Fluff 'n' Stuff

Brenda Howard created Pride and she was one of those argumentative, “het-partnered”, poly, bisexual feminists that are constantly told “shouldn’t be at pride”.

(Literally the only thing anyone asked is that bi people in opposite-sex relationships not peform public displays of affection at Pride, because it is essentially rubbing gay and lesbian people’s faces in the privilege that you have to make out with your partner any day, any time, anywhere when you take that shit to Pride. That is all we are asking: Please stop. Please.)

But this is a downright nasty, malicious lie that you are spreading directly with the intention of erasing gay men and lesbian women from history.

Pride was created by a gay man, Craig Rodwell, with his partner Fred Sargeant. Brenda Howard was on the organizing committee and did put forward some ideas that became part of Pride, but it was not her idea and she did not start it. Saying that she did is not only a lie, but it is a lie that erases the contributions of two gay men who were out in a time when that was a dangerous thing to be, in favor of giving their history over to a woman who was partnered with a man, who faced none of the danger they did. That is disgusting.

Also, not only did two gay men engineer Pride, but it was with the instrumental aid of two lesbian women, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes, whom you are also erasing when you perpetuate this nasty lie.

Source quotes:

No one was more responsible for conceiving and organizing that first march on the last Sunday in June than Craig Rodwell.

Getting everyone together for the Stonewall anniversary march proved to be a challenge. In the fall of 1969, the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations met in Philadelphia. Two women, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes, were instrumental in getting a resolution for that first march passed. New York Mattachine was the sole holdout.

It’s also on the Wikipedia page:

On November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first pride march to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia

Meetings to organize the march began in early January at Rodwell’s apartment in 350 Bleecker Street.

Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, Michael Brown, Marty Nixon, and Foster Gunnison of Mattachine made up the core group of the CSLD Umbrella Committee (CSLDUC). For initial funding, Gunnison served as treasurer and sought donations from the national homophile organizations and sponsors, while Sargeant solicited donations via the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshopcustomer mailing list and Nixon worked to gain financial support from GLF in his position as treasurer for that organization.[10][11] Other mainstays of the organizing committee were Judy Miller, Jack Waluska, Steve Gerrie and Brenda Howard of GLF.

Brenda Howard did not create Pride. It is arguable, certainly, that she was instrumental in Pride becoming what it is today, but she did not start it.

Pride was started by two gay men and their names should not be erased from history to make opposite sex-partnered bisexual people feel better. Their names are Craig Rodwell and Fred Sargeant.

People chant abuse and physically attack people just for being bi at pride, whether they are in a ~opposite sex relationship~ or not, gay and lesbian people do this because of the toxic gate-keeping you’re promoting right now. 

Not to mention the casual transphobia that goes along with this, so many trans couples are afraid to go because of unchecked abuse like this at pride, being percieved as “straight passing” results in them getting the stink eye and abused at Pride too, they deserve to not have that at Pride and if that means getting rid of the shitty purge the bi undesirables from pride mentality at the event so be it.

I don’t care if you’re “not like that”, or the people you know are “not like that”, gay and lesbian people are like that at pride and bi people are fed the message that they don’t belong and are discouraged from attending, as well as being told they have “nothing to do” with lgbt history, I’m sick of everyone ignoring that and choosing to believe that bi people are just interlopers making it up because they want to hurt gay and lesbian people.

That’s the most malicious lie in all of this and you shouldn’t buy into it, don’t give me this shit about what “you really want” from bi people at pride like there’s some kind of tragic and simple misunderstanding that bi people are just not getting and are being entirely unreasonable about, the hate and hostility towards bi people as a group is very real at pride and bi people deserve a little bit of reassurance that they belong in the community from time to time and that people like them existed in history, that’s not a bad thing or a slight against gay people or their history.

And don’t for a second think that this conditional acceptance of bi people at pride is in any way the same as full acceptance of all bi people or a rule concieved at the very first pride and broken by bi people just to spite the poor gay people. Bi people can have relationships other than same-gender ones and they have just as much right to march and be affectionate with their supportive partners as you or I do, it’s LGBT not LGB(but only if you don’t show an aspect of your sexuality and life that annoys LG people)T.

Plus if you are more critical of bi people in ~opposite sex relationships~ PDAing or attending pride while being openly bi than you are of homophobic, racist, transphobic, biphobic trash straight people like Iggy Azealea openly welcomed and headlining Prides then you’ve got all your priorities mixed up.

