A TRULY INCLUSIVE PRIDE MUST INCLUDE BUSINESSES TOO.
Borders. Economy. Diverse.
At last year’s Pride in London, I was one float along from Disney. This meant that I marched to the sound of Let It Go on loop… for three hours in thirty degree heat. And even though I left with my ears bleeding, fantasising about performing a lobotomy on Princess Elsa with an icicle, I’m proud I spent the day shoulder to shoulder with the corporate section of Pride, as part of the advertising and marketing LGBTQ organisation PrideAM. Shortly afterwards, The Guardian ran an opinion piece from Peter Tatchell who wrote that “corporate floats, and onerous rules have ripped out the heart of a once political march with a party atmosphere.” Then, a few months later, I sat on a LGBTQ business panel alongside Pride in London organisers where I heard ‘the business world’ (whatever that is) blamed time and time again for everything from making the whole day less fun in general, to cynically and deliberately stealing the space of the diverse voices within our community that should have been given a bier platform.
I’m not denying we need to hold a critical magnifying glass up to Pride. When much of what you see at Pride is a sea of white abs trying to get their perfect #pride #instagay post to follow on from their earlier #avocado #brunch via Instastory, we have a problem. It’s clear we need more diverse voices and to double down on the political purpose of the day, especially if that means thinking about the LGBTQ world beyond our borders.
I also agree with Peter Tatchell on the need to protect the fun and the party atmosphere to not let Pride get too sanitised and boring. But what doesn’t make sense to me is the suestion that including businesses is somehow at odds with the true meaning of Pride.
The first thing that we have to remember is that businesses don’t march at Pride — employees do. Businesses are not inanimate objects. Businesses, especially given the high proportion of service industries in the UK’s economy, are people and they win or lose as a result of how talented and motivated these people are — more so than as a result of factories or any other fixed assets. Employees who march at Pride under their company’s banner are not carrying out a PR exercise on the whipping orders of an evil and cynical marketing director — they are generally a group of people who are celebrating the fact that today they can be who they are at work and don’t have to hide their identity when they put on a suit or a uniform. And they should be allowed to celebrate this, but it hasn’t always been that way.
We have short memories. It was only in 2003 that it became illegal for employers to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation, and only in 2010 that the Equalities Act offered protection from direct and indirect discrimination, victimisation and harassment to LGBTQ employees. Our very recent history as a community is a history of talented people that have had to spend the majority of their life, five out of seven days, pretending to be someone else to get by, or get ahead. Them biting their tongue in the face of bullying, or being denied access to a career all together, let alone flourishing.
We still need to encourage more businesses to empower their employees to march because working culture in our businesses still has a long way to go. The world of work still isn’t open to everyone in our community, especially the trans community, where unemployment remains far higher than the national average. Only 51% of LGBTQ people are out
feel a responsibility to amplify the fact that queer people are still murdered in modern America just for who they are and who they love. “Certainly we all feel an obligation, but often that obligation is very much aligned with the need within ourselves,” Lilah explains. “Conveniently it was a song we felt pretty good about putting into the world as we feel like the world needs it, but at the same time it’s just something we needed to do for ourselves.”
But with such a raw, powerful and highly sensitive subject matter, how difficult is it to encapsulate that within a song? Ezra thinks for a second. “I would say, particularly the feeling surrounding cataclysm, trauma, and tragedy really alludes a state of being encapsulated,” he starts. “So just like anything we say – in this interview included – and just like anything we make or write, it doesn’t ever serve really to encapsulate the feeling, it’s just an attempt.”
As they stated up front, Sons of an Illustrious Father are very aware of their privilege as white people, but are also cognizant of the fact their platform can be be used as a weapon to enact change – especially in the current political climate. “I think what can be really powerful at this time is to create for ourselves a mode of response and a mode of care, where we can both respond to the intense and constant and ridiculous hellstorm of these times,” says Ezra. “But we can also care for ourselves and make space to care for ourselves, so we can do that and do it effectively, so that attempting to respond or stay present with this constant barrage of atrocities doesn’t overcome us as individuals and as a collective across the earth. In trying to respond to it, we have to continue to care for ourselves and each other, and even doing that is a radical act in a time that’s full of such rampant carelessness.”
With that in mind, it’ll come as no surprise that simply existing as a “genrequeer” band and exploring ideas of sexuality and gender in their work means they have come up against resistance from alt-right groups on the modern-day battleground we call social media. “From the beginning there have been strange, sometimes negative and damning responses to what wedo,” Ezra reveals. “I remember in the early stages of the band, Lilah had an internet showdown with the Westboro Baptist Church.”
