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After the online spat over the Cork Wimmins weekend, you'd think people would learn.  But no.  It seems not.  A huge split has emerged in Galway over "Bród", the west's answer to Pride.  It was a popular little pride, in a tightly knit scene that did attract a slightly more hippyish following than its slicker east and north-east coast cousins.  It would appear that this initiated over disputes over payments owed to 2 of the main entertainment venues or promoters, and the non appearance of audited accounts for last year.  It ended up with 2 entirely separate committees being elected, one of which seemingly is resolutely refusing to resign in order to reelect a single committee for August's event.

Instead, its a form of Pride doomsday - a miniature Dinah Shore style-split which is erupting into two entirely separately different sets of events.  Some efforts appear to have been made by interested individuals who are concerned at the ability of the events to sustain themselves, not to mention the long term damage done by having two competing sets of events on a single weekend.  In the case of the Dinah, what really happened in 2006 was a reversion to the older model where several different events occured, based on the demographic of the attendees (for example there was a bunch of activites for golfers, the "Lina Shore" and another event for women over 35, the ProSuzy Dinah.   Each of these events is targetted at a particular age, level of interest in the golf itself, and the income level - ranging from a modest 500 dollars for the cheapest and well over 2000 dollars for the priciest.  While people argue that this was only sustainable because the figures attending the Dinah by 06 had escalated to over 20,000 women, in fact most of these events started out at just hundreds and built up over many years.

The question so isn't just about whether or not it is socially desireable that Galway Bród remain a single unified event, but to what extent the bringing together of the growing number of disparate groups within the community is sustainable in the long term if forced.  Many pride events in other cities - most notably London and Sydney - have almost fallen apart, but usually because of a problem with funding.  London almost went bankrupt in the early 1990s due to a lack of financial support from both participants and commercial interests, and in fact if I recall on one year got huge criticism after an organised pride party charged a hefty entrance fee in order to attend.  Sydney L&G Mardi Gras (considerably larger than the cities pride, which is a separate event) was bailed out by an unnamed benefactor after the event almost collapsed.  While the parade remains a free event, the lavish after parties and annual Harbour party the weekend prior are funded by substantial ticket charges as well as a popular sleaze ball the previous autumn.  Debates take place everwhere, with this years Maspalomas Gay pride publishing both a list of commercial operators who did and did not contribute to the pride events (under a general desire to "keep pride free").  Maspalomas has the unique position of taking place in a development that includes Europe's largest concentration of gay businesses.

However the situation is similar all over the world.  There is a perception amongst some community activists that businesses make a fortune from pride events without making a contribution back to the community.  Nobody seems to take into account that not all gay businesses make a fortune from concentrating on a gay clientele - obviously some of these people are too young to remember the unpleasantries over the transformation of the Parliment on Parliment St into the Turks Head Chop House, complete with what was at the time a perfectly legal new homophobic door policy that excluded the people who'd kept the business going for the previous ten years.  There is frequently an accusation levelled at certain elements of the dyke community that don't spend much, how they expect to be catered for if they are unwilling to lavishly blow the cash in gay bars.  And to be really honest, I really have to back that feeling - lesbians who moan and groan about the lack of venues catering for them really do need to consider the fact these places won't survive unless money is spent there.

The one thing I've really noticed, however, is a huge similarity between the stonewalling of debate on the CWFW and one lady on Facebook's diatribe on the facilitation group setup to try to "end the face" - this lady has even changed her name on FB to "Get Behind Galway Pride", I can only assume, in order to signify they "picked on" status of the problematic pride committee in a similar way that a few women semi-defended the CWFW policy on GC.  The difference in Galway I think is that the impact on the wider community is much more obvious.  In the case of CWFW, men are excluded anyway, a considerable number of gay/bi women marginalised, and most het women, and those like myself who just don't like it, don't go, withhold donations to organisations funding them as far as it is feasible to do so and realise quite well that hardcore groups like this eventually fizzle out due to lack of resources caused by their exclusion of others.  But Galway is different.  Pride involves thousands of people - from people who just come for the weekend to people who live out their social lives around the scene and need it.  There are people there who care enough about Bród to want it to be genuinely representative.

The one thing I recognised from the Cork situation was the numbers involved in turning up to so-called "community meetings" and how public meetings are manipulated and used as representative factions to control communities.  It would appear that different dates and times were circulated by different factions in the Galway feud in order to vote in representatives committees.  You have got to wonder why the determination to refuse to step down and meet with other groups is there for any reason other than pure raw power-mongering.  I notice a deep similarity with a particular other organisation who uses the vehicle of "community meetings" in order to hear the voice and take votes on decisions.  The reality of this, as I've previously pointed out, is that 30 people turn up as "representation" of a community of somewhere between 4000-9000 and then lay claim to "represent" them.  This is the kind of democracy that people riot about in the Middle East.

