Gay Shame

Gay Shame is a movement from within the LGBT and queer communities described as a radical alternative to gay mainstreaming and directly posits an alternative view of traditional "gay pride" events and activities which have become increasingly commercialized with corporate sponsors and "safer" agendas to avoid offending supporters and sponsors. The Gay Shame movement has grown to embrace radical expression, counter-culture ideologies and avant-garde arts and artists.

Gay shame was created, named in opposition to, and as a protest of, the overcommercialization of the "gay pride" events. Members attack "queer assimilation" in what they perceive as oppressive and conservative societal structures -- as such its members disagree with the legalization of same-sex marriage. Gay Shame began in 1998 as an annual event in Brooklyn, New York. Held for a number of years at DUMBA, an artists' run collective center, bands such as Three Dollar Bill and Kiki and Herb and speakers such as Eileen Myles, Mattilda aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore and Penny Arcade appeared at the first event, and the evening was documented by Scott Berry and released as the film Gay Shame 98. Swallow Your Pride was a zine published by the people involved in planning Gay Shame in New York. Three issues were released. The movement later spread to San Francisco, Toronto, and Sweden. The San Francisco Gay Shame became a non-hierarchical direct-action group that continues to this day.

An academic conference at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor occurred in March, 2003. During that weekend, there was friction between the activists and the academics, growing out of different strategies, and the activists' claim that the academics didn't do enough to acknowledge their power and class privilege, and to share more of that with the activists.

There have also been events titled "Gay Shame and Lesbian Weakness" in London, England associated with the club night Duckie run by Amy Lame. Although documentation about when the first event happened is hard to come by, the event was occurring annually by 1998, if not earlier. The 2004 event was billed as "Now in its 9th great year." The event includes performance art and queer-bash make-overs and is also referred to as 'The Annual Festival of Homosexual Misery'. In 2006, Duckie presented EuroShame.

From 2001 to 2004, there were Shame events in Stockholm, Sweden.