The largest protest Duke University has seen in an entire year is scheduled for Saturday.
The North Carolina LGBTQ Pride festival is coming to East Campus, and in 2016, that is still radical. It doesn’t take much digging through the University archives to figure out why.
Fifty years ago, you would have been expelled from Duke for being gay. Forty years ago, you would have received an email from Duke President Terry Sanford justifying his decision to exclude sexual orientation and gender identity from the university’s nondiscrimination policy. Thirty years ago, you would have read in The Chronicle about DSG revoking the charter of the undergraduate LGBTQ group for its “promotion of homosexuality.” Ten years ago, you wouldn’t see, let alone hang, a pride flag over a West Campus dorm room window. Five years ago, you would have to peer over a fence to spot the LGBTQ Center in the basement of the old West Union. Four years ago, you would struggle to find a class on LGBTQ identity on ACES. And at this time last year, you certainly wouldn’t know of “HB2.”
Yet, on Saturday afternoon, East Campus will not look like a protest—it may even look like a party. But to many in the LGBTQ community, Pride feels like a riot.
To understand Gay Pride, we must first understand something about shame. When people attack queer folk—when they terrorize nightclubs, pass homophobic laws, etch death threats on dorm room walls and make cheap jokes—they teach a version of toxic shame that instructs queer people that an immutable characteristic is cause for inferiority: that queer people should live in silence, that they should obscure who they are.
So, for queer communities, unapologetic authenticity is the highest form of rebellion. Glitter, not pitchforks, is Pride’s most potent tool of protest.
The Stonewall uprising—our most famous civil rights moment, our first Pride—happened at a bar. It was neither polite nor solemn. It was lead by trans women of color. It was drunk, and there were sequins.
And this weekend, our response to indignity is, again, to throw a party. To wear ridiculous outfits. To blast music. To acknowledge a society whose disapproval works to deny moments of self-expressive joy, but to choose to dance and love and smile anyway.
But unlike most parties at Duke, Pride isn’t closed. Unlike most parties at Duke, guests are not merely welcome—they are critical. Allies matter for Pride.
Last year wasn’t especially easy for queer folks at Duke. But it also wasn’t easy for allies. There is no instruction manual for effective allyship. And while there is good advice about what to do during the big moments—when a friend comes out, or when we encounter homophobia—there is less guidance about all of the subtle moments in between.
This Saturday, good allyship is more clear-cut. You should attend NC Pride. Attend not because it will be the most fun you have on Saturday, but also because, at least this weekend, it will be the most important thing you do.
This is your formal invitation—extended for the reason that we need you. And we need you in ways you may not have yet realized.
We need allies at Pride because, when allies show up, closeted and questioning students can find community at lower personal risk. For a questioning student listening to the sounds of the parade from their East Campus dorm room, walking alone to the festival is not merely courageous. It is herculean. When allies come to Pride—when they invite their friends—they make Pride accessible for those who may need it most. There are few things more powerful than introducing someone to the people with whom they share a history for the first time.
We need allies at Pride because, when allies show up, queer folk know who they can lean on. Take Duke’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Bryan Center as an example. The CSGD is important in large part because it affirms that resources, staff, peers and support are available to queer and questioning students. But for many LGBTQ students at Duke, it’s easier and more powerful to know which of your friends will give you support themselves. For an ally to post a photo from Pride to Facebook is more than an act of self-indulgence. It can be an act of radical visibility, of community love. Allyship is only useful if it’s evident to others, and it is good news that it isn’t difficult to make yourself known.
And we need allies at Pride because, when allies show up, the volume gets louder. The crowds get bigger. The message gets amplified. And more people get reached. If there is one additional person who sees a message of equality, one more passerby that catches sight of the parade, one more Newsfeed that is populated by a message of LGBTQ dignity, one more person who is moved to challenge an assumption about queer identity, then your attendance will have been worth it.
So this is an invitation. It is an invitation to you, the football player in the mid-calves with the coupon to Sports Clips; to you, the sorority girl with the southern drawl and the long-term boyfriend; to you, the Kinsey-zero with a paper due on Monday and a lingering skepticism that your presence is really, really needed. This is an invitation for all of you to join us.
You are invited to our protest. And you can definitely stay for our party.
Tanner Lockhead is a Trinity senior. His column, “not straight talk,” usually runs on alternate Mondays.
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