Let Them Eat Rainbow Cake

The phrase “Pride is a protest” echoes throughout June as the queer community seeks to reclaim the true meaning and origins of Pride. In the midst of parades and parties, can we still call Pride a protest? Pride as a protest does not mean that we do away with the celebration and the rainbows and the joy. In fact, these themes are foundational to the way in which we express our queerness. This is seen most clearly in the art of drag. It is no secret that the Stonewall Riots were heavily led by drag queens, specifically Black and Latinx drag queens. In a time where police would attack queer folks for dressing “incorrectly,” drag was itself a form of resistance. Drag is also a performance art that allows artists to explore their expression of gender beyond the binary through entertainment. The notion of Pride being a form of protest is not found in how drag queens both entertain and resist but in how their entertainment is a form of resistance. We live in a world where anti-queer legislation is based heavily around how queer people are able to carry themselves in public, our ability to access books that affirm our existence, be represented in media, receive medical care that allows trans folks to prosper and those living with HIV and AIDS to survive. Throughout queer history, homophobia and transphobia has existed in the control over our bodies and our happiness. There is no clearer protest against this form of violence than pure, unregulated joy.

            Fear has echoed throughout the queer community for decades and, though it is also important to mourn and grieve, this fear and sorrow is the main goal of those who seek to oppress us. When we are in places surrounded by those we trust, we are able to fully release our grief and anger. In the streets, however, celebration is our greatest weapon. Pride is the accumulation of queer happiness and color and expression and, put simply, life. In a world set against our survival, we make our survival unapologetically loud and unable to be ignored. We protest by reflecting the very thing that anti-queer movements fear the most. Protest has always revolved around the ability to disrupt the comfortable and create an atmosphere where prejudice and oppression simply isn’t able to prosper. In Pride, we have the opportunity to exist fully in our bodies and our identities without feeling shame or fear. At least, that is what Pride should be.

            Pride has often been criticized for featuring very scantily-clad men and carrying a sexual theme. The queer community is chastised for being too sexual but the ability to express one’s sexuality is a form of autonomy that has often been denied to the queer community. Subgroups such as leather and kink have always been a way for queer people to reclaim control over their own body or put that control in the hands of those whom they trust rather that those who take control by force. Pride should not be focused on putting on an acceptable performance for cishet onlookers but about removing this mask. Because of this, it is not the presence of revealed bodies or sexual autonomy that is a poor reflection of Pride but who is allowed these privileges.

            As comedian, Joe Lycett, has pointed out, public figures such as Olympian, Tom Daley, have been sponsored by banks and corporations to go to Pride. However, it tends to only be the ultra-fit, attractive, gay white cis men who are sponsored, never the fat, Black, trans lesbian. You can wear revealing outfits to Pride, but only if your body is the kind that is easily marketable and desired. Pride should be an opportunity for all queer people to feel comfortable in their self-expression. Disabled queer folks should be able to participate in Pride freely without being resigned to the sidelines. Asexual people shouldn’t feel pressured to act sexual in order to be accepted as queer. Pride shouldn’t be a space for body-shaming or exclusionism. Put simply, sexual expression is about the ability to control your own body, not merely an opportunity to curate a selection of conventionally-attractive visuals. At that point, Pride would become more about sexually-explicit entertainment rather than queer expression and resistance.

            It is when corporations and sponsors become involved that we risk losing the meaning of Pride. Like with Tom Daley, the issue is not with the individual who is sponsored but how sponsorship and corporate involvement shapes the way Pride is presented to the world and what demographics are highlighted as the face of queerness. Performative allyship is certainly annoying when businesses transform their typical capitalist heteronormativity into rainbow-colored capitalist heteronormativity with a dash of “unique” gay pandering. However, this ultimately doesn’t affect the nature of Pride too heavily. At best, it makes homophobes angry and allows young queer people to see themselves represented, if even for a month. At worst, it distracts from the shady ways in which corporations still participate in systemic oppression. The real danger of corporate Pride is how the financial funding takes precedence over justice.

            In the beginning, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March would see queer people simply gathering and walking as one. This was an opportunity to dress how they felt most comfortable, hold hands with those whom they loved, and feel protected by the crowd of queers around them. As the parades became more organized, Pride was able to grow bigger and louder and more disruptive. Groups and businesses were able to become involved in order to show queer people that they could belong in spaces past the parade, that there were opportunities to exist in the greater world. The stronger sponsors could bring larger floats and pass out more flyers and gather more interest for the parade. Suddenly, more community programs and youth shelters and educational opportunities could be funded in exchange for the opportunity to advertise. The money was able to be used for truly good things. However, it also allowed for parade entries to become more of a chance to advertise businesses than to campaign for justice and challenge normalcy. This allowed for a bigger spectacle but corporate sponsors also became a competing voice in Pride that didn’t always reflect the queer voices.

