Guest post: The world’s first calendar spiral
Originally a comment by Artymorty on + Month.
A purity spiral in action:
In 1970 it was Pride Day.
By the mid-1990s it was Pride Week.
By the turn of the millennium it was starting to be called Pride Month.
By 2022 the Canadian government had declared all of summer, from June to September, as “Pride Season.”
And now, just a year later, of course, Diversity, Equity, and Incusion busybodies want to extend the season through October.
This will just about get queer people safely to the end of the second week of November, which is the start of Trans Awareness Week. And the day after that is of course the Trans Day of Visibility.
In case you’re worried about that two-week prideless interlude in which people have the nerve to celebrate World War I veterans instead of the real heroes — the Rainbow People — there’s Intersex Remembrance Day on November 8th. But many believe that’s still not enough queer remembrance for November, so there’s an active campaign to ensure the whole month of November is celebrated as Trans Awareness Month.
And earlier in the year, for those who can’t wait until June to express their pride, we’ve got the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia in May, and before that, there’s International Asexuality Day in early April.
Next year we won’t even have to wait until April, because Sunday March 31st is the most holy day of them all: Trans Visibility Day, which unenlightened cisheteronormative folk insultingly refer to as Easter Sunday.
Oh! And speaking of Jesus: south of the Equator, Mardi Gras has already become Australia’s gay pride celebration season.
And back up here, the exclusionary cisheteronormative “Valentine’s Day” is counterprogrammed with Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, for the seven days following February 14th.
What’s left?
Christmas, New Year’s, and in the U.S., Martin Luther King Jr. Day, remain shamefully unqueer.
But I’m sure GLAAD and Justin Trudeau will team up and make a plan to fix those holidays, too. For one thing, the “+” doesn’t even have a single day yet, let alone a week or a month!
Here, for free, are some suggestions:
Christ+ day
Martin Luther Drag King Week
New Year’s Resolution to End All Queerphobias Eve
Oh, I dunno. ‘Christ+ day’ could well put the mess back into Christmess. Worth a try, surely.
There aren’t any World War 1 (and it’s The Great War damnit!) veterans so that’s losing the plot a bit.
It sounds vaguely medieval – when every third day was a saints’ festival. This did mean getting some Holydays off. Then the Protestants came along and abolished the lot, including Christmas in some parts.
And, not to be forgotten are that both Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day are days to reflect on how transwomen are women.
The sign-off line of Tom Lehrer’s National Brotherhood Week was …be grateful that it doesn’t last all year!. Not only that, but both he and Henry Kissinger are still alive too!
I love Tom Lehrer.