When Pride meets Purge

But it's my special day!

As discussed on a recent podcast, this has been quite the week in the discourse surrounding public nudity. I won't get into this here (not least because I already got into it there), but the tl;dr is that the nonconsensual sighting of a penis represents, I guess, an intolerable trauma, except for those occasions when it's no big deal and perhaps even wholesome, and good luck figuring out which is which in a way that doesn't break down along the stupidest possible political binary. (As the kids say: thanks, I hate it.) 

This is not my first time trying to parse the confusing and contradictory messaging surrounding the question of when it is or isn't okay for people to be casually, publicly nude. It was, however, the first time I have ever been a direct recipient of a scolding to the effect that I should not be talking about these naked penises for the very particular reason that they appeared, quote, "during Pride."

On the one hand, I fully understand how “during Pride” might function as a question of etiquette. All other things being equal, maybe it’s just in bad taste to scrutinize the behavior of a marginalized group during their designated awareness month. One of the greatest affronts of my life was the time I got a speeding ticket on my 28th birthday. Literally! On the actual day! (Sidenote: the cop who pulled me over not only did not share my belief that this was incredibly gauche but actually seemed to enjoy the entire thing, and wherever that man is, I hope he’s got an ingrown toenail.) Which is to say, I am intimately familiar with the sense that transgressive behavior should sometimes get a pass on the basis of but-it's-my-special-day. 

And yet. I also think it is possible to take said expectation too far: for instance, by declaring an entire month of days to be but-it's-my-special ones. Or by demanding a total moratorium on not just consequences for transgressive behavior, but on any conversation about it at all, especially when those transgressions are of the, shall we say, attention-getting variety. A slightly more permissive and/or tolerant environment during Pride month, in recognition of the gay community's historic struggles? Seems reasonable, yes. A Purge-style free-for-all in which members of said community get to wander down the street with their dicks out, violating any number of social taboos and/or public decency statutes in the process, and nobody is allowed to notice or talk about it?

I mean. Good luck?

This may be the limit of what we can demand from Pride month as a wholesale remaker of social norms. Certainly, it has a lot to recommend it; our rainbow-bedecked June represents the achievement of truly remarkable progress when it comes to  awareness-raising, acceptance, and legal protections for LGBT people.

But it does not, at least for the moment, have the power to make a naked man invisible.