The truth about Pride Month

Provocative, uncompromising, essential – but I'm feeling uneasy.

If you live long enough, you witness the most remarkable things and of all the miracles I’ve seen, one of the most incredible is Pride Month – first officially recognised in the US in 1999 but an altogether more recent phenomenon in the UK. Much like LGBTQ History Month and the various visibility days that dot the calendar with rainbows, it’s sometimes hard for me to believe there’s time dedicated to celebrating and amplifying voices that were, for too long and well within my memory, suppressed. I didn't see the worst of it, obviously, and the fight isn’t anywhere near over, but this acceleration of progress within my lifetime gladdens my heart. Yet I have a complicated relationship with Pride Month. My feelings crave perhaps more nuance than is useful for a ‘7 min read’ on a noisy newsletter platform. But, as overjoyed as I am that Pride Month exists, I also dread it. I dread it as I do the first play in a supermarket of ‘Fairytale of New York’ come November. The existence of Pride Month is not the problem, it’s the reactions it provokes.

Pride is supposed to be provocative. From flying masonry at Stonewall to the defiant chant of ‘we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it’ chants on protest marches, Pride’s mission is creating noise, making people (of any orientation of gender) examine their feelings, forcing change to enrich the lives of those it represents. Yet in recent years, it’s felt like target practice. Let me rewind, explain.

From its radical origins, Pride has, for better or worse, elbowed its way into the mainstream. Every year, on May 31st, the cogs of acceptance grind into place ready, like Big Ben limbering up to bong. Huge corporations route in store cupboards for Pride flags. Apps ditch their regular (usually dreary) icons for rainbow remixes. My inbox fills with press releases about queer-themed afternoon teas. And generally, the whole place gets a little more queer. Sounds like the bare minimum, merely decorative, and perhaps it is. Rightly suspicious of über-rich businesses flaying the puckered skin of late-stage capitalism, we’ve long questioned their motives, asked ourselves if we really need this.

Last year I hosted a panel at the BFI following the premiere screening of a Channel 4 documentary about the history of the British Pride movement. Among the brilliant panellists was activist Femi Otitoju, who’d been there at the very birth of Pride. When an audience member berated Pride's corporate culture, Femi acknowledged the concerns, but reminded us of the hard work that went on behind the scenes. She would be on teams that went into often hostile and indifferent organisations to remind them that we mattered, that we were valued, that we had power, and their queer customers and employees deserved respect and consideration. (One thing we often forget is that the show of solidarity is designed to make employees feel safe too; it’s not *just* about scamming us out of our five-bob notes.) There was, Femi said, more to Pride than marching and partying; it was about transforming toxic cultures. So, if I’m honest, a teabag company emblazoning its packaging with ‘SPILL THE TEA, GIRL’ and ‘SLAY THAT CUPPA’ or whatever, doesn’t bother me at all. (Although I admit I did scoff at Evri’s parcel tracking app using a map that showed the courier as a unicorn and my house as a rainbow – are they OK?) There are valid questions to be answered about what these firms do the rest of the year, yes, but let the rainbows fly.

But with visibility comes acrimony. Bigotry never clocks off, and the rainbowification of the high street and social media detonates a neutron bomb of whiny aggression. The commentary is much the same every year in content and format: complaints of wokeness – now utterly divorced from its original concept and repurposed as a dismissive insult; claims there’s ‘no escape’; pondering why it has to be ‘rammed down their throat’. (Why do they love aggressive sexual imagery so much?) To them, any representation is a takeover, and as the culture war tightens its grip, with Sunday newspapers now basically unreadable thanks to terminal transphobia, it feels like reactions to Pride Month are ramping up in intensity. I don’t believe they’re getting worse, by the way, but these feelings may have been harboured in private before, or ended at a brick wall or unresponsive face. Now the haters feel emboldened,  they have the channels to express them, they know several audiences await –  the target of the hate, those who agree with them or, their favourite, the vocal opponents who amplify them. Call me a snowflake or whatever you like, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to ignore.

No flag truly speaks for me, I’m unmoved by the Union Jack, but when I saw a viral tweet of a burning rainbow flag, I felt a little sick. It’s not the burning that hurts, but the intent, the disgust. Last year, when Regent Street in London was festooned with rows of Progress Pride flags gleaming proudly in the scorching sun, I was so happy to see them, but clenched and wary, too, because I knew what was coming. And sure enough, before too long the hate began to pour. (Indeed, this year, I didn’t realise they’d put the flags up on Regent Street again until I saw a hateful comment about it being retweeted into my timeline.) Sometimes I feel ashamed, not of my sexuality, but my thoughts, because sometimes I wonder, ‘God, maybe we shouldn’t bother with all this’.

Pride Month antipathy often feels like a sport – I don’t even believe the haters are necessarily that bothered, but offered an outlet for their bigotry, and seeing the sometimes half-hearted solidarity from firms leaping on the bandwagon, they seize the opportunity with both hands. I struggle to enjoy Pride Month not just because of this backlash but also how we’re forced to respond to it. Being on the defensive is exhausting. I know I’m not alone – at a panel I chaired last week for Pride Month, attendees of all ages, genders and sexualities told me they had similar worries.

It doesn’t help that the allyship offered by big businesses evaporates at the first sign of pushback. The pink pound has power, sure, but locals’ loot always takes precedence. Already Target in the US has withdrawn some Pride Month lines after complaints from straight customers and Oxfam hurriedly removed an online video campaign after similar outcry. It’s a shame, because their backtracking ignores what Pride Month is about – not just to amplify and represents queer people but to help demystify us for the rest of the world. Exposure lets light in. Sometimes you have to be forced to look into the glare, for your own good.

I maintain that most people are fine with LGBTQIA+ people, but those who aren’t are loud. They want us to say, look, Pride Month is a load of crap, let’s forget it. They want us to admit we don’t need it now, that we’ve got ‘enough’ rights, thank you. And you know what, astonishingly, plenty of queer people DO say this, and quite loudly, under vague approximations of alliances and ‘genuine concerns’. That’s enough progress, they claim, with the disingenuousness of a gentrifier secretly hoping a Starbucks wipes out that ‘charming little café’ that encouraged them to move to a rundown area. I’m embarrassed that I ever let them get to me.

I remember, years ago, when I wrote about how ‘Fairytale of New York’ should perhaps not be played in public in its unedited, F-slur form, among the hundreds of people casually chucking insults my way came so-called allies and even other gay men telling me ‘people like you are the reason straight people hate gays, just let them have the song who cares’. What use allyship if so easily renounced? This isn’t a buffet; you’re either all in, or you’re not.

As complicated as my feelings are for Pride Month, I’ll forever support it, marvel at it, be glad of it. Pride Month may only take up June but bigotry is a year-round event and we don’t stay folded up in a cupboard for the other eleven months. I challenge any organisation to hold queer events outside Pride Month and LGBTQ History Month. As for the reactions, I won’t tell queer people how to behave, all responses are valid, we have earned the right to express them – hell, some fought and died for it– but I reserve the right to mute the hate. I don’t need to see it to know it’s there, I’ve known it all my life, even before I knew who I was. But as often as we remind ourselves that Pride is a protest, it should be a party too. The fight isn’t over, but neither is the dancing.

Sometimes I wonder where we’re heading, what other miraculous, unthinkable sights I’m yet to see. I hope they’re good ones. Whatever you think of your world turning rainbow for 30 days, we’re here we’re queer, and we’re not asking you to get used to it anymore – feel exactly how you like, you don’t need our permission. Just like we don’t need yours.

Happy Pride Month. Let’s never stop being us.