M3A1 Assignment: Culture: Everyone Has It!
There are festivals every year that are held publicly to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals rights within society. Usually depending on how big the city a couple streets or a district within a city is closed down for the festival to take place. These designated areas are patrolled by law enforcement just to make sure matters don’t get out of hand because this event usually does have people who fight. Men and women, usually most adults and some older adolescents from all racial/ethnic backgrounds take to the streets on foot and watch floats, advertisements backed by businesses, and marches with shows put on by groups of people that support these communities. Sometimes the streets are so crowded you can barely move and it can be suffocating. People that fill the streets can be dressed very strangely. Men dress as women and women dress as men, and sometimes the outfits can be very provocative and sexual in nature. There are also people who dress in the bright rainbow flag colors or cut their cloths and design their own clothing specifically for the event. Usually there is someone who goes too far and violates an important more by exposing their genitals amongst the public and is arrested by the authorities. It’s common to see men holding hands with men and women holding hands with woman and couples seem to be more open to engaging in public displays of affection. You also will see groups dressed in tee shirts with the same slogan or terms that send messages to onlookers who view them that this counterculture and way of lifestyle should be adopted as “the norm” and acceptable within the mainstream culture. Many of the groups hold up signs to symbolize and demonstrate the right for a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman as equal. Some have signs with the “=” symbol meant to depict justice and equality. People rummage through the streets, and people with blast their music from their cars and have open block party dances. The bars and the clubs are open and tend to market for the event decorating their windows and entrances with rainbowed flags to attract the public that they are open for business.
People that are gay, straight or otherwise participate in this event to try to form an alliance as a people to be accepted more as subculture of mainstream culture. Homosexuals or transgendered individuals are viewed within American society as a group of people that have deviated from the norm and therefore would be included as a counterculture. They gather together to show that they take pride in the fact that they have a different sexual orientation and feel they have a right to express how they love even if it’s different from other’s concept of what’s normal and natural. Families and friends of these groups attend the festival as well to show their love and support .They feel that they should be entitled to the same rights and should have the ability to be legally married, and that their relationships aren’t of any less value than that simply because its members aren’t of the opposite sex. I consider this gathering to be a ritual because it takes place annually in cities dispersed all over America where these groups express their identities through their form of dress, interactions with each other in public, it’s a way for this community to liberate themselves, advocate for their rights, and unveil who they really are without ridicule from bystanders. The rainbow flag is a multicolored flag flown around as a their pride flag, its different colors symbolize lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered diversity in the gay community .The use of rainbow flags has a long tradition; they are displayed in many cultures around the world as a sign of diversity and inclusiveness, of hope and of yearning. This event can be considered a moral holiday in which people are allowed to break some norms. Some activities such as public drunkenness and some nudity are allowed and expected. The specific arena that I have been describing is attending a gay pride movement or festival for the first time and what you should expect to see and experience.