Post LGBT festival thoughts

Last week, May 12-16, we had the LGBT festival in Gothenburg, Sweden. It wasn't the first year, but my first, and the first when the festival moved into the city centre and the main streets and places were richly hung with rainbow flags. Gothenburg has been a city more known for hate crime than LGBT openness, even though we have quite a strong LGBT movement, but this past week gives us a lot of hope. The city council and the company that manages the city's outward appearance, festivals, tourism etc have openly supported the festival. In yesterday's Pride parade (or Rainbow walk, as they've chosen to call it here), all the local parties apart from the Conservatives and the National democrats were represented - ie. including the Christian party! - and several politicians have made appearances during the week. I marched under the Feminist initiative banner, as I'm running for local office for them. It's probably the most LGBT friendly party of them all; 4 out of 5 local candidates are openly queer.

I've held two seminars with a colleague, one on empowerment and changing your inner dialogue, and one on non-violent self-defence. It was great fun and it seemed that our audiences really liked them. One man came back to the second seminar/workshop because he liked the first one so much :) It'll be interesting to see where this leads!

It's been a bit of an overwhelming week in personal terms, and the problem with a festival in your hometown is that your normal life goes on, which isn't the case for people who travel in for the festival. So I've had work to do, and haven't been able to go crazy with seminars and workshops and late night parties.

One thing that annoyed me was how there seems to be this stereotypical dyke look; similar haircuts, similar glasses, similar clothes. Very uniform. How alternative are you if you look like all the other alternative people? I really dislike all forms of stereotypes, and take great pleasure in breaking them :) I'm me, and I'm not changing in order to belong in a group. That is just individuality numbing.

Something else that left me thinking were the Proud Rainbow Parents. I wonder if my parents are proud rainbow parents. They've probably never even thought about that, and I think that even though they're not openly not proud, they are indifferent rather than proud. Well, come to think of it, my mother might actually be not proud and disapproving, even though she wouldn't say so to my face. But it's a shame. All parents should be proud of their children!