EDITORIAL | Limburg Pride sets dress code for “family friendly” experience: when pride becomes shame

Tomorrow, 12 July, Limburg Pride vzw organises its second Limburg Pride in Hasselt. In the advent of the big day, Het Nieuwsblad writes there’s a dress code.

Limburg Pride wil vooral iedereen een plek en een stek geven. Dus is er een dresscode (geen al te zichtbare lichaamsdelen) en hangen er discrete doeken rond het feestterrein, zodat ook mensen die niet uit de kast zijn, er zich veilig voelen. “Dat is voor ons heel belangrijk, dat het een familiefeest is.”

In English:

Above all, Limburg Pride wants to give everyone a place and a spot. Therefore, there is a dress code (no overly visible body parts) and discreet cloths hang around the festival grounds so that people who are not out of the closet also feel safe. “That is very important to us, that it is a family celebration.”

The FAQ page of Limburg Pride sports this statement:

Zijn er grenzen aan outfits?

We willen Limburg Pride veilig en welkom maken voor iedereen, ook families met kinderen. We vragen daarom om rekening te houden met je omgeving en je expressie zo vorm te geven dat het inclusief blijft voor alle leeftijden.

💡 Vertaling: je hoeft heus niet in jeans en T-shirt te komen, maar laat die extra expliciete outfits voor een andere setting. Body positivity = yes. Publiek (quasi) naakt = liever niet vandaag 😉

In English:

Are there limits to outfits?

We want to make Limburg Pride safe and welcoming for everyone, including families with children. We therefore ask that you be mindful of your surroundings and express yourself in a way that remains inclusive for all ages.

💡 Translation: you certainly don’t have to come in jeans and a T-shirt, but leave those extra explicit outfits for another setting. Body positivity = yes. Public (quasi) nudity = preferably not today 😉

There a few issues with this. Limburg Pride is not the only Pride organiser specifically or LGBTQIA+ initiative (commercial or non-profit) to fall into the traps I lay out here.

Pride without pride?

When a language adopts a foreign word to convey a concept, without translating, the adopting language sometimes ‘forgets’ the original meaning. In Flanders, the word for ‘pride’ is ‘fierheid‘ or ‘trots‘. For the LGBTQIA+ movement and event, Pride is usually capitalised to make it an institution. As with ‘church’ (the building) versus ‘Church’ (the institution).

But by setting a dress code, you’re actually saying you’re embarrassed by an important and constituent part of your peers: people who do not conform.

“We want to make Limburg Pride safe and welcoming for everyone.” Yes, but do not come as you are.

Family friendly = single unfriendly

“Will someone please think of the children”, Helen Lovejoy, wife or reverend Timothy Lovejoy in ‘The Simpsons‘ ejaculates. Yes, I’m 45 so my cultural reference is not that recent.

The rainbow activist movement at large doesn’t really like single members of the rainbow, unless they’re looking for a partner. Then they’re okay.

Slogans such as “Love is love” and “Love wins out” sound great, but are blind for the fact many people do not have a relationship. Some of them don’t want a relationship, other do very much but it never works out (long term). Fact is, many people – gay or straight – are single.

By keeping emphasising love is what it’s all about, you’re depriving them of sexual orientation. Do single people – again, gay or straight – not have a sexual orientation?

The 2017 European MSM Internet Survey shows 54% of men who have sex with men are single. For Belgium, that number is 49.4%. Half of men who have sex with men are single. But love is love, so they don’t matter.

We have to adapt to families all the time

Also, in everyday life, single people, queer people, and thus single queer people have to adapt to families all the time. Like right now. It’s July so it’s the time of the big summer holiday.

Try as a single person to assert yourself at work and get some time off. Your coworkers with children of schooling age will pull rank on you, because they have children. People with children are worth more. That message is clear. A message Limburg Pride endorses.

Can’t spell sexuality without sex

Rainbow activism doesn’t exist in a void, it exists in a surrounding environment. For twenty to thirty years now, the world has become more prudish, and sanitized pride events are the consequence.

Sexual liberation, gay or straight, is increasingly under pressure. Sexual orientation has become synonymous with romantic orientation. Recent ‘smut’ fiction such as ‘Heated Rivalry‘ notwithstanding, expressions of *sex*uality are increasingly unwelcome.

But you can’t spell sexuality without sex. People will have sex within and outside the boundaries of romantic relationships. But they are deemed detrimental for the cause: allowing same-sex couples to marry, as queer person to marry and then “start a family”. Those are the good gays.

Gays not following that path are bad publicity, many individuals, pride organisers and LGBTQIA+ organisations think.

All this of course is not new. Since the start of the modern homosexual liberation movement at the end of the 19th century, there has been tensions between ‘blending in’ versus ‘standing out’. Limburg Pride chose blending in.

It’s just nasty and bigoted

While I can to a certain level sympathise with the wish to “to give everyone a place and a spot” and keep the event vanilla; and which you’re not, you’re only giving a spot to people like yourself; imposing a dress code on a Pride event just sounds so unwelcoming, so judgemental and so bigoted.

It’s giving uniformed catholic school vibes. I’m guessing members of the organising committee all went to catholic schools.

Why did you mention the issue in the press? Why make it a topic on your FAQ page? It’s clearly important to you.

Don’t fool yourself: the measure is not welcoming, is not inclusive and goes against the sprit of Pride, which was and is a protest against conforming to societal expectations.