Leather Pride Parade in Toronto
A few weeks ago, just after Pride, I wrote what Pride was for me – or at least, one part of it.
Sunday culminated with the combination of the “Church St. Fair”, formerly the “Church St. Fetish Fair”, and Toronto Leather Pride.
The Church St. Fetish Fair was a weekend designed for a number of reasons:
- for sexual minorities to show their pride.
- for people to recognize that “it’s okay” to be kinky – after all, everyone has their kink.
- it was designed to bring more people to the Church St. Business Improvement Area. As long as we acknowledge that at some level, it was for capitalistic reasons, and I am fine with that. After all, Church St has a number of independent businesses that I would prefer to support over larger commercial enterprises.
I believe the event in the past did create a safe space where people could wear their fetish clothing during the day and display their sexuality, rather than having to ‘hide it’ away in a club or bar, and people could explore things in a non-threatening environment. After all, that is one aspect of what Church St. is about – sexuality. Why would we want that sanitized in the days of conservatism in Toronto and in Canada?
So this year, the BIA decided to drop the Fetish aspect based on many reasons as described in this podcast episode for a kinky internet radio show, sanitizing the event. The one reason I am most offended at was that, to paraphrase, businesses didn’t like kinky folk standing in front of their stores doing things like standing in diapers or flogging out of fear that people wouldn’t return to those businesses?
Kinky folk are not allowed in the Gay Village?
I knew the Gay Village was going mainstream, but hadn’t realized just how mainstream.
Excuse me, but the Church St. Fetish Fair was meant to be an adult event. Church St by it’s very existence has always been a more adult place. While I may not be interested in one person’s fetish, who I am I to censor? If you’re looking for something much more open and inclusive, that’s what Pride is about. I will also add that if you want to be inclusive, then you also need to be inclusive of kinky folk when it comes to Church St. You cannot just say, “We want everyone but you, you’re not welcome” especially on a street that was built on and celebrates sexual minorities.
Needless to say, Church St. witnessed it’s first Leather Pride parade yesterday. Kinky people – players, lifestylers, fetishists, pan, bi, gay, straight, two spirited – you name it – came together walked up and down Church St in a celebration to say, “Hi, we are here, and we’re not going away.”
While some would disagree with the flash mob and parade. I do support this initiative and it made a point. We are still around, there are a LOT of us and we will not be pushed back into the leather or sex closet.
It’s important for these businesses to know that the same people that purchase from them, are the same people that some have talked about negatively.
And needless to say, the BIA realized their mistake:
- The Ferris Wheel and Bouncy Castles went largely unused. The mechanical bull was quite busy.
- There were still a bunch of independent fetish businesses that sold their products on the street despite the drop in the number of vendors.
- Overall attendance, I’m sure, was down because most of the kinky leather folk who would have spent their hard earned dollars, gladly supporting Church St. Businesses, supported Zipperz who were the Sunday hosts of Toronto Leather Pride. Smart move for Zipperz.
- celebrating who I am,
- the ability to be who I am in light of all the work that has been done by others that have come before me
- to tell the world that it’s okay to be who you are regardless of sexuality, gender identity, gender, body type
- taking a stand as a community, to take our place in community
- showing that there are different ways to live and to love.
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Great post, Iain, and I agree with your overall view etc, but I’ve noticed that there is an incorrect premise that has been creeping within the leather community, and you touch on it here. Of the three reasons you state that the BIA created the fair, only one is correct. I was on the management board of the BIA and one of the people that helped to create the fair; I was then on the fair committee for three or four years. The BIA did not create the fair for sexual minorities to show their pride, nor nor for people to recognize that it’s okay to be kinky. Those are “political” reasons that fall outside the BIA mandate and it’s raison d’etre. The BIA is not a community funded organization; it’s mandate, goals and ‘community responsibility’ are no the same as, for instance, Pride Toronto. The only reason the BIA created the fair was to bring more people to the Church St Business Improvement Area. The BIA exists to support its members, which are are businesses, not individuals; its mandate is to grow the business activity in the district. The reason that the fair became a “fetish fair” was also a conscious “business” decision: it played to the strength and character of the neighbourhood, and why people are drawn to it at Pride and Halloween, etc, and that theme would set itself apart from every other fair in the city, as no one by the ‘gay village’ would ever attempt such a scandalous fair. But those decisions were all business decisions, not political. There are political and community and safe space benefits that are a byproduct, but they are not THE reason the fair was created. Why this is relevant is that when gauging what a community organization does, it’s important to base the assessment on “what actually it does; why it actually exists; and what its actual mandate is” …though we often base such things on what we think they SHOULD be, or what we think they SHOULD do. The BIA has no responsibility to leather folk or the leather community — that is not the membership that pays for the approximately $55,000 in costs of the fair, businesses fund that. The leather community enjoys the collateral benefit that the event is about us, but it could have been otherwise, like a drag festival like NCY’s Wig Stock. Also, to be clear, the level of support for the fair has not really changed much since the early days: some businesses were always opposed to it. And each year whether it would continue the next year, has been a bone of contention since the fair started. The only difference today is that the board has more people on it who are opposed to the fair, than in the first 4-5 years of the BIA’s existence. I am not supportive of the BIA’s attempts to change the focus of the fair away from fetish — not because I believe it’s their role or mandate from a political level or mandate; it isn’t — but I think the mainstreaming of the fair is a bad idea because it’s a “bad business decision” … The niche and, for some, odd focus of fetish is what made the fair successful because as an event, it’s not offered anywhere else in Toronto; there are dozen of other bland family fairs. And what I find disheartening is that the motivations of those on the board that want to make this change seem to focused on reasons other than ‘sound business decisions’… They made the change: attendance is down; the $16,000 of games/rides went largely unused; vendors were down… As an organization that exists only to support and promote business activity within the district, it’s clear to me that the mainstreaming of the fair isn’t a very good business decision, and that’s what BIA members should hold the board accountable for. … So, all that said, it’s not a rebuttal to the overall themes of your posting which ring very true, but it’s simply more background, some of which is being lost with time, as well as being distorted by some of the leather folk involved in the day.