[crowd cheers]
Hi and welcome to another episode of "you
DONT deserve a drink" there show where we talk
about the real issues. Like the lightness
of being and the weight of capitalism.
But today we're here to talk about "what
is camp?" This year's Met gala saw stars
utterly fail at bringing camp to the
most important gala of the year. They all
followed Susan Sontag's
"notes on camp" which defined "camp as
"artifice taken seriously." But who cares
what she said. She's dead.
Much like the morals of the corporations
taking advantage of LGBT folks' desperate
need for representation. But I'm getting
ahead of myself. I guess what we're
really here to talk about today is: is
pride TM camp?
[transitional disco music]
Hey you might have been expecting Ruben also known as Queer Xicano Chisme
Who you can follow at the @ the at below.
But today you're getting Kitsch Loren...uh. Kitsch Lorena.
And we're gonna talk about modern day camp.
I mean pride. I mean pride.
We're here to talk about pride. And really the mess that it is now a day. And the best way to
do that is with a couple of cocktails. So
I'm gonna be talking about some pretty
interesting things that have shaped
modern pride and kind of assign a
cocktail to them. First up we're gonna be
talking about pink washing. You might
have heard this term before it's also
known as rainbow washing and it really
entails when corporations or political
figures or social figures paint this
veneer of LGBT Allyship around June
Pride Month to kind of redo their image
or pander to the LGBT community
some examples of corporations are like
Amazon who was given an ally award by
the HRC in recent times but who still
fails to pay their employees a living
wage. Does the HRC not
that LGBT folks work for Amazon? Because
they certainly do and they certainly do
not get paid a motherfucking living wage.
On a more political level there's people
like, of course, Donald Trump who is
obviously, we all know, a bigot. Right. But
he recently tweeted his support for the
LGBT community,
all while implementing anti-trans
legislation left and right since he came
into the picture. On the more liberal
spectrum we have folks like Joe Biden
who recently tweeted his support of the
LGBT community saying that a lot of the
setbacks are seeing are due to Donald
Trump's presidency. But girl we got the
Internet and what do we find on the
Internet? Other than porn. Your dirty
dirty history. And so there we find one
of Joe Biden's biggest claims to allyship:
passing same-sex marriage under
Obama's presidency. But if you remember
correctly, as I hope you do, Obama
celebratory speech came with a little hustle
and bustle when trans Latina activist
Jennicet Gutiérrez spoke out in
defense of all the trans women held in
detention centers.
Over the years, we've gathered to celebrate Pride Month and
I've told you that I'm so hopeful about
what we can accomplish. I told you that
the civil rights of LGBT Americans..
[muffled] President Obama!
Release all LGBTQ detention centers. President Obama!
[shhhh'ing]
Stop the torture of Trans women in detention centers
President Obama! I am a Trans woman
I'm tired of the abuse. I'm tired of the violence. [through shhh'ing]
Obama: You're in my house! [crowd laughing at Jennicet]
As a general rule I am just fine with a
few hecklers. But not when I'm up in the house.
And so, as we saw in that video of
Jennicet calling out Obama
All while his buddy Joe
Biden stood by and laughed along with
him and ultimately got Jennicet
Gutiérrez expelled from the event. Listen
if you want to call yourself an LGBT
ally you have to be an ally to all LGBT
people. Not just the folks that seem
palatable to you. You have to be an ally
to LGBT folks who are refugees who are
immigrants. And what kind of allyship
is you putting trans women in detention
centers? It kind of seems like the
opposite of allyship to me. But what I
know? I'm just a common drunk here on youtube.
Another more pertinent form of
pinkwashing is this very platform we
have today: YouTube. Who waves around their queer creators around June and promotes
diversity on their platform all while
allowing bigots to run amuck. Just
recently Vox journalist Carlos Maza
called out YouTube for allowing this
dude Crowder to consistently harass him
for years.
Once Carlos Maza's call out became viral
YouTube responded that it would not
cancel Crowder's channel because... well
they were really tripping over their
word they really didn't really give a
clear reason. They said that their Terms
of Service doesn't outright outlaw like
bullying or harassment but then you look
at that Terms of Service and it does and
so it's like what the heck? And so
ultimately YouTube's like we're gonna demonetize this Crowder person. And it's
like this foo doesn't make his money
off of like monetization. Like really
nobody does. He makes his money of all
the products he hawks, his Blaze TV
contract: where he gives mofockers
like mugs and shit for like signing up to
that right-wing youtube, I mean what is it
like a streaming service it's like a
Netflix for bigots right. And so what
good was YouTube being like "we love queer
people" if it's not gonna help
actually change the material conditions
of queer people, of trans people? Ff it's
gonna allow them to be harassed on their
platform. That's just showmanship. And
that's pinkwashing (or rainbowwashing).
