My First Pride

I went to Tokyo Pride today, and I marched. I am somehow very very proud of this fact. It felt really really good and like I was doing something good too.

So I went to Yoyogi Park and around the stalls listened to speakers on the stage and bumped into the Dykenetwork ladies…and marched with the Chestnut and Squirrel group and their float. The Chestnut and Squirrel is the International Dykebar in Shibuya run by a very lovely lady, Chubabe. For those not conversent in Japanese Chestnut and Squirrel translates as Kuri to Ris (now run the words together, a little faster, faster, pretend you’re speaking in a heavy Japanese accent…got it? good) ah the beauty of the bilingual play on words!

I’ve been involved in a number of marches but always before for purely political reasons, peace marches mainly, I’ve never marched before because of who I was. I mean yes obviously there is a political element to any sort of gay pride event, but I was marching and saying ‘this is who I am, this is a part of who we all are, and we think that this is ok to be like us’.

It was a curiously different feeling, and very much there was a feeling of solidarity, we knew that we were all alike in a particular way and we knew that we were saying ‘look at this part of me’ to Tokyo. I’m not sure I can explain it, just a feeling of complete okness with myself and a sense that it’s ok to be me in front of the glaring lights of the city. It’s not something I think I could have predicted feeling because it’s not as though I have any particular issues with being myself but it is true that in general life people assume me to be straight and I’m not. I don’t feel its particularly appropriate for me to go up to everyone and say ‘hello I’m Mish, I’m bisexual and you?’ and so I just accept without really noticing that acceptance that most people are going to assume straightness until proven otherwise. I mean I fit very nicely into that category; two boyfriends, generally more luck with men than women…as Blue Eyes said recently I’m a very bad lesbian.

Do other people need to know that I’m bi? Not really unless I’m going to be trying to pick them up…bisexuality, it’s a part of my sex life and parts of my social life not something that is needed, anymore then any other sexuality for the rest of my life…but to be in a group of people where the assumption is made that I like women. It’s an exhilarating feeling. Its a feeling of ‘yes, yes, you’re right and I don’t need to tell you’. I imagine though if I lived that side of the fence for very long then places where people assumed I was straight would assume that sense of ‘yes, yes, you’re right I like men’. Sometimes it’s strange to be a minority within whichever sexuality grouping you’re in.