Omega Point

Critical Pride Part 2: Midnight Mass & the Dyke March

As a fol­lowup to some of the dis­cus­sion result­ing from yesterday’s post com­par­ing Pride and Crit­i­cal Mass, I thought I’d extend the metaphor to my pre­ferred alter­na­tive events: Mid­night Mass and the Dyke March.

Speak­ing per­son­ally, Pride is gen­er­ally not gen­er­ally my thing: it’s loud, it’s hot, and the parade, at least, is not really par­tic­i­pa­tory. I don’t like watch­ing things, I like doing things. One of the things I like doing is the Van­cou­ver Dyke March.

Rather than a spec­ta­tor, I find myself tak­ing the role of a par­tic­i­pant, walk­ing up Com­mer­cial Drive with friends, amongst a fairly laid-back crowd, where one is more likely to see women with strollers than thongs. Hon­estly, I like the fact that it’s a smaller event, as well: for me, there’s a much greater feel­ing of com­mu­nity than I feel at Pride.

But back to Mid­night Mass. (“That’s a Catholic thing, right?”) Some­times! In this post, how­ever, Mid­night Mass is Vancouver’s answer to LA’s Mid­night Ridazz group: a reg­u­lar late-night ride through LA — with a num­ber of reg­u­lars num­ber­ing in the thousands.

When I look at the Mid­night Ridazz site, the first thing that stands out to me is a shout-out to an LAPD offi­cer that escorted them on a recent ride:

The Mid­night Ridazz would like to extend a sin­cere thanks to the LAPD and espe­cially to the offi­cer (whose name we did not get) who recently helped to escort our ride through the streets of Los Ange­les. We are all part of the neigh­bor­hoods we ride and we sup­port the LAPD!

Hear­ing this mes­sage from a loose group with a strong DIY, anti-commercial per­spec­tive is likely sur­pris­ing for any­one expect­ing this to be Crit­i­cal Mass at night, but the Mid­night Ridazz’ site describes the ride as both anti-confrontational and apo­lit­i­cal as well.

Respect for space, dri­vers and the sleep­ing res­i­dents of the neigh­bour­hoods through which they ride is also a core value of Vancouver’s Mid­night Mass com­mu­nity: In this post to Vancouver’s Mid­night Mass Live­Jour­nal com­mu­nity from 2007, one par­tic­i­pant shares his con­cerns about the ride becom­ing too rowdy.

We don’t need to ride 6 peo­ple abreast and block 3 lanes of traf­fic. There are only like 20 odd peo­ple; this isn’t Crit­i­cal Mass. We really should keep over to the side and just take one lane. It is all we need.

I can appre­ci­ate this because it’s not jus­ti­fy­ing, nor crit­i­ciz­ing Crit­i­cal Mass. The point is that this isn’t Crit­i­cal Mass. Rather, the author is just point­ing out the dif­fer­ences between con­duct expected among the small crowd present at Mid­night Mass and what was observed.

“So Cather­ine, if you’re skep­ti­cal of both Pride and Crit­i­cal Mass and a fan of both their smaller, less-flashy coun­ter­parts, does that make you some­one who just hates things because they’re popular?”

You hush. The Dyke March has its roots in some­what more con­fronta­tional pol­i­tics than the Pride parade, orig­i­nat­ing as a protest both in favour of les­bian (and later, bisex­ual and trans­gen­der) rights, as well as against misog­yny within the gay rights move­ment of the 80s and 90s.

(Also, yes, yes it does.)

So, if you’re inter­ested, the Van­cou­ver Dyke March begins walk­ing towards Grand­view Park from McSpad­den Park at 12 noon this Sat­ur­day, August 1st. I hope to see you there!

Mid­night Mass Van­cou­ver occurs every sec­ond and fourth Thurs­day of the month, start­ing from Grand­view Park at 12 mid­night. I am usu­ally in bed by this time.

Orga­niz­ers of both events rec­om­mend show­ing up early to meet fel­low participants.