And what better drink to symbolize pinkwashing or rainbowwashing then a Cosmo?!
Shout out Carrie Bradshaw. Alright so for
this drink you're gonna need:
[dance music plays over recipe]
And then you put it all together
And then you shake that shit.
[tumbler shaking noises]
[gay screaming]
[exasperated] oof I don't know why everything's falling out!
[gay laughter]
shake that shit
And then we pour it into our desired vessel.
so here we go [drink pouring noises]
So, for your Pride party
before you go to the protest obvious not to that gay ass parade
downtown and weho. Just kidding Ima
be there too. Probably. for you little a
[gay witch cackle]
For your little party you can have this Cosmo. Right. It's
pink to represent pinkwashing. You can
have a real discussion with your friends
and family about the futility of showing
Allyship without actually trying to
positively impact the material
conditions of LGBT folks. And
after they have that discussion you can
throw the drink back.
And I mean like actually back.
[sound of poorly made cosmo hitting the rainbow flag]
[cackle of a messy queen]
Why throw the drink back? Cuz there's
already too much liquor at fucking Pride.
But real talk because that's kind
of what pinkwashing does to to any type
of LGBT Pride. It like soils it. It taints
it. That brings us to our next topic
Rainbow capitalism
[dance music over title sequence card]
So sometimes people use rainbow capitalism and pink washing
hand in hand or interchangeably because
they kind of, they kind of have like
similar implications. Or rather they're
both concerned with consumption and
corporations selling you something. With
pink washing though it is mainly selling
you an image. With rainbow capitalism
it's literally selling you a product. See
you got all of a sudden in June you got
like rainbow Oreos, like a rainbow
mouthwash, and like a rainbow
panties, and like rainbow... rainbow everything.
I can't even I can't even
list off the amount of rainbow things
there happens to be in June that don't
exist year round. Usually companies
pretend that like a small portion of
their profit goes to some sort of org
that supports LGBT folks but rarely are
there ever very clear on like how much
money is being given how exactly that
money is being used and how much a
company is directly profiting from LGBT
folks. And while we're on the topic of
companies donating a certain percentage
of their funds to nonprofit, let's talk
about my favorite fellows: the HRC. Whose
Sylvia River was famously against
to her dying breath. And Sylvia Rivera, we'll talk about that bad bitch in a minute
But, HRC let's talk about them. A
2016 report noted that the HRC also
known as a human rights campaign has
hiring and workplace structures that
benefits cisgender white gay men over almost all other
demographics. This is evident in who
makes up their boards and who makes up
the face of that nonprofit. A 2017
study which is the most recent of its
kind took a census of all of the grants
given to LGBT related organizations and
causes and found that less than 1% of
them went to folks who were economically
disadvantaged, that means working class or severely below the poverty line, folks
who were disabled, folks who are sex
workers, and folks who are survivors of
domestic violence. The fact that they
haven't given grants to programs that
help LGBT sex workers is especially
horrible given that Sylvia Rivera and
Marsha P Johnson, often noted as the
mothers of the modern LGBT rights
movement, were leaders of the S.T.A.R.
organization, which stands for:
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization that helped LGBT folks,
primarily trans folks, who were homeless
and who were doing sex work. Sylva Nevada
herself and Marsha P Johnson both noted
how they often did sex work in order to
survive, a thing that's still going on
today given the fact that trans people
can be discriminated in the workplace in
most places in this country. Things like
that are why Sylvia Rivera once said"
"One of our main goals right now is to
destroy the Human Rights Campaign
because I'm tired of sitting in the back
of a bumper." So what good are all these
brands selling you rainbow products and
representacion, representation, and
things of that nature
if A they're not gonna be transparent
about where their money is going andB
they're gonna give it to places like the
HRC which do nothing to really help the
material tangible conditions of LGBT
folks. Places like HRC and GLAAAD are overfunded
they don't need any more funding.
