Shame and queer pride

"Where there is shame, there can be no empathy." What is shame and where does it come from? Certainly not by itself. No, we are "shamed". The negative reactions of our social environment to everything that is not cis-gender and hetero-conformist come crashing down on us in the form of shame and humiliation. When we are shamed and humiliated, it hurts, it hurts badly. And to stop this pain, we change our behaviour, our innermost authentic self. Anything to stop the painful shaming and humiliation.

We just want to be allowed to be there, to be welcome just as we are. It then looks as if this is only possible if we pretend, cut back, adapt. And the only means we know of to suppress and reshape something as strong as our own identity, the expression of our own person, is shaming and humiliation. We have the voices, the gestures, the threats in our own heads. We have internalised the self-hatred, the negativity, the shame.

At the same time, we long for empathy, for an understanding of what it means to be LGBTQIA+ in this world. What it was like to walk our personal path. These paths have been different for each of us, and hard in different ways. Even if it sounds trite after the thousands of times RuPaul has said it, it's still just as true:

"If you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to love anyone else?" Do I watch so much drag race so I can hear that line? I've heard it a dozen times and it still hits me in the heart every time I let it in. Oh yes, I think, that's right, I'd forgotten again. I had somehow made myself look bad again, in my own head. The shame runs deep.

A little look back ...

It should be good now, it should be over. I had my hard-won coming out. Even though I was already 28 (is that a sign that it must have been hard before that?). I got involved in the community on a voluntary basis straight away - that was in 1994, there was so much to do, massage projects for people with AIDS (it was still AIDS then) that hardly anyone touched, coming out self-help groups, queer festivals.

Then I decided to build my own "normal" gay life. On my third attempt, I finally found a solid partnership: I'll take him and hold on to him! Visiting gay friends, each other - dinner parties, and of course my favourite lesbians in the family of choice. Maybe a child together like David&Michael with Patrizia&Claire? Nah, I can't do that. But a dog, yes, and renovating together, building the nest, every weekend! Hardly ever out and about in the scene, but at least once a year at the Pride parade and the queer picnic in the city park. Travelling confidently as a gay couple: Ha! Doublebed.

Then, little by little, they finally did what I had subconsciously longed for as a teenager: they "came out". Actors and musicians, a few in politics, some even in sport. Anti-discrimination laws at the holiday destination of choice - now we can go to sosundso, it's OK there now too.

And now the registered partnership or even marriage - the cleansing of historical sins for society as a whole - yes, fine, but we only need it because of the tax, hospital and so on. We don't need that for our love, we forged it ourselves long ago.

I am proud of my gay life. I may not be a pioneer or a stone in the shoe of the powerful, but I was still swimming against the tide. So all pride and no more shame? None at all?

So it's all pride and no more shame? None at all?

Do I dress the way I would really like to? Like the child at 8 or 9 who desperately wanted a bright red shirt and a pair of persil white jeans to go with the red and white captain's cap he had bought with his pocket money at the seaside kiosk during the holidays. And the grown-ups awkwardly manoeuvred it back onto their rails with worry lines on their foreheads. "No, you'd better not, it's not carnival now, you don't want to be laughed at, do you?" I don't know how much the child still keeps herself in check today, it's such an old habit.

And do I consistently get involved when someone is sexist, racist, ableist or even LGBTQIA+-hostile? Don't I even find myself thinking that the person could not have been quite so in your face have to appear queer? What can this reticence, this foreign shame, be other than the little devil of residual shame that is still breathing down my neck?

Pride in, shame out?

Shame is different from guilt. Guilt means you shouldn't have done it. Shame gets to you. Shame means you shouldn't have done it be. And that means you are not allowed to do something over which you have no control. You are trapped because you are who you are, but you are not allowed to be. A dead end of shame.

And where do you get out? As with any dead end, only by turning round and turning yourself in. So queer pride as an antidote to shame, but how does that work? When I step over the threshold into a queer space, a safe space, something happens to me. Whether it's an online chat with a person from my LGBTQIA+ family of choice or a bunch of real, warm, queer bodies in front of, behind and next to me, at a demo against the right or at a party. Something falls away from me. I move differently, I talk differently, I allow something inside me. Especially when I'm with people who have travelled part of my path, my way out of shame, with me.

Especially when bad things happen, like physical attacks and murders against one of us, when they want to divide us into acceptable and unacceptable queer people, like in the current anti-trans sentiment, then that means we need each other more again. Then we have to look deeper into each other's eyes again and see who we are, and shout to each other "We stick together, we won't take a step back, I'm with you and you're with me. I'm relying on you and you're relying on me." When that happens, shame doesn't stand a chance. We need our queer spaces where we can meet and renew this vow. But even that is not quite enough.

Out of sheer happiness and impetuosity about our own self-discovery, we stumble. Because we forget that we still have baggage. We've all been dipped in the same cis and heteronormative, sexist, racist, ableist sauce. In particular, as gay men, we have not dealt enough with the shame of our own 'femininity' that we internalised after the humiliations and threats as young people. It is distorted and confused in gay stereotypes and conventions. Why do we actually have to point out that fag is just as good as leather, why did the label power bottom have to develop in the first place? We're still messing around with the old hierarchies. "No femboys, no Asians" also means "no ME"!

There is also an internal homonormativity that every person should fit into if they want to belong. If they don't, they are shamed for it.

I think there is not only heteronormativity, i.e. the compulsion to either orientate oneself towards the life forms of the straight world, or to be different, outside, separate, strange, special, etc. There is also an internal homonormativity that conveys that there are certain ways of being and living as a gay person if you want to belong. There is also an internal homonormativity that conveys that there are certain forms of gay being and gay life that every person should fit into if they want to belong. If they don't, they are shamed for it. Then they are different again, outside, separate, strange, special.

Shame isolates. Shaming someone means singling them out, detaching them from their social circle, "presenting" them in front of others. This is particularly humiliating and therefore so painful because the protection of the bond with others is violently torn away.

That's why I want queer pride not only for myself, as an antidote to my own shame, but also for you, and for you, and for you too. I don't just want to be proud of myself, of my journey. I want to be proud that you are not hiding, precisely because you are so differently queer than me. I want to imagine what you had to overcome, what you still have to overcome every day to be yourself.

Perhaps you are often the only person with a darker skin colour. Maybe you're either shunned or fetishised because of it. Maybe you have to listen to women's jokes. Maybe you're gendered the wrong way. Maybe you can't even get into the "safe space" in your wheelchair, or you can't read my lips because I'm mumbling behind the beer glass. Maybe you're often sad and scared and don't dare go outside. Only when I recognise this, when I have asked you about it, with what you then community makes sense. Only then does it warm my heart. Only then do I feel really connected to you, only then do I realise how much I need you. That I can't be shameless if you can't be shameless too.

Only when I recognise that, when I've asked you about what you're struggling with, does community make sense.

So, is queer pride the antidote to shame? I think so. It starts with my pride, the awareness of my own history, my own daily struggles with shame. But even more important is my pride in you. My pride in the fact that I you know. That I yours that I know the story. That I know what you overcome, and what you you have failed. That I know that's exactly why you're here and that you're still fighting to be yourself. If I can strengthen you, cheer you on, then my own shame has no chance, then I don't look at it, then it has no place.

So let's use the space we take in the 2024 Pride season and fill it with our pride. Ask me what I am proud of, what I have overcome to be able to celebrate here with you. Ask me what I need from you to be able to be myself here unashamedly. Then let's celebrate. Not just because it's summer and we do it every year, but because we now know from each other what there really is to celebrate here.

I am proud of you.