The Commercialization of Pride

A few weeks ago, I was at what I hope was the worst event of the year. It was a con in Colorado Springs—and as bad a reputation as the Springs has, I’ve overall found it very welcoming. I live here, shop here, and do events here. This specific event had very few people and a lot of vendors.

There was a gentleman at the booth next to me who was talking and joking in a way that you do with temporary neighbors for a weekend. At least until he realized I am trans. His mouth closed up, and his eyes refused to even acknowledge that I existed. Fine. Even if it makes for a long weekend.

Except that the other vendors loved him. One in particular kept trying to convince him to sign up for Gayborhood. This is a small business vending opportunity at Denver Pride. “It’s where the money is at,” this vendor said. All weekend, I heard her start this conversation with my neighbor. Not once would she engage with me. She was fine taking money from queer people as long as she didn’t have to be in community with us. This is a theme I have heard over and over again about Pride. Straight people will take queer money, but they don’t want to actually interact with us. It’s like they think Pride is about them.

I wonder if LGBTQIA+ vendors are prioritized at Gayborhood Market. I wasn’t accepted into Gayborhood Market this year or last. I’m disappointed. I would be lying if I said otherwise. I will be doing several other Pride festivals this year. I did almost all of them last year, and I loved the communities so much. I am excited to go back.

However, Denver is the biggest. It has the most people. And this year I lost my day job (allegedly) for being trans. It is the year I need the support of our community the most, so I can stay afloat and keep writing our stories.

How many of the straight vendors who see us only for our wallets got accepted? I honestly do not know.

I do have a theory about why I wasn’t accepted, why no queer author I know was accepted.

Denver Pride partnered with a bookstore this year. This bookstore only sells romance and is straight-owned. At the same time, the Denver queer bookstore announced it had to shut down. Instead of supporting a queer-owned business, they are instead supporting one that, once again, is exploiting the queer community.

The event that they are hosting is called the “Smutty Scholastic Book Fair.” As an aro/ace queer trans/non-binary author of science fiction and fantasy, nowhere do I fall in as a smut or romance author. So this event may be the reason that no queer authors, to my knowledge, who applied to the Gayborhood Market were accepted. However, this event is gatekeeping and eroticizing queerness.

Last year, I did an event at this bookstore. I was one of the few queer authors at the event that was touted to be a LGBTQIA+ book event, and it is probably the inspiration for the whole idea this year. But I was at least included. To be clear, last year’s event was at the store but not hosted by the store. I found the owners extremely nice and was thankful for their allowing us to pay to use their parking lot for this event. I had a positive opinion of them. I no longer do.

You see, they sent out an email to the organizer of last year’s event. As a queer author, that email was forwarded to me. The email, which I will include below, does a general call out for queer authors. I am queer. I was at the event. So, I was confused about the actual nature of this “Smutty Scholastic Book Fair.” I sent them an email (also below) asking for clarification. I expected something telling me the event was romance-focused. I hoped they would realize that their messaging was defining queerness as romance and smut, and that was problematic at its core—again, this event is being hosted by a non-queer bookstore, and to my knowledge, not personally a part of the queer community. As of writing this, they have not even bothered to reply to my email.

I have since found out that Denver Pride sent them at least some authors’ contact information. Romance authors were reached out to. To my knowledge, non-romance authors were not. So a straight bookstore is gatekeeping what it means to be queer, and Denver Pride is sponsoring it. An event that the bookstore doesn’t even have listed on its website. It is unclear how much Denver Pride knows about which authors are being included. At least some authors’ information was submitted to the bookstore without consent or knowledge of the authors. If all authors’ information were shared, then only romance authors were reached out to. However, Denver Pride is the organization promoting the event, and they are clearly advertising it as a “Smutty Scholastic Book Fair,” indicating that they seem to accept queerness being equated to smut.

The whole event is a question on the part of the authors. Romance authors who have been included are not having their questions answered. Authors like me have not received responses. And the communication going out is problematic for the queer community and continues to conflate queerness with sex or at least sexuality, making asexual, aromantic, and trans/non-binary people completely invisible in this entire situation.

Pride started as a protest. Now, when we are fighting for our basic right to exist—when the state next door just invalidated IDs of trans people—we are allowing straight people to continue to exploit us at our own events. I am so tired of fighting to be allowed to exist in the world. Why do I have to fight to be allowed to exist in queer spaces?

 

The emails

To be clear, I am sharing these emails as evidence of what I wrote about in the post. Please do not call or harass either The Spicy Librarian or Denver Pride. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect—including queer people.

Sent from the bookstore

Hi!

I am partnering with Awakening and Denver Pride to host a Smutty Scholastic Book Fair on June 13th. I was wondering if you could give me the contact information of the authors that participated in our signing last June. My goal is to have an entire section of queer local authors books during the event (so if you know any others who you think would love to have their books stocked at this event send their information my way as well). 

Of course, this also includes us stocking your books during the event as well. And if you are doing another charity anthology, we'd love to have that. 

Our plan is to buy a limited stock from each author (on Ingram or directly from them) and have everyone come in the week on June 1^st to sign their stock. 

Thanks for the help! 

Sydney Ivey

My Email to the bookstore

Good morning, Sydney,

I received Ky's email yesterday and wanted to reach out before assuming I qualified.

I participated in last year's LGBTQIA+ book event at your store, and it was a wonderful experience. However, I write queer SFF—not romance or spicy content. I'm trans/non-binary, aromantic, and asexual, and my books reflect that, but given that this year's event is framed as a smutty scholastic book fair, I wasn't sure whether the call for queer authors was intended to include authors like me, or whether you were primarily looking for queer romance and erotica writers.

I wanted to check before reaching out to participate.

 

Thank you,

MJ James, MS (they/them)

Queer and Neurodiverse SFF Author

MJ-James.com