The “intention” of my post was to reassure bi people who, thanks in part to this unsupportive as fuck community, are unsure that they deserve to attend Pride and genuinely believe bi people (especially ~het-partnered~ ones) never had any involvement in pride and therefore deserve to feel unwelcome, sadly an all too common feeling among bi people especially among bi people who just came out. 

There’s also been a gross amount of biphobia going around on tumblr recently such as calling bi couples cishet and saying they shouldn’t be at pride, people saying “het-partnered” bisexuals don’t have anything to be proud of, gay people saying they hate and want to “eradicate” bisexuals, and calling bi women non-females who are just extentions of men. So yeah… I think there might be at least a few bi people on tumblr that need reassurance that they belong at this moment.

Telling them that Brenda Howard was a major activist who is known as “the mother of Pride” for organising the very first Pride and subsequent Prides, not only existed but fitted none of the bullshit gate-keeping requirements biphobes insist on helps a lot of bi people feel a bit better and are more aware their own history.

Making people aware of Brenda Howard doesn’t erase the contributions of gay men and lesbians throughout history, telling bi people that historical figures like them not only attended Pride but shaped LGBT history by cooridinating and marching in the first Pride does not erase gay men and lesbians, I don’t know what kind of person looks at that and goes “mmmmm bi people might feel a bit better about this post and think bi people made a significant contribution to history, I must put a stop to this”.

Brenda Howard didn’t just “put forward a few ideas” and just hung back being the big privileged bihet you’re making her out to be, she was a militant activist and the fucking chair of the Gay Activist Allience, and an active member of the gay liberation front, with an lgbt activist career spanning 3 decades, she wasn’t a small player in this.

Let’s have a little look at your wikipedia source, just a few sentences down from your choice quote shall we?:

Brenda Howard is known as the “Mother of Pride”, for her work in coordinating the march. Howard also originated the idea for a week-long series of events around Pride Day which became the genesis of the annual LGBT Pride celebrations that are now held around the world every June.[15][16] Additionally, Howard along with fellow LGBT Activists Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) and L. Craig Schoonmaker are credited with popularizing the word “Pride” to describe these festivities.[17] As LGBT rights activist Tom Limoncelli put it, “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why [LGBT] Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.’” [18]

Holy shit, you omit that whole section crediting Brenda and I’m guilty of erasure? Fucking really?

There is not “arguably” when it comes to Brenda Howard, she was essential in the creation and continuation of pride as we know it today, there’s a reason why she is called “the mother of pride” and her fellow activists saw that and gave credit where credit is due. If you’re going to give credit to Craig Rodwell and Fred Sargeant and Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes you can’t just omit Brenda Howard because you don’t think she’s worthy enough as gay men are.

But let’s be honest, you don’t actually care about the effort she put in or how influential Brenda Howard was or giving credit where credit is due, you don’t think she’s was deserving as other players because she was one of the bisexual woman you feel disgusted by and you don’t think there was much risk involved in that in the 1960s and 70s, as if biphobia and misogyny against bi women was invented in the 80s or something.

Which is probably the most revolting part of all this, she was an out and proud and prominant activist for gay rights, this was never a secret or not apparent, she was arrested multiple times on lgbt rights demos, and was slated because of her bisexuality and activism (not to mention Kate Millet was forceably outed as bisexual and nearly had her life and career ruined because of it just a year later, let’s not pretend that was not a risk), these were not cases where society just went “oh wait these are bi women, nevermind!”.

Abuse, fetishisation, rape and conversion therapy for bi people whether they were ~het partnered~ or not was a big threat back then, especially to outspoken ones, it still is a huge threat today. The risk was not and is not minimised for bi women, whether they are ~het partnered~ or not.

Minimising the oppression of bi people is bad enough without minimising it with the purpose of cutting them out of lgbt history, this is one of the reasons why few people even know about people like Brenda Howard and honestly believe that bi involvement in lgbt rights is not a thing and leads to people in the community okaying biphobia or worse thinking bi women are subhuman.

Dear axe, your ad is horrible. Let me explain how:

1) It objectifies women. 2) It tells young men with female friends that they are not “real men”. 3) It tells young women that “real” men don’t want to be their friends, they only want to “tear” their clothing off. 4) It insults men with braids. 5) It is advertising a crappy body spray.

absolute zero

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