Me tired after the parade
So now the fun is over. For over a week Stockholm have been taken over by us fags, lezzies and asorted queers. And I'm proud to be a part of the latter two - a transsexual woman, lesbian, queer and gender outlaw.
I've been working as a volunteer at Pride House so haven't had much time to participate in other events. This will as a consequence be a rapshodic and personal account.
Stockholm Pride is made up of three main parts: Pride Garden, Pride Park and Pride House as well as lots of events associated with Pride, like museums theaters, resturants, clubs ..... Pride Park was in Kungsträdgården - a park in central Stockholm - all events there were free and there was some great stalls such as the publishers Normal .
Pride Park, situated in Tantolunden is the main area for entertainment and stalls for shops, bars, political parties and a lot of LGBT related organisations.
Pride House, in Kulturhuset in central Stockholm, Is where most discussions, talks and lectures were held as well as plays and music.
During the week all buses have been carying the rainbow flag. And all official flagpoles all over town have had the flag flying.
To begin at the end: Saturday we, about 35 000 people, took a leasurley stroll through our beautifull city. Watching us fags, dykes, queers, trannies and assorted outlaws were about 350 000 citizens. For various reasons this was my first parade but absolutely not the last! It was a marvelous feeling, especially towards the end of the route. Thousands of people on a knoll in front of a church and on a hill opposite were cheering and waving. Loved it! I was walking under the banner of KIM, an organisation mainly for all variants of trans people.
But then I started to wonder. About a third of the population was out to cheer us but what about the rest of the year? Where does the discrimination come from? The hate, the snide remarks, the snicker behind the back and the violence? Are they just out to watch the freaks? Do they really love us? Well, never mind, I took it as a well earned tribute to our trails and tribulations.
Back to the beginning: I was working at Pride House as a roadie in a large but a bit out of the way premise. I was in charge of arranging the stage, see to it that the tech was as requested, water for the lecturers, counting the audience, keeping the very tight schedules and generally make sure that everythin ran smothly. As it was not more than 15 minutes between events it was sometimes a bit hectic. And because the doors had to be closed most of the time I unfortunately didn't hear much of what was going on.
The rest of the volunteers were a lovely bunch of coconuts.. ehh people. As behoves Pride there was all sorts of preferences, genders and ages. I look forward to seeing them all again next year.
There is not much i can tell you of the events. The chief of police in Stockholm, Karin Götblad, have very nice legs, and she have done much to fight hate crimes and to change the attitudes among the police in Stockholm.
An old friend that I haven't seen since the seventies, Pia Laskar, talked about what's been defined as normal throgh history. Did you know that the term heterosexual is as new as the mid 1800s?
Pia was also one of the guides on a boat sight seeing with the theme of lesbians and queers in Stockholm from King Kristina to the present.
Another friend I listened to was Nina Ramsby, she's one of the best artists I know of. Her participation in Pride Park wasn't announced untill the same morning but the out of the way venue was packed with audience, mostly girls an women. And as usual Nina was great, she have a fantastic stage presence and report with the audience.
One thing I did through out the festival was lobbying for Kate Bornstein to be invited as a guest at next years Pride. I'm also trying to get Normal Förlag to publish a Swedish translation of Kate's book "Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws". Anyhow I'm going to start translate it tomorrow. Lazy and easily distracted as I am I have made a schedule for myself. Now the problem is how to make myself stick to the schedule.
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