June is considered
the Pride
Month even though my local pride in Manchester is one of the last in the Europe,
taking place in the last weekend of August that includes the last Monday as
part of the August Bank Holiday in the UK.
I normally will only
attend a Pride march but rarely the other activities, in Manchester, I only
have to step out of my front door with a foldable chair to watch the march go
past on my street. Berlin offers a better spectacle in July as I take a room in
the Hotel Berlin Berlin that overlooks the march from at least the first floor.
I might go to the Siegessäule
or the Brandenburg
Gate to see the performances for a few hours before departing for some
quiet time.
Prides around Europe
Until last year, I
had not missed a Berlin Pride usually known as the Christopher Street
Day (CSD) in German-speaking countries in recognition of the Stonewall riots of
1969, except one other time in at least 12 years. It was like a pilgrimage of
at least 4 days, sometimes longer, allowing me to do other things besides.
When I lived in
Amsterdam, we celebrated in the first weekend of August, the Pride march on
canal boats, I never vied to get on any of the boats because it was at least a
4-hour slug, however, it was always good to have a vantage position to view the
colourful floats as they moved along with music blaring out of megawatt
loudspeakers ready to deafen you.
At one time, I was in
Playa del Ingles on the island of Gran Canaria, their Pride is usually the
second weekend of May. Unfortunately, most of the Prides would be cancelled
this year, about 500 on one count, some will be adapted to take place online as
digital Pride events. [See link below.]
Prides of the future
In June 2016, I
joined up with the Barclays team called Spectrum for the London Pride which we
were a main sponsor of, it was the first time I had walked in a Pride march in
the UK apart from being a spectator or going to park activities after the
parade.
I cannot say what the
world would become after the pall of this pandemic is lifted, the way we would
manage crowds and marches for all sorts of celebrations and how life might
change between the consideration of risk and damning the consequences. However,
I hope that in the aftermath, we would all celebrate our common and diverse
humanity.
There is a Pride march
in the not too distant future that my husband and I would participate in,
marriage is on the cards; it would be the joy of our lives for Brian and I to
pose and say to the world, Happy Pride Month.
Germany has a way
with issues and one I have observed and only just captured a good picture of is
the consequence of the Container
Deposit Legislation.
Anytime there is a big outdoor event there are people with bags or suitcases, sometimes on foot or wheeling bicycles or even with supermarket trolleys collecting containers.
These are for single use containers as cans, plastic bottles and glass bottles, the empty bottles cost €0.25 each at the returns point and all affected containers are labelled pfand.
What makes this legislation quite bizarre is a black market created by reason of people not necessarily caring about returning their containers to reclaim their pfand deposits. At first, people had to return the containers to their original point-of-purchase; that was eventually eased for them to be returned to any place where the refunds can be made.
So, picking on
bottles, riffling through bins and at night peering in with a torchlight,
collectors have made a trade that could yield a free €25 for 100 bottles and
when a festival is in town, beyond the jostling for the bottle when there is
competition, it could be a health sum in these hard times.
The police are your friends
In the past 12
years, I think I attended every Berlin
CSD bar one, besides Berlin in June being warm, sunny and fun, there are
too many museums to visit, old friends to meet, decent Nigerian restaurants to
visit, the main one for me being Ebe-Ano
after Fifty-Fifty closed early last year.
Ebe-Ano is central too
and quite easy to get to. Ebe Ano, Pohlstraße 52, D-10785 Berlin, +49 30 609 69
627.
However, what is
more striking about CSD parades is
the presence of the police who act as bookends to the march, in their cars and
as outriders before the street sweepers take up the rear cleaning up as if
nothing happened.
The Landespolizei are your friends even though they man war-like tanks on football match days and can be quite fierce looking, armed to the teeth, they are rarely, at least not to my knowledge even found in acts of abuse of power as the Sichersheitdienst (SD)
or Gestapo of the Nazi era were wont to demonstrate.
The right to be protected
In many other countries, especially to the East of Germany, the police would probably be testing the strength of their truncheons and their preparedness for riot management on demonstrations of great diversity as a Pride march. Here in Berlin, major arteries of traffic and business roads are closed off for the safe celebration of the CSD.
It is not only a
celebration of our diverse humanity, but it sounds out the voice of acceptance
and the community that Gay Rights are Human Rights too.