And yet, that's the first place where
everybody goes specially celebrities and
their followers to show that they
support the LGBT community. If they
really wanted to help folks tangibly
they would donate to folks in need
directly. Another part of rainbow
capitalism is when companies openly support an LGBT
event but then behind closed doors they
do things that harm LGBT people. One of
the most notable instances is this is
Gilead, the mass producer of prep the HIV
preventive pill (PrEP). This pill can cause
folks up to $4,000 a month without
insurance. With insurance is a whole lot
less and there's ways to sometimes get
it for free if you're part of a certain
target demographic. But often folks don't
have access to these. The black and Latinx community are some of the most
impacted groups as far as HIV goes and
they are some of the least likely to
take Truvada or PrEP. And that's because
it's inaccessible to them. Gilead has an
opportunity to make the patent for
Truvada available so that they can
mass-produce it and make it more readily
available but they choose not to. They
choose to instead make a profit up a
very important pill that can keep a lot
of folks HIV negative. And to represent
rainbow capitalism we're gonna be making
a Manhattan. Because what better place to
represent capitalism then the Upper East
Side (which I hope is in Manhattan I
don't know I barely paid him into Gossip
Girl even though I watched it
religiously as a child). Whatever we're
making a Manhattan! huh (gay laugh) and for that you're gonna need whiskey you're gonna
need Agostura bitters, sweet vermouth, and
apparently a cherry. But we don't got
cherries because I don't like that shit.
So then you're gonna put it in the tumbler thing.
[gay screaming]
I'm making a bigger mess than I thought I was gonna make.
And then you're gonna shake it.
And then, what do we do with Rainbow Capitalism?
That's right remember we throw it back. Cuz there's already too much fuckin liquor at pride.
And we should really be investing in sober spaces.
So allowing corporations to take over pride isn't
only bad for the aforementioned reasons,
but also because more corporations in
Pride parades means that these
corporations are gonna want to protect
their interests. And how that translates is
with more police presence at pride parades.
Something you might question
like why security is a bad thing a pride
parade. Especially in spaces where we
might be receiving more homophobic
attention or where people might feel more
vulnerable. But the thing is that police
make people more vulnerable particularly
black folks and other people of color;
and even more specifically trans women
who are often seen as sex workers and
criminalized because of that by police
officers. And so when we look at the
actual purpose of policing, which is to
protect property in capital interests, we
see that that comes at the expense of
queer and trans people of color. This
becomes even more evident as we've
seen that various black organizers have
been arrested for protesting at pride
events; most notably black lives matter
protesters who were calling attention to
the murder of black people, which
includes of course LGBT people. We cannot talk about LGBT liberation without also
talking about liberation for black folks
and other people of color. These two
things are interlocked inseparable
because there are people who embody both of
these identities. And because of that it
is really it's a paradox to be Pro-cop
and pro LGBT folks because one of these
hurts the other group. Furthermore, siding
with police officers also tends to be a
product of homo nationalism, which is
allegiance to the state. A state
that doesn't necessarily have their best interest in mind.
And so like a blaring
example of this is Pete Booty gaygg
Boot edge edge booth edge edge... girl we're never gonna say that right.
that's not a real last name. uh-huh
Pete booty gage bootie egg.. recently said in
an interview that he doesn't believe
that incarcerated people should vote and
at first glance this might seems to some
of y'all as a good thing but one of the
most important things to remember is
that a state that makes it so its
prisoners can not vote is a state that
is now very invested in imprisoning its
opposition. When you imprison an
opposition they can't vote anymore they
become non-citizens. As it pertains to LGBT folks we have to
remember that our foremothers like
Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were
constantly criminalized. Other LGBT
leaders like Angela Davis and Miss Major
have dedicated their entire lives to
abolition work. However rainbow
capitalism, pinkwashing,
and homonationalism, all work hand in
hand to ensure that we believe that
police presence at pride is a good thing.
If you feel protected by police officers
and that makes you feel safer than I
think it's time to ask yourselves why
that is. And to signify police officers
we're going to use Fireball because I'm
not even gonna mix this gonna go just
like right in the trash. Like do not pass
GO. Every other thing I like covered the
label because I didn't want to promote
it. But there's an anti promotion for
Fireball. This is literally fucking like
battery acid. We're not gonna make mix it
we're just gonna like, we gonna thrown it in the trash. Or as it pertains, as it's relevant
to the video, we're just gonna pour it on the flag. Make a mess of the flag because that's
what all these bad things do. They make a
mess of things that should be making us proud.
ultimately I believe that pride has to
get back to the history of resistance
under which pride was founded. On June
28th 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in
New York, on this night a police raid was
trying to arrest a bunch of LGBT folks
but many folks, most notably Stormée, Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha P Johnson, fought
back against police officers. Throwing
bricks, rocks, shot glasses, and anything
else they could find. The riots went on for
at least another day and were one of the
big booms to really set off the modern
LGBT rights movement. And so honoring
that history of resistance means
providing for LGBTQ family however we
can and defending them even if it means
throwing a brick or two.
