I feel a lot of the time that modern urban gay life is like an episode of The Real World or Survivor or one of those other reality television shows. There is always the blonde bitchy girl and the smart girl and the uptight guy and the beautiful jock—everybody has a role based on personality. Gay life seems that way too. Here is the leather queen and the lipstick lesbian and the preppy boy and the bear. Here comes the gym queen and the butch momma and the genderqueer and the radical faerie.

We seem to fit more and more into stereotypes that we’ve created for ourselves.

The bigger the city in which we live, the less mingling there is between each subgroup. There are bear bars and leather bars and bars you go to when you want to be slutty and bars you go to when you want a martini. There are bars for older men and for younger men, for African Americans and Asians. There are hip-hop clubs for baby dykes and circuit clubs for gym types. Gay men and women mix even less often than groups within our separate genders.

On one hand, this sounds pretty great—there are so many out gay people in the world that we don’t feel the need to just be thrown together with nothing in common. We don’t have to all go to the same gay bar playing show tunes and disco remixes like in more rural areas. We are free to be more than just generic gays, but specific individuals based on our individual tastes rather than our general sexual preferences.

On the other hand, our world is actually getting smaller the more we do this. Most of us still hang with an all-gay crowd. Whatever the crowd may be, it’s a lot more homogenous than if we were all thrown together in one place, forced to have contact between generations and genders. Most every scene seems to be getting bigger yet more narrowly defined and insular. Women are not welcome here. You’re too old to be here. Come back after you work out. You’re not like us. These are the things we seem to be saying to each other.

As gays continue to win small political battles and our lives are less threatened, we have also gone our separate ways ideologically. Now each of our subgroups fights for itself rather than for spreading our rights to those who don’t have them. We are no longer unified on even the big issues, because for urban gays, most of these issues are solved. The smaller issues become important to the groups most affected. Uneven distribution of medical research dollars is an important women’s issue. Reopening of the bathhouses is top issue for some men. Non-discrimination clause inclusion is the main agenda of many trans and bisexual people.

We have gone from many voices shouting one thing to many voices shouting many things. A lot of it is drowning each other out.

At least there is one time a year when we are all in the same place at the same time. Gay Pride time. But even Pride celebrations are guilty of some of the same problems—there are different areas divided up for different crowds. In San Francisco there are separate stages for Latins, African-Americans, Radical Faeries, country/western and older folks, a women’s stage, etc. You don’t really need to leave your homogenous group to celebrate your diversity. Hmm.

Here is what I suggest: this year at Pride, mingle. Talk to strangers. Visit areas other than just where your friends are. Become aware of what issues are that affect other people. If you’re a man, spend some time in the women’s area. (We’re most neglectful in that respect.) Think about what you can do to help other causes.

Think outside your self-made box—not just about which issues effect youth versus seniors, but which issues effect people outside of your zip code as well. There are a lot of places in the country where being gay can still be a death sentence. Think of them rather than of yourself for a bit.

Of course, it’s not possible to be part of every scene and work to solve every political issue. But it certainly is possible to do more than most of us are doing, and at the very least understand how other groups are feeling. We are after all, part of the same big gay family. Pride is a time for celebrating our diversity from the straight white world, but it should also be a time for unity within ours.

Copyright © 2002 Camper English. All Rights Reserved.

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