"At some point, the pride has to be a part of the whole day-to-day oeuvre. It's part of who you are and doesn't need to be discussed anymore"
About this Quote
Bernhard is doing what she’s always done best: taking a microphone to the culture’s nervous tic and refusing to soothe it. “At some point” lands like a challenge, not a calendar date. It implies we’ve been stuck in an earlier phase too long, still treating pride as an event, a panel topic, a seasonal marketing lane. Her word choice is telling: “day-to-day oeuvre” drags the grand language of artistry into the mundane. Oeuvre usually belongs to auteurs and museums; Bernhard repurposes it to mean the lived body of work that is a life. The subtext is blunt: if your existence is only legible when it’s declared, defended, or celebrated on cue, you’re still performing for a straight audience’s comfort.
The pivot from “has to be” to “doesn’t need to be” is the real engine here. It’s not a retreat from pride; it’s a demand for integration. Pride becomes infrastructure, not spectacle: baked into friendships, workplaces, casting rooms, family conversations, and the way you move through a Tuesday. There’s also a sly critique of the culture industry that endlessly asks queer people to explain themselves for content. “Doesn’t need to be discussed anymore” isn’t anti-talk; it’s anti-permission. It imagines a world where identity isn’t perpetually up for debate, where visibility isn’t a recurring assignment.
Coming from Bernhard - a comedian and actress whose persona has long blurred provocation and candor - the line reads like generational impatience: not “stop celebrating,” but “stop making us narrate our right to exist.”
The pivot from “has to be” to “doesn’t need to be” is the real engine here. It’s not a retreat from pride; it’s a demand for integration. Pride becomes infrastructure, not spectacle: baked into friendships, workplaces, casting rooms, family conversations, and the way you move through a Tuesday. There’s also a sly critique of the culture industry that endlessly asks queer people to explain themselves for content. “Doesn’t need to be discussed anymore” isn’t anti-talk; it’s anti-permission. It imagines a world where identity isn’t perpetually up for debate, where visibility isn’t a recurring assignment.
Coming from Bernhard - a comedian and actress whose persona has long blurred provocation and candor - the line reads like generational impatience: not “stop celebrating,” but “stop making us narrate our right to exist.”
Quote Details
| Topic | Pride |
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