#AntiDoomPosting
The Pink and Black has been a work the Dog Park Dissidents have been building since 2017, with each EP taking their lyrical and musical styles to new places and refining their performance. It was released in 2023, and has had an influence on discourse and queer culture online and in the US, even if you didn't realize it.
Their most famous single, "Queer as in Fuck You" is about reclaiming radical queer liberation from the co-opting and pacifying of the movement.
It ends with its thesis statement that is an earworm:
"Not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you." As they chant it, raising the volume and screaming it out, audiences can't help but feel the power and join in.
The lyrics of the song are about rejecting the neoliberal recapture of the gay lib movement. During the late 00s and 10s, money and resources were poured into the Human Rights Campaign and other nonprofits that focused on marriage equality and hate crime laws to the exclusion of all else. The result were politics that emphasized assimilation and tossed anyone who wasn't white, cis, and middle class under the bus.
"Since I can file taxes with a same-gender spouse,
I shouldn't feel so bad getting kicked out of my house."
"You want to celebrate a gay man on your cable TV,
While trans lesbians of color dig in garbage just to eat."
This is the problem. This is how those that captured the movement and messaging for more than decade failed us and why many of them are betraying us now.
"Don't sell me a rainbow,
Your market's never done shit for me"
This is the core problem: neoliberalization is the process by which we replace community, solidarity, and actual governance with market logics, consumerism, and privatization of public goods. This is what Pride became and the markets that we've let take over our movement orgs are the problem.
"I don't want to be equal.
'Cause I know I'm fuckin' better than you.
Your moderation is lethal.
Get out of my way, let me do what I need to."
Let this ethos give you power - moderation and assimilation has been killing us. Every queer person I know is so fucking amazing, beautiful, and powerful beyond what I used to think was possible. Take pride in us and let's fucking do what we need to do.
And remember, the only colors we really "need are the pink and the black."
https://youtu.be/JN4U577VQP4?si=lUDvx3_qaiDr4mhC