31/05/2026
Tomorrow the logos will change.
The rainbows will appear in shop windows. Banks will discover they have always cared. Corporations will dust off their annual declarations of allyship and schedule their social media posts down to the minute.
And every year I find myself thinking about how strange it is that we've been taught to mistake visibility for victory.
Because Pride did not begin in a boardroom.
It began in anger.
It began when people who had been beaten, arrested, mocked, abandoned and criminalised decided they had reached the end of their patience.
June 1969. The police raid the Stonewall Inn yet again. This time, people fight back.
Not politicians. Not CEOs. Not the respectable faces that would later appear on magazine covers.
Drag queens. Trans women. S*x workers. Butches. Homeless q***r kids.
The people society had already decided were disposable.
Black q***r people. Brown q***r people. Trans people. Those living at the sharpest intersections of oppression, carrying the weight of racism, poverty, misogyny and q***rphobia all at once.
People like Marsha P. Johnson. Sylvia Rivera. Stormé DeLarverie. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy.
People who were told they were too loud, too difficult, too much.
The modern LGBTQ+ movement was not born from acceptance.
It was born from resistance.
And perhaps the most tragic thing about Pride's history is how quickly the people who built it were pushed to the margins of the movement they helped create.
A riot became a parade.
A revolution became a marketing strategy.
The stories of Black and Brown q***r people were softened, sidelined or erased altogether. The movement became whiter, wealthier and more respectable. The people who had fought on the front lines were too often treated as an inconvenient reminder of where our freedom actually came from.
Today, as politicians, newspapers and culture warriors obsess over trans people, it is impossible not to notice the echoes of the past. Once again, the most marginalised members of our community are being singled out, scapegoated and treated as acceptable collateral damage.
And once again, too many people who have found comfort within the system are staying quiet.
The rights that many white cisgender gay men enjoy today were not won alone. They were built on foundations laid by trans women, drag queens, s*x workers, Black and Brown q***r activists, and countless others who put their bodies on the line when doing so carried enormous risk.
Some paid for that struggle with their safety.
Some with their freedom.
Some with their lives.
Yet now, when trans people are under attack, when racism continues to shape the lives of q***r people of colour, and when the most vulnerable members of our community are still fighting for dignity and safety, many of those who have benefited most from the movement's successes seem content to pull the ladder up behind them.
Not all, of course. There are countless gay men standing shoulder to shoulder with their trans siblings and with q***r people of colour. But there are far too many who have mistaken personal acceptance for collective liberation.
Pride was never supposed to be a club where the most accepted members got to lock the door behind them.
It was supposed to be a promise:
NOBODY gets left behind.
So before Pride Month begins, I think it's worth remembering that Pride was never meant to make comfortable people feel comfortable.
It was meant to challenge power.
It was meant to demand liberation, not merely inclusion.
And liberation is unfinished business.
So enjoy the parades. Celebrate your community. Dance. Laugh. Fall in love.
But don't forget why any of this exists.
Ask what happens after the rainbow logos come down.
Ask who is being protected and who is being sacrificed.
Ask whose voices are still being ignored.
Ask who still gets left behind.
And if you're going to honour Pride's history, don't just wear the colours.
Stand with trans people.
Stand with q***r people of colour.
Stand with those facing the sharpest edge of discrimination.
Stand with the people who are still fighting the battles that made those colours possible.
Because Pride was never a gift handed down from above.
It was won by people who refused to disappear.
And that fight isn't over.
