. And that makes me #proud.
A quote from John Steinbeck recently recirculated on the internet. I googled “John Steinbeck controversial” to make sure I wouldn’t be cancelled for getting behind it. “If you're in trouble or hurt or need–go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help–the only ones.” And I agree.
There is incredible, radical organizing and movement building happening right now in New York City. Some people in these circles come from great wealth. We don’t have to discredit important work happening while also asking: where are the poor and the working class? Likely at work. Perhaps feeling unwelcome in these spaces.
I think sometimes it’s easier to speak up for hypothetical injustice or the struggles of those not in the room with you. I see some people shirk when needing to confront their Black neighbors in gentrified apartment buildings or the immigrants who wash their clothes. It is easier to see land theft and apartheid elsewhere than it is to see the remnants of Jim Crow in the United States. It’s easier to see wealth disparity as a pie chart for a non-profit end of year report than it is to talk to your friends who make less, who struggle, whose day to day is not like your own. It’s uncomfortable, but the world has suffered too much for a select few of us to have comfort at every turn while the rest of it burns.
I was recently around a bunch of academics, mostly of some slice of upper middle class and mostly all white. Most didn’t know how to socialize with someone outside of academia. I felt an intense anxiety I haven’t felt in a long time that reminded me of my undergrad days at Emory. Something about being read as different within seconds of entering a conversation. That feeling of finding out the people around you all had their parents write $200k checks the first day of school while you knew you’d still be paying student loans at 37. And for a moment the pangs of wanting to go back to school disappeared.
I suppose it’s hard not to feel lost right now. People are fleeing the country. Martial law is descending. It all borders on comical but it’s real and terrifying. An eagle in a harness can’t protect us. Only we can protect us.
I think maybe I lied about not trying to get people to care. You must care. We must care. More and more it is clearer to me how connected our struggles are. If you don’t feel this, talk to an immigrant friend, a trans friend, a poor friend, a sick friend. Do you have friends like that? Do you give when there is need? Why is it that the poor are the only ones who help? It is not naivety, it is power.
I wish us all to see the power of care. It is powerful to care for yourself, to lead by example. It is powerful to care for others, even when the future is bleak. I am reminding myself that the work today will allow me and my future ancestors to inherit a better world. It might be small work, it might not be visible, it might not seem like anything, but we must sow the seeds now. There is nothing to wait for. So if you’re rich, cough it up, henny.
HAMPY PRIDE GAYEAGLES
