Why I Don’t Get Pride Marches and Pride at All

Perhaps I’m weird to some, but I never got the logic of how pride marches lead to respect. To me, doing such marches is almost like being a siga (macho bully) in town, going around and demanding respect from others, and when someone does not give that respect, he beats them up. LGBTs don’t usually beat people up, the idea of demanding rather than earning respect is the similar thing between them and the siga. In the siga’s case, some people will be annoyed by his demands and will beat him up themselves. That’s what a pride projection does as I see it: draw fire to oneself.

Courtesy of Wired

I believe humans have a natural aversion to others’ pride projection. When someone is arrogant, we find ourselves perturbed, right? I doubt that we should de-stigamatize this. This is a needed mechanism in our nature that helps identify and correct miscreants in society. Sometimes, these pride projectors cause trouble, such as the siga mentioned above, so we need to put them in their place. I also find it bad advice to just go along with one’s pride projection and lie (and flatter the person, saying they are beautiful, etc.) to avoid conflict, since that will encourage one’s egoism.

To me, the idea that someone will accept me if I were to project pride is the product of teen hormones and a poor understanding of human behavior. It’s the product of what guidance counselors call a defense mechanism, something we do because we feel we are attacked even if we are not. A lot of motivational advice has said, stop imagining that you are not accepted, and start thinking that you are already accepted. But this is difficult when your idea of acceptance is actually more of flattery than just acceptance.

That’s what I think is the goal of louder LGBTs, whether in or out of pride marches. They want to romp around fishing for praises, compliments and accolades for nothing, wanting people to tell them, “ang ganda niyo!” They do it for vanity. They want others to support their vanity with praises and adulations. They need to get the message that they’re not entitled to this.

This is why I am quite critical of Pinoy Pride. It’s similar. A projection of pride doesn’t cause you do deserve respect, and at times it may be an indication that you need less.

Remember when Filipinos in Singapore wanted to do a loud nationalistic celebration some years back? I compare it to LGBT marches because the Filipinos there wanted to be loud, or bongga as gay lingo calls it. But if they did that, they would be perceived as rebelling against Singaporean authority. It’s a good thing they backed down. Yet, I don’t get why people would want to loudly proclaim who they are, when people can already see it.

I believe LGBTs are mostly accepted. Of course, they had to go through a lot before reaching the point today. I do know about the chemical castration of Alan Turing and physical abuses to LGBTs before. But remember that these abuses are products of culture, and such abuse also happened to people with disabilities, migrants and people identified as nerds, among others. Even harmless religious groups and hobby groups receive raps. There are many reasons people can conjure up to reject and hate people, but it all boils down to getting rid of threats and useless people. As I said previously, you cannot completely remove discrimination unless you remove the culture of marking and removing undesirables. And this is something that exists in all cultures, not just ours.

I also think pride marches have outlived their relevance. They probably had their place in the sixties, when campaigning for rights had its major start and needed a boost to draw people. Today, they’re just commercialized parties, just like beauty pageants.

The association of LGBTs with pedophiles and sexual predators is still unfortunately there, mainly because the pioneer gay rights activists included pedophiles, such as Harry Hay. The LGBT movement will have to live with that, and also, be careful among their ranks, and the pedophiles might just be hiding and then will spring up when they have their chance.

I’ll repeat the saying “discretion is the better part of valor,” not to say the LGBTs should stay in the closet. Rather, it’s better to not be noisy and obnoxious, and take the sober and rational way to do it. I believe the quiet behind-the-scenes action, such as directly meeting with policy makers, gets more results than the noisy actions (such as protests). Gretchen (Greg) Diez though made noise not for freedom’s or human rights’ sake, but for vanity’s sake, and got exploited to support a controversial bill. I do not support the SOGIE bill, but in case it passes, let’s see what happens then. I expect some using it to interpret refusal of one’s “love” as discrimination or to say refusal to agree with one’s self-claimed “beauty” is bullying (remembering the siga earlier, that’s how some LGBTs or vain people may “beat up” others).

Perhaps I’ll call something a spade now: if someone is a man, and he claims to be a woman, he lies. If they want to believe to themselves that they’re the other sex, fine then. They should just not expect other people to play along with their lie. They could have their own world, but they shouldn’t drag other people into it. Fellow blogger Gogs’ recent piece about Gilas’ losses can connect to this. Some Gilas fans seem to be in their own world, and get mad when others don’t share their mindset. And that’s one reason why the Philippines is a dump. We have to leave our own world at times, and put our egos six hundred feet under, since egos don’t help but bog us down.

ChinoF

I believe, as my cohorts here do, that what Filipinos embrace as their culture is what actually pulls the country down. And those who seem to be anti-dictators, who may also believe themselves to be “heroes,” are the real dictators.