            Pride was a place where queer voices could be highlighted and safety was found in the number of queer people willing to fully express themselves with their community as protection but, now, control was not solely in the hands of queer people. Choices needed to be made between the voice of queer people and the voice of corporate funding that can be used to help other queer people. Safety was manufactured in the bureaucratic structure of permits and police presence, a system that has historically put queer people in incredible danger rather than true safety. In both 2022 and 2023, the Pride parade in Aurora, Illinois almost didn’t happen because the city threatened to revoke the permit because it wasn’t happening how the mayor and police wanted Pride to go. This was only proof that control over Pride was no longer in the hands of the queer community but in the very system that Pride protests against.

            It is so incredibly tempting to want to see Pride become more popular and mainstream. On the outside, the queer community gains everything we’ve ever wanted: the ability to exist freely without concerns for safety and the ability to simply be seen as “normal.” However, this reliance upon the “allyship” of controlling powers threatens the queer autonomy of our own movement. Pride is only allowed to be a protest so long as it’s palatable to the system that “allows” Pride to happen. The strategy is simple. If protests are state-sanctioned and contained, they are never a real threat to the system in power. We’ve seen how violently police forces react when protests actually threaten corporate interests from Stonewall to the pro-Palestine protests on college campuses. The celebration aspect of Pride isn’t contrary to the protest movement but yet many people have something to gain by turning Pride into a rainbow-themed party. After all, what do you have to protest against if you’re given such a pretty parade?

            Obviously, the ultimate goal is to be accepted, to have a government that truly does stand up for queer justice and support our community and to not have to worry about which businesses and organizations affirm our existence. However, we are not there yet. The ultimate expression of Pride is through unrestrained queer joy and unconditional love, not just parades. Pride continuously fights for justice and pushes for more inclusion. The state-sanctioned, corporate-funded parade does not. The love is still conditional and the peace that is pursued is one of order and stagnation, not radical justice. Despite the crucial role of trans people of color in the creation of Pride and fight for queer justice, it is still only the fit, white, cis gay men who are highlighted. These are the bodies that bring in crowds and pay for $30 rainbow cocktails. Fat people aren’t profitable. Black trans voices taking the microphone to remind crowds of the myriad of people like them who are killed every year does not fit with the rainbow party. Disabled queers are inconvenient and their accessibility is a waste of time if you can’t cover it with a brand symbol. Bringing intersectional messages of justice just brings down the mood so we stick with “Love is Love” because that fits better on a sticker. If our ability to protest and express ourself is limited by how marketable it is, then corporate Pride becomes a way to control and tone down queerness.

            When Pride is created based on the algorithm of profit rather than the needs of the marginalized, then corporate “allies” take precedent over queer voices. Pride is a space that should be created by and for queer people specifically because cishet allies don’t understand what is at stake when they take our autonomy away from us. Queer people grow up with an intrinsic knowledge that our bodies are not ours and the process of coming out and sojourning towards Pride is an effort to find integrity in our own existence. The choice that allies make to align themselves with queer people can sometimes come with risks but it doesn’t provide all-knowing insight into our struggle. These allies then fall victim to making decisions based on what makes the most sense to them and their organization and not what reflects the needs of the marginalized.

This past year, I have seen straight-led Pride movements turn away from queer voices because justice is simply not the most strategic move in organizing a parade. Even in liberal settings, white allies have defended the genocide in Palestine despite the cries from Native American, Black, and queer voices that seek freedom for our Palestinian siblings. Racist slurs and messages in Pride groups, mainly from white allies rather than queer people, have been defended because of how wonderfully supportive they have been towards the movement. Organizers have chosen to stay silent and enforce silence out of fear of losing support from these white allies. Even the Human Rights Campaign refuses to speak on behalf of human rights because of the funding they receive from weapon manufacturers that profit off of arming Israel. With a parade to plan, justice simply gets in the way. When the funding and support of organizations and businesses is conditional on continued injustice, then the queer voices on the margins take a backseat in their own movement. Pride was supposed to be a space for us to take back our autonomy and fight against systemic injustice but it has often become yet another place where our bodies and voices are not ours to control.

Pride is still a protest but it isn’t only about protesting alt-right, homophobic legislation. Queer justice is a protest against all efforts to control our bodies and expression, even if that controlling force pays for rainbow flags and event permits. If our Pride doesn’t include calls for freedom for Palestine or affirmations that Black lives matter or the space for fat and disabled bodies to be showcased, is it really a justice movement? Sometimes, protest comes in the form of celebration and joy when our oppression relies on our mourning and death. When our oppression relies on our emotions being limited to only celebration, however, protest requires us to disrupt the way that Pride has become processed and performed. Pride is an opportunity for us as queer people to take control of our expression and existence. If you feel like you have to be less queer or silent in situations of injustice, you aren’t in a queer-led space. It is our job to make it one, even if that means losing sponsorship.