Pride Month: To avoid aggressive tribalism, the movement should embrace being 'glad' instead of proud – Kate Copstick

Humanity’s tendency to divide itself into different tribes, of one kind or another, can have dangerous consequences

It is the middle of June and we are up to our sexually political parts in Pride Month. Oh yes, a whole month of being Proud. I am fairly sure that the proudest people in the month are the ones who spun a month of commercialising and merchandising out of a celebration of a victory for a hitherto oppressed minority. But I digress.

In the words of Adrienne Rich, poet, feminist, lesbian and one of America's most influential intellectuals (so, a woman with much to be proud of), “pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling”. I think she nailed it there.

I do feel that we might be heading into Pride Saturation nowadays. Here, in the West, anyway. Now that most of the big battles have been fought for the kids, we are encouraged to be oppressively proud about everything. Hierarchically, exclusively proud, which is not a useful kind of proud, although nothing new. There are, after all, some horrific examples from history of weaponised ethnic 'pride'. Pride isn't a big thinker. Loves a flag, though.

People celebrate Pride Month in Glasgow last year (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Once upon a lifetime time ago, I had just discovered that there was a name for what I was. Bisexual. I was happy with that. Glasgow was not exactly Copacabana-on-Clyde but I was pointed at an establishment called the Scottish Minorities' Group (I know… you can taste the fun already, can't you) and I was thrilled. Down the back of a close at Charing Cross, I felt like the Ugly Duckling about to be recognised as a swan.

The door was opened by someone who looked like Spongebob Squarepants' very angry sister. Having confirmed that this was 'the place', she looked me up and down like a Scot in an English Greggs looking at a pork link on their ordered roll 'n' square slice. She enquired as to my sexuality. As soon as the 'B' word was uttered, she sneered, snorted and slammed the door in my face.

I went to take part in New York's Gay Pride not long after, having failed to learn that, in the gay camp, to hijack George Orwell, “some are more equal (and proud) than others”. At the start of the event, I was informed that bisexuals and transvestites were only allowed to join in several blocks down the route, bisexuality and transvestism being deemed worthy of about half a mile less pride. Hmmm.

But, obviously, we do not only have 'Pride' in how we identify sexually. From times long before you could change your pronouns with your hair colour, the human animal has sought out their tribe, whether they are born into it or have achieved or developed membership. That is natural. Not always wonderful. But natural.

Black, white, young, old, rich, poor, Scottish, English and – growing up in Paisley when I did – Catholic, Protestant. There were, famously, three questions one Paisley Buddy asked another, when meeting for the first time, away from home: one, where are you from? two, what is your name and, if the second is not a giveaway, three, what school did you go to? In other words, what tribe are you? Catholic or Protestant? Rangers or Celtic?

You ignore tribes at your peril. Look at, for example, Eastern Europe. “Hello chaps, we won the war and you are now Yugoslavia, carry on!” That went well. Colonialism has brought, in its wake, unspeakable bloodshed as the 'tribes' – the ethnicities – the cultures, and the religions reasserted their identities from the appalling chop-up the West inflicted. It is still continuing. You cannot ignore tribes. You just have to be careful about how and why we create them. Cults, gangs… all just tribes.

Nowadays very different tribes are proliferating everywhere and humanity as a species is dividing and subdividing like bacteria in a petrie dish. We are ring-fencing and creating tribes out of everything from sexual and gender identities, through diagnoses neurological and psychological, to morphology.

Different tribes in music and art have long been around and, with the 'alternative' revolution, even comedy shattered into factions of funny. Try explaining to a Stewart Lee fan why Michael McIntyre is funny. Tribalism.

Your tribe can and should be something to be proud of, not a weapon to turn on others. In one week, a variety of angry and accusatory tribespeople have criticised me for being godless, white, cis, a switch-hitter, old, and a “bleeding-heart liberal”. Guilty to all. But does that make me a bad person? (Answers to The Scotsman, please.)

I am (who would guess?) a fan of the spaces in between. We need the spaces in between. My happiest moments have been coming onstage at Madame Jojos and being introduced, by the Madame herself, as “Copstick, who proves camp is not just for the queens” and a time in Kenya when, out there with charity Mama Biashara, I was described as “a spoiled mzungu (white person). It is only her skin that is white."

So listen to Adrienne Rich... and if 'pride', rather than making you feel positive about yourself, simply makes you see others negatively, then I would say, go with Tom Robinson. In 1978 – when homosexuality was classified as disease number 302.0 by the World Health Organisation – Tom exhorted us to Sing If You’re Glad to Be Gay. And we did. We waved our arms and lifted our voices and we were glad. Glad always seemed more fun than proud.

There is, too often nowadays, little joy in pride. Pride gets aggressive. Glad is just happy to be there, who you are, how you are.