[dramatic crashing sounds]
the bigger it is the more camp points you get. So how's that for incentive.
So, hashtag #ThrowABrickBitch
And so, what impactful things can
you do a to actually celebrate pride
all year long and materially help LGBT
folks. Well you can join and help orgs
like black and pink who write
incarcerated LGBT folks who are often
the most forgotten. And you can also get
involved in abolition work. You can help
organizations that help sex workers such
as the SWOP. As remember, a lot of
LGBT folks often do sex work as again
labor laws often discriminate against
trans people specifically but other
queer folks as well. Which brings up
labor laws. We can fight for just labor
laws that establish that you cannot
discriminate LGBT folks in your
workplace. You can help fight LGBT
homelessness because remember that 40
percent of the homeless youth population
is LGBT and most of them are black and
Latinx.
This can also entail giving directly
to people in need when you see their
GoFundMe or their PayPals or their
cashmes circulate. You can follow
hashtags like #TransCrowdFund which directly gives to trans people in need.
Those are just some ways that you can
start giving directly to people. You can
also hire LGBT folks year-round. Don't
only get an artist or a lecturer LGBT
lecturer when it's the Pride Month
celebrations. Hire them year long so
they have like sustainable income not
just like a annual burst of money when
people remember that LGBT creators exist.
Established that type of safety
net for folks. Which also brings up: buy
from LGBT indie creators. There's so
many of them so talented that you don't
need to be spending your money at Target
for Pride flags or Pride gear. You can gonna make your own.
You can buy from indie creators. I
made this myself just not for sale it's
like one of a kind very exclusive very
pride TM. You can make your spaces,
including pride, accessible to disabled
folks. Pride as it stands is so
inaccessible to folks who are disabled
and so we really need to get on that in
all of our spaces. We can center LGBT
folks in our work always. What I mean by
centering is that you begin any event,
any org,
by thinking about LGBT folks and wanting
to provide for them first. Particularly
folks of color particularly trans women
of color. Think about how we can help
them first and then build around that.
Protecting our most vulnerable
ensures that everybody is protected. I
use the word center because center means
that things are built with this person
in mind. Including folks, the
language of "inclusion" implies that
things were not meant for a specific
group but they were included afterwards
right often as an afterthought.
another important thing you can do is
actively defend trans people. We can
defend trans people year-round. It's of
the utmost importance. Just in the last
few weeks alone there's been five Black
trans women who have been murdered
because our inaction is part of the
problem a lot of times. Sometimes
we think oh we buy this rainbow gear and
then that's it and like we support the
right companies and that's gonna change
everything. But it's like nah we need
like active defense, active participation
in the defense of LGBT folks, specifically
trans women, trans people, and even more
specifically Black Trans women.
That's because Black Trans women embody identities that are most attacked globally.
So, it is up to us to defend them when the
state is just not gonna do it.
And som that brings me to my original
question: is modern-day pride, camp?
And well the answer is multifaceted.
We know that pinkwashing and/or rainbow
washing, rainbow capitalism, that's not
camp. That's exploitative. it's
it's all artifice and no no joy, no
celebration, it is mainstream, while
camp is like counterculture. Cops. Cops
are not camp. Very much not camp. Just
if you take anything else: cops are not
camp. But pride can be camp if we get
back to our revolutionary state. If
we get back to a point of celebration. So
Pride can have room for kinksters and
drag queens and all shades of LGBT and
it can also have room for anger and
protests and sorrow and joy and
celebration of the fullness of the LGBTQ experience, and an
honoring of why we're even allowed to
celebrate pride to begin with. And
that's because of the sacrifice of many
LGBT leaders of color who are
fighting back against a state that
didn't want them alive. And it is only by
honoring this history, that  Pride can be
truly camp and thus revolutionary.
[dance music over credits]
Thank you for watching this video. Again
if you want support all of my content
you can support me on patreon at
patreon.com/QueerXicanoChisme
Shout out to all my patrons here
for making this possible. Lord knows that
none of my videos would be possible
without their support. If you want to
book me to speak at your school in the
fall or the winter there's also links
for that down below and yeah happy pride
y'all
Revolution NOW
