Pride movement
Pride movements are responses to biased treatment of a group or class of people. The pride movement itself asserts pride in the group or class identity, including its history, attributes, members of the group, and so on. It suggests a strong sense of self-respect and a refusal to feel shame or to have one's group disrespected.
Pride movements are an aspect of identity politics. A pride movement can apply to any kind of group or class:
- groups and classes that face significant social, legal, and economic discrimination (such as African-Americans in the US; women in most parts of the world; queers in most parts of the world);
- groups and classes that potentially face significant discrimination (such as atheists, members of minority religions or politics, other sexual minorities, members of some occupations, fat people, people with certain illnesses);
- groups and classes that face relatively minor discrimination, such as embarrassing stereotypes (for instance, Irish-Americans, who were discriminated against in the late 19th century but who today face little or no discrimination of any sort; remnants of historical discrimination remain in song and language (such as "paddy wagons"; librarians, who are often unhappy with the stereotype that they are prissy spinsters with their hair in buns; SF fans, comic book fans, and computer nerds, who have similarly faced stereotypes and caricatures on The Simpsons)
- groups or classes of any other sort; for instance, citizens of a country are often encouraged to feel "nationalism", a type of pride towards one's "nation" (government, history, land, ethnic people, military forces, military interventions and excursions — however variously defined)
Classes and groups may have defined themselves prior to the discrimination, or they may take on their identity as a result of the discrimination. For instance, immigrants from various parts of the world to the US may already have a unique linguistic and cultural identity prior to any experiences of discrimination. Discrimination may then encourage greater group identity, or may destroy the group identity and encourage assimilation. People may also come to identify as a group because they are so identified by others.
Aspects of pride
Pride movements primarily focus on proclaiming feelings of joy in one's group; whether the feelings on the unique attributes of that group. For instance, the girl power movement took pride in girlishness and femininity. The black pride movement in the US celebrated African American history and culture.
Pride movements may be simply a cultural movement or an overt political movement, typically (but not always) depending on the degree and level of discrimination faced by the community. For instance, the black pride movement in the US was associated with the black power movement, and the gay pride movement around the world is associated with a significant drive to end legal and social discrimination.
Cultural aspects of pride movements are also often key. The women's movement developed numerous cultural outlets to facilitate and foster women's culture: women's presses, women's music festivals, women's bookstores, and so on. This aspect of separatist feminism was in large part an identity pride movement. The black pride movement had its own cultural artifacts, such as James Brown's song, "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud," fashions showing ethnic pride (hairstyles and fabrics from Africa or with African motifs), black presses and a very strong musical tradition that has essentially defined US music and a significant portion of modern music. Celtic and Irish pride have taken on different faces in the US and the UK: In the US, they are largely a cultural movement centered around Irish-American identity, pubs, infatuation with Celtic mythology, St. Patrick's Day celebrations, and so on. Librarians have developed a fairly extensive catalog of humorous librarian-pride paraphernalia, such as pins and buttons that say "Nobody knows I'm a librarian"; "For sex see librarian". Booklovers congregate on LibraryThing, take great pleasure in showing off their book collections (see the numerous book-oriented pins, earrings, and paraphernalia sold at the American Library Association meeting; see badgerbag tshirt "My bookshelves can beat up your bookshelves".)
Pride and class hostility
While a pride movement is by definition focused on the positive (the pride in that group), there may sometimes be a fine line between A's pride in A, and A's criticism of, hatred of, or class hostility toward B.
From the perspective of members of a disenfranchised or discriminated-against minority or group of people, it can be an important step to turn negative rhetoric, stereotyping, and favoritism against the privileged class. That turn-around can itself be useful for individuals, who thus may remove some of the sting from the privileged class members' insults or discrimination. It may simply sometimes feel good to exact a little retribution or in-kind. Hence, women may speak disparagingly of men or boys; African-Americans may speak disparagingly of white people in the US; queers may speak disparagingly of straight "breeders". This can show up in hostile language ("breeders", "rednecks", "testosterone poisoning"); works of art and literature (rape revenge fantasies; woman only worlds); and in tense relations between the classes.
From the perspective of members of the privileged class, it can be an uncomfortable experience to be on the other side of hostile or discriminatory remarks or behavior. However, this can be a productive learning experience for people. It can create empathy, or open up the person's eyes to the awareness of the class or the experience of members of the "other" class. As such, experiencing some form of class hostility can often be a useful corrective for members of the privileged class to be the victims of turnabout. However, it can also be unproductive or even counterproductive for some individuals. Some people will be defensive to the point of being unable to learn from the experience; some people will feel it unfair even if they understand and sympathize with the political context; etc.
While expressing class hostility can have positive benefits for members of oppressed classes, and experiencing it can even be a positive or neutral experience for members of the oppressing classes, class hostility (as opposed to pure "pride) can also contribute negatively to resolving class tensions. This can be the case both on an individual basis and in larger group political dynamics. Individually, it can sometimes cause communications to break down between people. A number of good pieces have been written to explain why oppressed classes sometimes need to express class hostility as well as pride and sometimes separatism. See:
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Some people (usually members of the privileged class) will use such rhetoric to fuel charges of "reverse sexism", "reverse racism", etc.; or to try to draw false equivalencies in comparisons between the oppressed and oppressing classes. This is often a ploy to conceal a discriminatory intent (as in the "white pride movement" discussed below). However, these responses may also sometimes represent a genuine lack of understanding about sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination. For instance, they may suggest that someone understands sexism simply to mean individual acts of deliberate and conscious bias by someone on the basis of sex or gender. This understanding neglects to take into account unconscious bias and systematic bias. The failure to achieve the larger understanding may represent simple ignorance or willful ignorance.
Additionally, some people (usually members of the privileged class) will try to confuse distinctions between expressing pride; critiquing or analyzing discrimination in a situation; and expressing class hostility. In discussion, this confusion may lead to a strawfeminist argument. For instance, Jan points out that a particular award panel seems to have been extremely sexist, noting their disparate analyses and descriptions of works that featured female characters or were by female authors and comparing those to analyses and descriptions of works featuring male characters or by male authors. In response, Terry suggests that Jan hates male writers or that this kind of feminist analysis relies on a hatred of men. This analysis both (a) conflates misandry with feminism (a double or triple conflation, since feminism is not exactly equivalent to girl power or other women's pride movements); and (b) fails to engage with the substance of Jan's analysis.
In its most extreme form, members of oppressing classes may seek to establish "pride movements" in their class. People practicing this kind of crypto-racism or crypto-sexism seek to disguise themselves as a pride movement, equivalent or parallel to an oppressed class' pride movement. The classic example is the "white pride" "movement", which purports to simply advocate "white pride" analogously to "black pride", while in fact promoting racist discrimination. The men's rights movement is a similar example, and an example of backlash against the women's rights movement.
See also
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