What is also similar is the vitriolic attacks on individuals and groups by those refusing to step down, and heat of anger at the fact that the dispute is made public.  But you know, thats what angered the old order in CWFW also - the fact their dirty linen was hung out.  Not because they don't want anybody to know, but because they don't want public debate - that will challenge the vice-like grip on power these groups depend on due to enforced silence ("we don't want to embarass the community do we?")  I expect one thing we are going to see a lot more of in the future with so-called community groups in the LGBT community in Ireland is who they are, who they really represent and who gains what from them.  For a long time, I've publicly highlighted the example of an "organisation" which calls itself "GISI".  This "organisation" is in fact just one person, who's endless attention-seeking campaigns display all the sophistication of a mental patient on the rampage.  Its unfortunate indeed that so many people are taken in by this rather sad and pathetic individual's outward charm and seeming simplicity and don't actually notice how all over the place the argument put forward is, or how damaging it may be to people on a rather confusing obstacle course in terms of personal gender identity.  Should you encounter anybody, I would remind you, claiming to be a "consultant" or "expert" on GID, I would recommend you quiz them thoroughly on their professional credentials as this indivudal has none whatsoever.

Again we are back to the confusing road as to how unrepresentative community organisations in the LGBT community have become and I seriously wonder if the current government actually unknowingly did us a favour in hacking financial backing for the Equality Authority.  Indeed what authority can any organisation have if it funds groups that are merely self-appointed advancers of a particular position in society?

Patience is a virtue they say.  Well its easy to talk about it, but if you live in the hottub world of the womens scene, patience might not seem to be a common thing.  Newcomers are horrified by the incestuous nature of relationships - circles of friends are intermingled with circles of current and former relationships and women seem unable to break out of this deeply incestuous pattern of opportunistic bonding, coupled with the inevitable increasing acceptability of breaching boundaries, wholescale exclusion of those outside of the "ring" and tolerance for some quite vicious bitchiness, particularly towards those not inside the "ring" or at its periphery.

TV programmes like the L-Word make light of the patterns of connections between women across the scene, often transcending geographic boundaries and frequently intermingling friendships and relationships.  In fact the reality is a more tightly bound system of relationships and pack-mentality like bonds.  One thing I noticed when visiting Maspalomas Pride in Gran Canaria in May 2008 was a huge boom in "group travel", groups of between 4 and 10 women who had come on a group holiday or prearranged to meet, often with a strong "bonding" element such as printing common t-shirts - in fact there were literally dozens of groupds like this.

Generally I noticed that the more secure and happier groups were made up of geographically based groups of around the same age group.  A lot of them consisted of a mix of both couples and singles.  Interestingly, there were also significant numbers of individual couples there.  Many seemed to be outside of their local traditional "scenes", probably due to social, work or even financial reasons.  For many, this is their only taste of "gay life" in the year.  The interesting thing is, outside of major womens scenes such as Brighton and London, there is quite a small, "closed" group who regularly go to such events, bounding strong social connections like that described in the L-Word, only across geographic boundaries.  Once somebody goes to such an event once of twice they are frequently "known" to their community.

This has interesting outcomes.  What it means are three things: the breakdown of the traditional "non-scene" groups into groups that "never" go anywhere remotely "gay", and a group who are "holiday queers", using traditional vacations as an output for social lives.  This showed itself most strikingly in a recent occurance where on two occasions showed a friend a photo of myself on holiday at a pride event, in two different countries, and the friend recognised others in the photo from their own holiday and/or living experience!  The fact that one of these was in Sydney, Australia, was particularly striking!  It shows just how small the real circle actually is even in huge scenes such as that in Australia or the greater UK.

In fact the development of gay tourism has extended the scenes into subsets now including touristy resorts such as Brighton, Palm Springs, Sitges, Gran Canaria into outposts of major scenes in European cities.

My best example of this is strolling into Candy Bar on the Kings Road in Brighton only to bump into a lady I knew from the Cork scene.  The gay world indeed is small.

Globe-trotting lesbians and gays also make contacts all over the world, generally on mutually benefical and genuine friendship terms.  Some even have a go at long distance relationships, often intercontinental, and some even work out.  There can be considerable social difficulty in local scenes, particularly in highly regressive "traditional" scenes such as the Cork scene in Ireland, which is extremely difficult for "outsiders" to enter due to a powerful domination of existing social circles who actively and passively exclude newcomers or those considered to be socially out-of-kilter with the dominant worldviews of those active in the group.  In this case, newcomers find themselves either actively ignored at best, or at worst at the receiving end of quite active hostility with implicit suggestions that they under deep social scrutiny.  I have personally found myself being subjected to a very disturbing level of what I can only describe as inappropriate and invasive levels of commentary on my personality, behaviour and even as deep as my reasons for going or not going to particular events.  For somebody unfamiliar to the politics of the scene this would be deeply intimidating, for me it has been extremely annoying.

This is why I have withdrawn myself from the local scene.  Much as I like and respect some of the individuals out there, I cannot play a part in social groups where I feel there is almost a ring of fire to cross before being made welcome.  I cannot agree with this on any level.  I am also unconfrotable with the incestuous nature of the social circle - I am sorry but its not mate up at any cost.  I would be much happier remaining single than going out with everyvbody on the scene just for the sake of it, and I would prefer to not be part of such an incestuous and invasive scene.