Be Yourself ... Resist Commercialization of Gay Pride

When the San Francisco Pride Celebration Committee designated this year's theme as "Be Yourself -- Change the World," the irony and the importance were not lost on organizers of Gay Shame, a series of actions around the increasing commercialization of Pride events.

"The Pride Parade's official theme is Budweiser's advertising slogan. 'Be Yourself -- Make It a Bud.' They're not even trying to hide it," says Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore, one of the organizers of this year's Gay Shame. "It's insane. Every time I drink a Budweiser I change the world ... ? Maybe they'll even have that banner."

The marriage of Bud and the rest of corporate America to Pride is nothing new and neither is the resistance to it. Ever since Susie Bright and other activists tackled the organizers of SF Pride onstage after the first corporate floats made their appearance in the Castro, chants such as the Dyke March's "We are not Bud Light whores" and Lesbian and Gays Against Imperialism's "It's a Movement, Not a Market" have become commonplace.

A less common sight was the recent takeover of the Castro by corsetted girls on stilts burning rainbow flags, dykes and trannies with suits and slicked hair, and queer boys with various levels of make-up and drag dancing to electro-house tunes. Emceed by Mattilda, the event was dubbed the Gay Shame Awards with glamorous categories such as one for the "Best Racist-Ass White Only Space" and another for "Helping Right Wingers Cope" (nominees included Mary Cheney, the veep's daughter and PR agent for Coors and the Human Rights Campaign, the national organization that has been so centrist and single-issue, it has single-handedly reduced the gay rights agenda to marriage and the military).

Throngs of onloOakiers crowded the sidewalk as one man got naked and leaned on one of the sofas that was blocking the busy intersection. Keri Oakie, one of the principal organizers, beckoned to people hovering on the curb, saying "Just step off."

Stepping into the streets in this way is something that hasn't yet happened with Gay Shame -- in San Francisco or in other Gay Shame's in cities across the world. This year's Gay Shame is a significant departure from last year's party in a deserted industrial park in San Francisco, which the organizers criticize as being disappointing in its lack of political focus.

"This year we resolved to be more confrontational, to ensure that our political agenda would remain clear," says Mattilda. But not without having fun. "Being clear about our message but being spectacular, decadent and satirical. We can have the critique and have fun at the same time. We can block the streets and we can do it on a sofa."

The original Gay Shame burst into the underground in 1998 Brooklyn. At a collectively run, not-for-profit performance space and household called dumba, the first Gay Shame consisted of "post-drag" performances, dance and spOakien word, and political speakers zeroing in on everything from welfare reform to needle exchange to Giuliani's crackdown on public sex. Free T-shirts, free food, and no entry fees were crucial to the event. "Make everything free in order to counter the idea that pride is something you buy," Mattilda explains.

This first event was planned by members of the Fuck the Mayor Collective, a radical queer propaganda campaign against police brutality, welfare "reform," and queer repression under Mayor Giuliani, which itself had splintered from Sex Panic!, a group formed to protest Giuliani's zoning laws that closed numerous sex stores, the closure and patrolling of popular cruising grounds, and the crackdown on bathhouses.

Fuck the Mayor Collective was formed in response to what was seen as the overriding insensitivity to women's and trannie's issues. Gay Shame, then, was viewed by the Fuck the Mayor collective as a way to begin to build a community of queer radical activists, uniting their politics with an actual thriving community.