But let’s not dwell on the negative responses they’ve had, and instead focus on the response they’ve had from fans who have connected to their music as means of understanding and accepting who they are. “We’ve had a lot of experiences at this point,” says Ezra. “Just getting to know really amazing people who find in our music, or in who we are as people on this planet, a helpful reminder of who they are and that they can be accepted and known and loved as – which is their authentic self. Despite everything exciting at this time, you also have all these homes across the planet wherein children don’t get that affirmation, and then when they grow up in the world we’ve created, can continue to not get it in their personal lives or the spheres they exist in. It’s been really touching to know people perhaps have been in that stru®le, and have found us as a part of their journey through and beyond that stru®le.”
Conversation quickly turns to the music icons who helped them understand who they were when they were younger. David Bowie, Patti Smith and Rage Against The Machine all come out quickly as personal inspirations, giving an insight to the influences that preside over Sons of an Illustrious Father’s own music. But for Lilah, her idols helped her in deeply personal ways. “For me with Bowie and Patti Smith, I was, as a child, deeply confused about my own gender and gender performance, and what was possible,” she says. “This was carving out space in the world for what one feels like is their authentic self. Seeing those artists, to somebody so radical and being so welcomed for it – it was life-saving for me.”
As queer people, we know all too well the shackles that society can burden us with. For those of you who have seen Ezra Miller’s turn as Credence Barebone in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, you’ll know that the character serves as a metaphor for the darkness that’s born from someone repressed by society for who they truly are – leading to dire consequences. The film is a prequel to the Harry Potter series and written by the book’s author JK Rowling. Set in the wizarding world 70 years before Harry turns up for his first year at Hogwarts, Credence lives during a time when being a wizard was dangerous and the mu®le world feared them for being ‘other’. He attempts to restrain and hide his magical ability and eventually it causes him great harm. The parallels between Credence’s experience and that of LGBTQ people in the 20th Century – and still to this day – didn’t go unnoticed.
“I was drawn to the role for a wide plethora of reasons, and that was definitely one of them,” says Ezra. The 25-year-old will return for the sequel Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald later this year in November, but his lips remain sealed when we dig for any hints of how the next installment will play out. He did, however, offer a little insight into the future of Credence and how he deals with the oppression he faces. “It will definitely be the continued exploration of that character as he progresses through other chapters of his life.”
But before Ezra’s next big blockbuster movie, Sons of an Illustrious Father have the little matter of releasing their new album in June. We’ve already been treated to a handful of tracks from the collection, including US Gay, Extraordinary Rendition, and When Things Fall Apart. But for Lilah, one of her favourite moments on the album resides on the final track, which came about by accident. “When we were recording the last song Samscars there was some radio interference with my guitar, and it turned out to be a man giving a sermon,” she explains. “He said the words ‘God honouring music’ and then we started the song. It was a moment of the strange, miraculous, biological, and technological.” Ezra stops for a moment before deadpanning: “Shout out to random radio signals for our favourite moment on the album!” So, as we promised earlier, let’s talk about this album title. Deus Sex Machina: Or,
Moving Slowly Beyond Nikola Tesla doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But it does, however, have plenty of meaning behind it – as we found out. “The first part comes from the Greek, Euripidean theatre term apos machinist deus,” Ezra starts. “This is how the crane would drop the players into a scene suddenly, or pull them out in a way that seems miraculous. It would often serve as a miraculous moment in the plotline of the early theatrical pieces. It’s essentially the idea between the ethereal, the body and the machine. It’s got the Euripedian influence, the James Brown influence, and sort of the Rage Against The Machine influence. I was thinking about it today as ‘God Sex The Machine’, but also ‘God Fuck The Machine’, instead of just rage against it.”
Stick with us as that was just the first part of the album title. Ezra proceeds: “Then Moving Slowly Beyond Nikola Tesla is our interpretation of what that conversation between God, the body (sex) and the machine (tools of the digital world) looks like. It’s where we perceive that to be in current times. So in the way that we transmit information, or the way we channel energy. We haven’t moved beyond even the first set of ideas about electricity that could have seen us all – as in Tesla’s dream – using free, endlessly renewable energy on the planet, instead of burning it to power our toys.” And breathe.
As we slowly digest that answer, Ezra quickly adds with a laugh: “That is the endlessly changing and sloppy explanation of the album title just for you.” And this is the endlessly fluid nature of Sons Of An Illustrious Father.
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Having been a mentally ill, disaffected queer youth, I know how much it can matter to see queer people
surviving and thriving.