About the Rally, I want to say...] David Kee: Observations on the LGBT Rally

Author: David Chih (Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Chengchi University) 26 September 2012

The development of the Gay Pride March in Taiwan has been amazing. A few features are worth mentioning:

I. The scale is huge:
　　The number of participants in the Taipei Rally has increased from 2,000 ten years ago to tens of thousands in recent years, making it one of the largest LGBT rallies in Asia.

II. Pluralism of appeals:
　　At the Taipei Rally, you can see the diversity of participants in the rally - in addition to handsome men and beautiful women proving the necessity and power of lust, AIDS human rights activists (including children with AIDS), physically and mentally challenged gays, labor groups, and so on also took to the streets, demonstrating the diversity of the rally's aspirations.

III. Diversity of locations:
　　In addition to Taipei, rallies were also held in Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Hualien, allowing the LGBT contingent to go out of Taipei and travel throughout Taiwan as far as possible.
 

The above features are some of the characteristics of the Taiwan LGBTQ Rally, and the general public who pays more attention to the dynamics of the rally will also notice them.

In addition to these obvious features, there are a few other lesser-visible characteristics to look out for:

Organizational structure of the organizing body:
　　The organizer of the rally is not a public entity, nor is it a public relations firm, but a non-profit organization - yet its ability to organize an event for tens of thousands of people is no less than that of a public propaganda campaign or a performance organized by a public relations firm. The rally organizer's unifying force is not business opportunities but the idea of human rights and dignity for LGBT people, and the process and results of this unifying force are proof of the maturity of the LGBT movement in Taiwan.

Keep a distance from the business world:
　　I have seen several pages of the march handbook listing dozens of sponsors for the gay march in the United States, and most of the floats at the march venue were painted with the logos of various corporations, but I have not seen any of these in the gay march in Taiwan. The fact that Taiwan's gay parade has so far kept its distance from the business world, and has not received any corporate sponsorships (or indeed any official subsidies), should be an ongoing controversial issue outside of the gay movement.
Taking money from businesses and seeing a large number of corporate logos in the march certainly gives people a euphoria (look, major corporations have come to stand up for gays and lesbians), but this euphoria tends to obscure the real demands of the gay and lesbian marches, and misleads people into thinking that "gays and lesbians have already been given enough support, and gays and lesbians have already been made happy";
By not taking money from corporations, the demands of the LGBT march are more prominent, and LGBT people can sing about their subjectivity without being subject to the considerations of the official or business sectors - this kind of grassroots nature is especially valuable when the whole world is money-oriented. However, I also think that in five or ten years' time, the overall situation may be even more commercialized, and the LGBT march still needs to consider the strategy of cooperating with the business sector in advance (not only the question of whether or not to do it, but also the question of not only whether to do it, but also how to do it.)

Six, the Gay Pride march had little visibility in the mainstream media:
　　Some of our friends checked the news on TV and newspapers after the rally, and were saddened to find that the media hardly reported on the LGBT rally anymore. This is something we can think about: the LGBT movement needed to cooperate with the mainstream media in the 1990s, but nowadays it is very difficult for the two sides to get along.
The mainstream media has turned a blind eye to most of the marches and protests (and not just the gay ones), preferring to report on night market food and celebrity scandals, and some of them are almost burning down their own signboards. Any pursuit of social justice must seek more diverse and flexible channels outside of the mainstream media. Facebook is one such channel, but smart gays and lesbians will use their imaginations to realize that eggs need to be placed in many different baskets.