A Gay Pride march is the one time in the year where we can walk defiantly hand in hand with our lovers, friends and chosen family, under an LGBT banner, literal or otherwise, free from shame. For a few hours we stop traffic simply to exist, visible, public and proud, in all our different guises. Not apologetic, not afraid and not ashamed.

It’s been 40 years since those legendary Stonewall riots that launched the gay rights movement, giving birth to Pride at a time when people had to fight for freedom from police harassment and violence. We’ve won some hard-fought battles along the way - decriminalization, equal age of consent and the dubious state marriage concessions known as civil partnerships. We’re not marching for these any more. But living in relative freedom, as most Western queers now do, for some Pride events have come to represent everything wrong with our rampant consumerism and the depoliticisation of LGBT identities.

Gay Shame, the annual event now in its 13th year, was set up with these issues in mind, as Queen Bee, host and organiser Amy Lamé explains: ‘It was at the height of all that pink pound shit, the overt commercialisation of the gay scene, in the late 90s. We thought, “Surely there’s room for some kind of comment on this?” because no one seemed to be saying anything about it’.

The shame the Duckie crew want to highlight is the kind that has you singing ‘We Are Family’, while off your face on E, waving a feather boa. It was this mindlessly hedonistic, sequined-hotpantsed hell that kick-started Gay Shame. A friend of Amy’s commented at Gay Pride, ‘I wish there was a Gay Shame march in the opposite direction, ’cos I’d like to join them’.

This idea has blossomed into a massive multi-medium arts event held on the same night as Gay Pride in London. Shame doesn’t come cheap – entry is £15 – but it’s extraordinary good value, offering numerous original, side-show type, interactive exhibits that put a thematic spin on the concept of shame, stretching, questioning and confusing it; re-appropriating and reclaiming it through the creative output of a collective of artists. ‘Last year Gay Shame tackled the hilarious issue of masculinity which was fascinating,’ recalls Amy. ‘For me, the finest moment was seeing a friend of mine being basically assaulted by a bunch of butch dykes dressed as truckers, who forced him to his knees and put their strap-on cock in his mouth. I thought, “Life just doesn’t get better than this”.’ (DIVA would like to point out that the gent in question was a willing victim, who’d paid good Duckie Dollars for the privilege of the experience.)

This year they get to grips with femininity as Duckie goes girlie. Which is a lot more than just tits and teeth, as Amy is quick to point out. ‘It’s going to be aspects of femininity that wouldn’t necessarily spring to mind,’ she promises. ‘Not just cup-cakes and pinnies, though there will be lots of that – in a very cheeky, wink and a nod, raised eyebrow kind of way’.
The disarming comic tactics beloved of Gay Shame are widely used by queer activists to critique the corporate elements of Gay Pride events, such as the one held in Manchester. ‘Twee Pride’ was organised by people involved in Kaffe Queeria and Get Bent (which put on events throughout the year, creating spaces alternative to the commercial gay scene). Dressed up as ‘old grannies’ they gave out leaflets asking punters what Pride meant to them. As one of the participants Cass explains, ‘The Twee Pride manifesto critiqued the fact that Manchester Pride excludes people through having to pay around £15 to get in, through being rampantly profit-driven, and privileging the moneyed, white, male, able-bodied, 18 to 35-year-olds. We tried to do this all in a way that wasn’t overly self–righteous and didn’t just dismiss Pride completely’.

In recent years critics of the commercial gay scene in general have grown more vocal. Pride events have become a common target for queer underground activists. Generally speaking, these activists adopt a broader take on the lesbian and gay identities, challenging gender definitions, relationship norms and the corporate approach to celebrating community. A typical ‘DIY’ approach includes free, autonomous events, advertised mostly by word of mouth, organised by a queer collective (many of which move under the moniker ‘Queer Mutiny’) and working with a fiercely political agenda.

Eliat, director of the European queer activists documentary Travel Queeries, pinpoints one common theme: ‘A lot of people are really clear that queer is a political identity connected to the oppression you feel [as a result of your sexual orientation or gender identity] and connect it to other social change movements’. Certainly most alternative Pride actions are a long way from sitting in your local park, sun-burnt and shit-faced, peering at last year’s X-Factor loser/Eurovision entry/G-A-Y-playing girl group on a distant stage.

Gay Pride began in order to create a sense of community amongst queers and foster spaces for us to live unharrassed by the police. Gay Shame and other, smaller, queer DIY events started as a reaction to the gross commercialisation of those spaces and the ‘shameless’ profiteering from the so-called pink pound.
That these events can co-exist and offer such a diverse choice for celebrating Pride in a way that’s meaningful to you is in itself a cause for celebration. After all, you don’t have to look far for places such as Poland, Latvia, Moscow and Serbia where people would consider themselves fortunate to enjoy a peaceful Gay Pride march, let alone corporate sponsorship.

Jet Moon, an activist with the Serbian group Queer Beograd, maintains it’s not about setting up in opposition to Pride, which still has its place, but that we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. ‘If Pride is a manifestation of a political impetus then people have every right to wish for that to be maintained, rather than seeing themselves subsumed into a “niche market”, but it takes a broader perspective to see that all forms of activity are valid,’ she asserts.

‘Certainly Pride still has relevance – homophobia hasn’t disappeared – but equally valid are the more raw and independent voices that insist on moving beyond “identity politics” and pushing for change that goes beyond freedom of visibility’.
Surely that would be something to be Proud of?