Pride 30 Project: Days 1–15
By: Jeffry J. Iovannone
Tags: Social Justice, History, Diversity, Transgender, LGBTQ

Pride 30 Project: Days 1–15

I’m writing a profile of an influential LGBTQ activist every day for Pride Month, 2018.

Each year, I grow increasingly disenchanted with Pride celebrations, especially following the election of Donald Trump and his administration’s assault on LGBTQ rights. I came up with the idea for a project where each day during Pride Month, 2018, I would write a profile of an influential LGBTQ activist on my publication — and now here we are. This is, in part, my small way of reclaiming Pride from its entanglement with “rainbow capitalism” and reminding us of its revolutionary roots.

Rainbow capitalism refers to the integration of the LGBTQ community and LGBTQ activism into corporate marketing campaigns for the purpose of obtaining profits. It is particularly associated with the most privileged members of the LGBTQ community (middle-to-upper-class white cisgender gay men and lesbians) who hold the most purchasing power under capitalism. Pride has become an opportunity for corporations to make money off the backs of the LGBTQ community. Affixing a rainbow to something — be it a T-shirt, an alcohol bottle, or the side of a building — does not make that something anti-oppressive. These same corporations contribute to the wealth disparities that harm the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ community.

Is Pride really a celebration if we don’t know how we got there, if we are unaware of what we are, in fact, celebrating? Pride should be a month about history, about struggle, about liberation for all over the comfort of a select few. Pride celebrations should not be a safe spaces only for white middle-to-upper-class gay people. Given the fact that Pride celebrations have become entangled with a criminal justice system that disproportionately targets people of color, gender nonconfroming people, and immigrants, is Pride truly inclusive of persons whose sexual orientations intersect with other forms of marginalization?

Pride is only safe for some today because our LGBTQ ancestors were willing to be unsafe, to put their bodies and lives on the line for our visibility and our rights. Consider this: marchers in the first Christopher Street Liberation Day, held on June 28th of 1970 in New York City, were told the NYPD would not protect them due to the existing marriage between the Mafia and the police department. They marched knowing they could lose their lives for doing so. But they placed the value of the cause higher than the value of any one individual life. Personal liberation is not truly liberating if everyone else is not free from whatever shackles bind them.

Below are the first fifteen days of the project. Change never happens as the result of one person alone — that requires a movement — and I have done my best to place each activist profiled within their respective historical context. I have also attempted to select a diverse range of individuals based on identity, accomplishments, and profession. Thirty profiles cannot wholly represent the richness, the diversity of LGBTQ history, but they’re a start. Advancements such as marriage equality and transgender legal protections (in some parts of the country) did not happen overnight and remain constantly under threat. The modern LGBTQ Rights Movement is far from over, and the struggles of our forebearers can help us take action in the present from a place of inspiration and clarity.