Along with the
crowds that gather to watch the parades, most of whom are straight with
generations of their families, a society at ease with all that inhabit it
regardless of persuasion is one destined to thrive.
For many other countries
where the state apparatus is used to harass and persecute those that are
different, in that picture is a long story from oppression and extermination in
the Nazi
Concentration Camps to respectful and celebratory co-existence – that is
civilisation.
Not just a manhole cover
I could remember
when we moved to our new home in Isolo, Lagos in September 1980, the grills on the gutters of the main road were made in Kaiserlautern, Germany.
Nothing could be so
distant from the heartland of Nigeria than to have products of other countries
cover the dregs and waste of our people, a significant story of what has always
been the unrealised potential of Nigeria. The tragedy of our steel industry is best
left untold.
Yet, after all these
years of visiting Berlin, I looked down at a manhole cover and noticed there
was something quite significant about it.
It was no ordinary
lid covering the waterworks distribution infrastructure, but a celebration of
the City of Berlin with images of the major Berlin landmarks as the Brandenburg Gate, the Fernsehturm at
Alexanderplatz, the Reichstag
parliament building, the Siegessäule (Victory
Column) and the Kaiser
Wilhelm Memorial Church of the structures I can recognise.
All of these places
are worth a visit when in Berlin amongst other historic places that represent
ancient, imperial, Nazi, post-War and united Berlin. They even had an exhibition of
manhole covers in 2011.
Just one of the
many quirky things that one sees, innocuous but still significant. I love
Berlin.
This represents a difficult subject and one of a very intimate nature that would well benefit from the kind of articulation I have brought to many issues that I have covered on my blog in the last 6 years.
I have been fortunate to have been born in Europe but had part of my development experience in Africa making me a product of the influence of all the cultures in which I have lived.
As a person of colour, one is in a minority but it does not then mean one should as well assume an inferiority complex. I have been blessed with a sense of awareness and being that has allowed me wade through the unfortunate scrapes with racism, snide belittlement and patronising conduct without being so negatively affected.
Comfortable in one’s skin
One somehow has a quality of assertiveness, if not wit where such encounters occur but not the legs to run when those situations have turned unnecessarily violent; in any case, I have refused to allow those experiences to take root and destroy the quality of self-esteem I believe I possess.
One place however where I have had some difficulty is where within a minority you then find vestiges of bigoted, intolerant, reprehensible behaviour, that just leaves you almost speechless, agitated and occasionally annoyed.
As I attended the Berlin Christopher Street Day [1] (CSD) celebrations, whilst I got wind of the event beforehand, I did not stay to witness it because I was quite exhausted and wanted to return to my hotel to rest.
Distancing from Homo-nationalism
Judith Butler [2], a renowned philosopher was being honoured with the ZivilCourage prize by the Berlin CSD, she was present but in the speech that they thought would be an acceptance speech, she declined the award castigating the pall of homo-nationalism that had become integral to the LGBT [3] movement in Germany and Europe to the exclusion of the recognition of the work, activities and plight of LGBT minorities.
It was a bold and brave stance to take [4] though the Berlin CSD organisers refused to engage or address the issues she raised and exhorted everyone to party on regardless.
A debate must ensue beyond the stereotypes that suppose that immigrants from the Global South are generally homophobic, intolerant, isolationist and illiberal in what has become a racist complicity perpetrated by organisations that are supposed to know better with their history of struggles for recognition, rights, fairness and justice.
A minority ignoring their minorities
The fact is we find such attitudes too amongst right-wing elements of Western societies and their fundamentalist counterparts around the world who abuse the purpose of religion to alienate, castigate, bastardise and condemn others in their quest for some sort of communal purity.
In the process, we forget that even amongst the indigenes of the Global South are people very much like us who suffer persecution in their homelands, rejection from their communities and in some cases serious violence amongst us in the West as their so-called loved ones portend to restore honour to their flawed ideals of perfection by eliminating what they consider as different or in the extreme abominable.
It is a shame that the seemingly emancipated networks of support created by organisations like the CSD cater mainly for their own without giving recognition to the activities, travails or issues that similar organisations catering for minorities try to address.
You come out to their public activities and might well assume that all minorities are heterosexual apart from the token few that dot the landscape only for their brazenness and boldness.
