Opposition
There is opposition to pride events both within LGBT and mainstream populations. Critics, such as gay shame, charge the parades with an undue emphasis on sex and fetish-related interests which they see as counter-productive to LGBT interests, and exposing the "gay community" to ridicule. LGBT activists counter that traditional media have played a role in emphasizing the most outlandish and therefore non-representative aspects of the community. This in turn has prompted participants to engage in more flamboyant costumes to gain media coverage. Parody newspaper The Onion satirized this perceived result of gay pride marches in a fake news piece in 2001.
Social conservatives are sometimes opposed to such events because they view them to be contrary to public morality. This belief is partly based on certain things often found in the parades, such as public nudity, BDSM paraphernalia, and other sexualized features. Within the academic community, there has been criticism that the parades actually set to strengthen homosexual- heterosexual divides and increase essentialist views.
Read more about this topic: Pride Parade
Famous quotes containing the word opposition:
“Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as “right” in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as “brute force.””
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and ... powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)