In Eli Clares, “Exile And Pride”, he talks about the struggles of leaving his rural, small town to be a part of the urban queer community where he can be accepted… with some caveats. The now upper to middle class queers that Clare is surrounded by don’t fully understand the experience of being lower-to middle class in a rural small-town.
Clare speaks upon specifically the progression of the commercialization of pride/stonewall with the event of Stone Wall 25′ celebrating the rebellion “…the tickets for many of the events costs outrageous amounts of money. Who could afford the benefit dance at $150, the concert at $50, the T-shirt at $25… Stonewall 25 strikes me not so much as a celebration of a powerful and lifechanging uprising queer people, led by trans people of color, by drag queens and butch dykes, fed up with cops, but as a middle- and upper-class urban party that opened its doors only to those who can afford it.”(Clare 41). The capitalization of queer people and our suffrage is now becoming a commodity that only the most privileged of us can access and with this comes a lot of blatant ignorance and exclusion.
The dangers of only focusing on the good and what we have in society now ignores and stops proceeding to the next steps. Full liberation. Pride today being funded by big corporations and government officials (who are the same people taking away certain rights from certain community members) take us away from our roots of protesting, fighting for the most oppressed within our community. Clare notes that with such focus on Urban efforts of commercialized pride and white wealthy gay people, we are not doing enough for those doing groundwork in smaller, rural towns where statistically they have more risks speaking out because they have no place to hide unlike a populated city.
The dangers of capitalizing off of pride whereas Clare is stating how Urban activists must take a “back seat” and give support to these ground roots activist in rural places before soon the most privileged of us all are now just as oppressed as they would have been years ago.
I really like how you emphasized Clare’s critique of Pride being commercialized and inaccessible, especially with your example of Stonewall 25. Your point about rural queer communities being left out is so important, since visibility in cities doesn’t always equal safety elsewhere. It really underscores Clare’s call for activism that stays rooted in supporting the most vulnerable members of the community.
I found your analysis of Eli Clare’s stance on commercialization really interesting. Your third paragraph relating to full liberation is reminiscent of Susan Stryker’s “Transgender History” where she emphasizes the importance of those who are “enfreaked” by society in any way–those who are working class, LGBTQIA+ folks, people of varying ethnicities and spoken languages, or those who are on the neurodivergence spectrum–to recognize the connection between all of those causes (xii). For this issue she cites exclusionary first and second wave feminists who actively discount trans people’s ability to bolster the feminist movement (3). Intersectionality provides a network of support behind causes, which many organizations of the past and present are lacking.