JD/ June 22, 2017/ Events, Pride

Pride Month was a good month for visiBi*lity. We had a table at the street festival (“andersrum ist nicht verkehrt” ~ “the other way round isn’t wrong”) in Otto-Bauer-Gasse, had a table at Pride Village and marched at the parade!

Andersrum-ist-nicht-verkehrt street festival

It took place on June 3rd and we were there and handed out flyers, talked to people about our cause and were simply visible. The festival itself was pretty neat, if a bit loud (especially since we were directly next to the speaker) and not even 20 minutes of heavy rain could dampen our mood. Quite a few people came over and asked who we were and why we were there. Our bi sweets (in pink, purple and blue) were quite the hit.
Unfortunately there were a few negative aspects: Some of us noticed that homosexual couples and people that walked by wrinkled their noses when they saw our banner. But that is also exactly the reason why we do this!

Pride Village

Our presence at Pride Village was pretty awesome. We didn’t have the best place (on the right side of the stage, where there was literally nothing but two small tents), but we had a few advantages, that attracted people: it wasn’t too loud, we were in the shadows of city hall and it was quite windy. Since it was very hot during these 4 days, a lot of people sought refuge in our cool area. We really reached a lot of people: Bi*sexuals that didn’t know that a group exists, homosexuals who had questions and maybe some prejudices, as well as heterosexuals, who struggled with similar questions. As I noticed in a lot of discussions, what we said brought a few people to think about prejudices and how they might have failed the bisexuals in the community – and that is worth a lot.

Rainbow parade / CSD

On Saturday, the highlight of Vienna Pride took place: our CSD, also called rainbow parade. Luckily it wasn’t as hot as before, it was even very windy and rained a bit. So we decided to leave the banner in our tent and just took a huge bisexual flag with us.
Our core group consisted of about 20 people, during the march new people joined us and some left. At times we were quite a big group and definitely visible! Again, we handed out flyers and, just like last year, we didn’t have enough. Our number was 61 out of 67, so we were quite far back and it took ages until we actually left from our gathering point. But when it was finally our turn, we had a good time and danced to the drummers that marched in front of us. Again, we were pretty cheerful and even wind and rain couldn’t put an end to that.

But it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The more attention pride gains, the more trucks take part and the less small groups like ours get seen. We were photographed often, but we can hardly find any pictures of us. If you’re not extra loud, extra colourful, extra in-your-face and don’t party enough, you aren’t that interesting, apparently. So a little less party and a little more demonstration wouldn’t hurt our CSD…

But all in all Pride was a success for us. We learned that we have to organise better and sooner, but we’re still young and next year will be better – we’ll definitely bring enough flyers! We spread our message and are excited to see many new faces at our next meetup on July 4th! 🙂

Share this Post