Emerge or explode?!
An estimated two hundred people participated in the first Leiden Pride Walk last night. “During the Pride Walk, we walk together visibly and proudly through the city to call attention to diversity, inclusion, and equal rights for the rainbow community”, the appeal read. At the Canal Pride of this coming Saturday, critical and militant expressions are not welcome. To channel such voices, the organizers came up with this walk. But it too had to remain unified and pleasant, as was emphasized in almost all the speeches – a pleasantness that threatens to cover up violence and the criticism of it with a cloak of love. Jonny Tudor from theater De Generator felt differently about this, as was evident from his speech which we reproduce here in full.
We find ourselves in a strange position today.
Hi, my name is Jonny, a trans man. Today I’m walking with the English-speaking Queer Leiden University, because that’s where I feel most heard in the fight for lgbtqia+ rights. But today I’m speaking Dutch. Leiden: can you hear me?! As a refugee and migrant here in the Netherlands, I have learned that I have to speak the language of the majority in order to be heard. That I have to adapt so as not to offend people. “And did that work, Jonny?” No. I was different, in many ways I was “strange”, as were my sexual orientation and gender. I wasn’t better, no, but I was different. Queer as fuck, you could say! Activism and art – and the people I met through these things – allowed me to shine a light on these parts of myself. Little by little, the cocoon I had been living in for years began to tear open. I was reborn. Right there, on that bridge, exactly 3 years ago, I stood there as a newborn: a baby queer celebrating Pride in his own city for the first time, a city I have always fought to make a better place for everyone who is so often forgotten by Leiden. I can remember the metallic sound of the police batons being pulled out as they prepared to attack us for the fourth time, while I shouted: “This is our Pride too!” I can remember flinching at the sound of the batons. So defiant, but also so vulnerable.
I stand here before you and truly: we find ourselves in a strange position today. A position in which Leiden Pride is being split in two. Today, we are allowed to hold signs, protest and demonstrate because we are not allowed to do so this coming Saturday! Three years ago, Canal Pride made it clear that we were not welcome at our own Pride. Because we wanted to hang protest banners from the bridge. Back then, we were stopped from protesting through police violence, and now it is a strange, typically Dutch poldermodel compromise that is stopping us. And why? Because the organisers say that the lgbtq community is a minority and that the “ordinary Leidenaar” – the so-called majority – should not be offended by provoking them! Well, I can tell you that if you belong to a minority and you can say that, you are clearly in a comfortable position, and you are abandoning the lgbtqia+ people who are still fighting for that same comfort.
People like us aren’t just stared at. We are beaten up on metro trains. Strangers make decisions about OUR BODIES for years. We die by suicide. Our IVF is not reimbursed in the same way as it is for heterosexual couples. An X in your passport? A legal hell, and abroad sometimes even dangerous. We are killed by bombs, but as soon as that one particular flag flies, it has to come down because: “Huh? Palestinians aren’t queer.” We are ethnically profiled, we have to prove to the IND that we are REALLY gay, we are more likely to become homeless, and meanwhile the strangest politicians in The Hague get to decide our fate.
We don’t want to PROVOKE, we want EQUAL RIGHTS, for peet´s sake!!! Organising a Pride where you say that fighting for the right to exist is provocative makes us angry BECAUSE IT DIRECTLY HARMS US! Not only is there silence about the everyday struggle of so many of us within the rainbow family, but this exclusion also creates a direct threat. Because. If the spectators along the canal this coming Saturday don’t see US represented at Pride, if Canal Pride itself considers our rights provocative, what do you think average Joe is going to think, the person who sees us everywhere: on the streets, as a topic of conversation in the news, online in thousands of hateful comments – but NOT at Pride? Then they’ll think: “Those are those abnormal people who ruin it for the nice, normal gays. Those drama queens for whom it’s never good enough.”
But those shouting “drama queens”, those queers who are “different”, those are the brave people who, in 1969, had finally had enough of their club, Stonewall, being raided by the police – the police who were supposedly there to protect the “normal” people from us. Those “drama queens” defended themselves and took to the streets. If you look at the photographs from that time, you can see the pride pouring out of them. Their pride was real! I celebrate my Pride because I am proud of who we are and of the power within myself and my queens that brought me here – that is truly something to feel pride for. And yes, I love to celebrate, I feel queer joy and I am the first to parade around with my Pride, check my Insta, bitches.
But Pride is not the parade for me! Pride is not an event but a protest for as long as we are still considered a minority! 3 October would not be an event either if the Spanish were still occupying us, right?
And our cannons are not on the Burcht? No, we are the cannons ourselves. We are your bottles of champagne that have been shaken up. We are your unopened confetti poppers. We cannot keep adapting ourselves in order to be ourselves. Sooner or later, we will pop out! The choice is yours how controlled that will be, the choice is yours whether we get to emerge or… explode. Whether it will be queer rage or queer joy! Because I can tell you: everything you try to contain keeps growing and growing until it can no longer fit back into the cocoon.
And one last thing: that ordinary Leidenaar whom we supposedly shouldn’t offend? Who even is that, anyway? Far too often, I see the “respectable” people of Leiden looking down on the “ordinary Leidenaar”. I AM an ordinary Leidenaar and I can tell you that you might be more afraid of those “respectable people” than of the “normal” inhabitant of Leiden, who is much more diverse.
Thank you.
Jonny Tudor
Would you like to continue talking about this with us? Come to our talking circle on Saturday evening, 5 September, at Theater De Generator at 7:30 PM.