Killed for her sexuality
I am therefore pleased that not only has Judith Butler shed light on a subject many do not want to address, Angela Davis [5] has added her voice [6] to the matter.
What is interesting on the whole is that this situation is not limited to Berlin or Germany. In October 2009, an 18-year old Belgo-Moroccan girl, Layla Hachichi [7], was brutally murdered by her parents in an exorcism ritual which on examination was to rid the girl of her lesbianism.
The parents for all sorts of absurd reasons with the fact that they live in the West have surely not been able to understand the society they reside in. Whilst they might not have been able to accept the idea of their daughter’s homosexuality, the heinous crime of murder described in ways that make mediaeval torture tame is completely unforgiveable.
A silence so despicable
The sadder aspect of this is that it took almost six months for the Belgian umbrella LGBT organisation, Çavaria [8], to comment on the matter with the excuse that they did not have enough detail on the matter.
When an organisation like Çavaria is afraid to speak up for one of their own who just happens to be of immigrant stock for the fear of hurting the sensibilities of the community that has committed such atrocious crimes against a person for their sexuality, you begin to wonder if those organisation are from hence worthy of existence having failed to speak up for the voiceless, the helpless, the incapable and the unfortunate.
To redeem themselves they have assumed the stance of amicus curiae in the case giving them access to all facts of the case seeking justice for the girl. Though one must state that the facts leading to the murder of the girl had appeared in more than 60 articles, the excuse is flimsy at best.
No hiding place for Homo-nationalism
With Judith Butler, Angela Davis and many other commentators giving voice to this travesty, LGBT organisations would no longer have a hiding place when they are derelict in their responsibilities to all their constituency; obvious members, the oppressed, the ostracised or the afraid - that includes minorities in the West and those that suffer under unspeakable sanction in faraway lands.
Any LGBT gathering that fails to accommodate the minorities as part and parcel of the whole representation of the LGBT community at home first and abroad would cast the organisers as hypocritical and devoid of values, seriously unworthy of the social justice mantle they claim to have and detriment to any further struggle for rights and fairness as they will be open to justifiable criticism and derision. They have no hiding place anymore.
Probably a mega-container load of imitation Michelangelo-Davids was smuggled into Germany and tipped over in the heart of Berlin’s Kurfurstendamm as sculpted bodies of firm abdominal muscle filled everyone with a political correct green of envy.
Forget the fake Rolex, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, Dior, Gucci or common Calvin Kline; made in China for a farthing and sold in Europe for a bomb, for the sake of vanity some might just cost an arm and a meal – hedonism is in town.
Six-packs, on floats and on the road like a rerun of I Robot clones masquerading as men, one could almost read a by-line in the gossip columns that made that rather unkind observation, we are growing old and it is showing. Must get the PA to book a lunch date with Dr. 90210.
Show it, flaunt it
It was Christopher Street Day as it is known in German-speaking countries, Gay Pride in others, the whole town could see the flamboyance, hear the noise and it was as good a family day out for a spectacle as any.
It somehow make up for the bare-arsed cheek of a hotel guest who wearing leather chaps forgot to wear denims underneath as he stepped out of the lift to present himself to the public in mooning glory – that beats the sagging trousers, you couldn’t get gob-smacked for it was too impolite an observation to react to.
As we watched the parade, the weather gave way to the forecast, it poured rain like the flood was back, we all sought shelter, but the parade weathered that storm as we empathised about how those perfect bodies crafted in the addiction of gym worship got drenched “to the skin” – they had nothing on top and basically swimming trunks – ditch “to the skin”, they were literally naked.
Well, really, there was too much jealousy in the air to be that concerned, if those bodies dissolved like salt in water we probably would have rejoiced, no end, we would have been the best bodies around.
Dragging the shoes
Meanwhile, many got into their glad rags and most especially those in drag – the clothes were feminine, but no naturally born woman would wear dresses like that – I suppose that is the litmus test between drag and women’s fashion.
I could not help but notice a few shoes and boots, heels so high, you will need a space shuttle to ascend to the point where the feet rest on the in-lays, any normal person would instantly suffer vertigo. As the rain subsided for the semblance of sunshine to reappear, I snapped a few shoes that walk our streets only just once a year.
You will have to wait till tomorrow to see the whole collection. Here is a sampler.
