Nearly two thousand people participated in the Pride Walk through Groningen on Saturday afternoon. ‘We celebrate diversity,’ say participants. Urgently necessary, they think, because tolerance is declining.
Patrick Simonis (54) has huge pink sticky eyelashes, a pink dress and a large moustache. This afternoon his name is Miss Punt. “We have to show ourselves, especially now,” he says militantly. He gets angry when people say that drag queens are ‘a danger’ to children. “What nonsense.”
Simonis lives in Nijmegen. He used to go to these kinds of events with his husband Rob, now he is alone. “My guy died four weeks ago. Liver cancer. Today I wear his dress.” He points down. “These shoes are also his. He had size 42, I 46. But this way he is also there.”
Cheerful with a serious note
The Pride Walk continues. A pink tractor in front, drag queens in a convertible behind them, lots of rainbow flags and an estimated fifteen hundred to two thousand participants.
They are cheerful, but not carefree. Because, everyone says, tolerance in the Netherlands and Groningen is getting less. Last year, the Discrimination Reporting Center Groningen counted 219 reports of discrimination due to someone’s sexual preference. A year earlier there were 191.
Arthur de Jong (61) is also participating. “We must be visible and combative,” says the towner. He has been around for a while in the gay world. “I always call my generation the lucky ones.” AIDS was terrible, but at the same time he saw the tolerance grow year after year. Until the last ten years. “It seems stagnant.”
Henriëtte Horlings (47) from Haren also notices this. She has a big rainbow flag around her shoulders, but she didn’t wear it on the bike. She was in no mood for responses. She is called after more often when she walks down the street with her friend. “People swear or ask if they can participate.”
‘We celebrate freedom’
Pascal Rakers (41) is one of the organizers of Pride Groningen: a two-day event in the city center of Groningen. The program includes the election of the most beautiful drag queen in Groningen and a brunch for ‘pink elderly’.
“People are more likely to have an opinion about someone who deviates from the norm,” says Rakers. “That’s why it’s nice to celebrate freedom here, because that’s what it’s about today.”
‘I’ll take it into account’
So says Simonis. “Of course it is less in other countries, but I am afraid that this will also seep through to the Netherlands. We are less and less tolerant of people who live outside the box.”
It doesn’t bother him too much. “I don’t get many nasty reactions,” says the Nijmegen resident. “I will take that into account as well,” he says a little later. He certainly doesn’t walk everywhere in his pink dress. “In Nijmegen, for example, I don’t do that so quickly.” He walks on, holding a red suitcase in his left hand. “It holds my regular clothes for the way back on the train.”