i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is āinternationalā pride month just because something happened in the united states.
in aotearoa, june isnāt our pride, itās theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that āyou owe your rights to Black trans womenā is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) MÄori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.
But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa donāt even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we donāt.
our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1989. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.
anyway, happy pride, americans. iām truly sorry that most of you donāt see the negative impact your nationās culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and cultureās queer history, donāt accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.
this post is closing in on 10k and itās really quite enlightening reading through the notes.
the most frequent reactions are from people from Not America agreeing that the cultural force of american pride has detracted in some tangible way from their knowledge or recognition of their own history. thereās so many links and references in the notes now, for so many different places. i had a scroll through some of them, that i could find versions of in english. the world has such a rich queer history, and i am inspired by all of the people saying theyāre going to go and research more of their own histories. there have been resources shared from all six permanently inhabited continents (none from antartica, yetā¦), including a lot (relative to the usual zero) from the regions most frequently glossed over in our global queer histories; africa, the middle east, southeast asia, the pacific, and south america. every single person whoās shared a queer historical figureās name, or a book or other source, or a historical event from their country or culture is doing an important thing by helping to dismantle the US pride hegemony.
the next most frequent reactions are from americans pissing on the poor, and claiming that either itās not their fault individually because [nebulous reason missing the point] and/or that iām racist (someone even said fascist lmao?) because the two people i mentioned were Black and latin americanā¦ itās not the fault of those two women nor myself that americans have chosen their faces and names to put at the front of their imperialist pride. cultural imperialism doesnāt have to LOOK racist! you can be unintentionally culturally imperialist and look woke! a lot of the people who do this are queer and liberal or even leftist. the problem is forcing american queer history on the rest of us. shoutout to the Black and latine people in the notes whoāve rightfully pointed out that thatās a bullshit rebuttal. Iāve also noted the autocorrect typo on Marshaās name, and fixed it, thanks for the heads up.
sort of the point of cultural imperialism is that the people doing it donāt notice it on an individual level. of course you donāt feel like youāre responsible! of course you struggle to see it when the rest of us point it out! thatās by design! if the rest of the world is saying something is a real experience that theyāve had, and you say āwell i donāt see it / iām not responsible for it,ā that is blatant denial of a very real issue.
finally, for the love of god, stop using they/them for me, a trans woman who exclusively uses she/her. my pronouns are front and centre on my blog! funny how the people calling me racist and transmisogynistic for Using Examples are also frequently degendering me in the process, huh?
anyway, this vent was never intended to go viral, i posted it on a quiet afternoon after a conversation with a friend about our queer history here. iām glad it has, though, because glossing over the americans swinging and missing, the breadth of history and knowledge being shared in the notes is a wonderful thing.
i love (read: hate) that this post is an āitās june 2ndā alarm in my notifications now. because apparently it immediately starts off again when america hits june 1st. ugh.
