Rainbow flags, parades and corporate campaigns. Pride month is coming, but some LGBT+ people feel rather excluded during it
Pride Month, which falls in June each year, is meant to be a celebration of queer identity, visibility and a reminder of the fight for LGBT+ rights. It is at this time of year that parades, festivals, cultural events and public debates take place around the world, while cities are awash with rainbow flags and brands change their logos to rainbow colours. But while this year's Pride Month is inexorably approaching, new research shows that some LGBT+ people feel more invisible than represented during these celebrations.
Data from dating app Taimi, which reached out to more than 1,100 LGBT+ adults, paints a rather surprising picture of the current Pride Month. Only 59 percent of respondents said they feel represented at least to some degree during Pride. The rest described varying degrees of alienation. Seventeen percent even said they never felt represented during Pride, another 14 percent said very little, and 9 percent said not at all.
Meanwhile, Pride has historically emerged as a protest and a space for people who have long been marginalized. Today, however, some queer people argue that it has become more of a carefully orchestrated visibility festival that caters more to brands, influencers, and the urban lifestyle crowd than to the LGBT+ community as a whole.
Not every queer person fits into the "Pride aesthetic"
A large number of respondents mainly point out that mainstream Pride often only shows a certain type of queer identity. Most often young, extroverted, visually expressive and urban LGBT+ people. The latter can then feel that they simply don't fit into the atmosphere of the celebration.
According to the survey, 25 per cent of respondents felt that queer people of colour, trans and non-binary people are underrepresented during Pride. Even higher numbers emerged for bisexual and pansexual people or queer people living outside of major cities. Nearly a third of respondents said that they are the ones who tend to be overlooked or completely marginalized during Pride.
Moreover, for many people, Pride is not a natural environment or personality. Although the public image of the queer community is often associated with extroversion, extravagance and social openness, the reality is much more varied. Not everyone wants to dance on the back of an allegorical float or spend a weekend at a crowded festival. Still, some queer people may feel that this is what a "proper" Pride should look like.
One survey respondent even described his feeling very pointedly, "I feel like a trained monkey in a circus." Another, on the other hand, said that during Pride he feels pressure from heterosexual allies to appear "more stereotypically gay."
When support becomes performance
For several years now, criticism of Pride Month has not just been about the events themselves, but also about corporate campaigns. Every June, rainbow ads, limited edition products or logos painted in rainbow colours fill social media. But increasingly, some LGBT+ people are pointing out that the real support for the community often stops with the marketing.
Twenty-three per cent of respondents said they were rather suspicious of Pride campaigns from brands. Nineteen percent feel it is mainly a performative gesture without deeper meaning. Some people even choose to actively ignore such brands during Pride.
The term "rainbow washing" has become a common part of Pride Month debates in recent years. It denotes a situation where companies use queer themes mainly as a marketing tool without actually supporting LGBT+ people through, for example, internal policies, financial support for organisations or long-term public support for human rights.
This does not mean that queer people do not want visibility. On the contrary, some respondents said that having more LGBT+ representation during June helped them feel safer or less alone. The difference is more about whether the support feels authentic or just another seasonal advertising trend.
Pride in the shadow of the current climate
Moreover, the current political situation also enters into the whole debate. In many countries, attacks on trans rights, drag performance or queer education have intensified in recent years. And this is also influencing how some people feel in public space during Pride Month.
Ten percent of survey respondents said they prefer to avoid public LGBT+ spaces during Pride because of the current political climate. Almost half of people then said they choose the places they go more carefully during Pride.
Ironically, Pride Month nowadays shows two realities at the same time. On the one hand, queer visibility has never been so strong, commercially attractive, and culturally present. But on the other, some LGBT+ people feel that what was originally a community event has become a space in which they have to present themselves in a certain way, fit in or be 'visible' enough.
