Pride Around the World
P
ride was born as an act of resistance. A concept unifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) communities around the word, Pride has evolved from its roots in New York City’s 1969 Stonewall uprising and has taken on a shifting constellation of meanings in different global contexts. Yet everywhere that Pride takes place, repression remains a fact of life. Even where visibility is celebrated and equality has been achieved under the law, heterosexuality is a presumed norm, and restrictive gender binaries persist. Pride – whether it looks more like a protest or a celebration – serves as a reminder to the public, and to queer communities themselves, that queer people exist and will not be silenced.1
OutRight Action International has identified more than 100 countries in which Pride and other events aimed at LGBTIQ visibility take place. These events may be centered around building public awareness of LGBTIQ people’s existence, articulating specific advocacy demands, resisting oppressive policies or systems, strengthening community and connectedness among LGBTIQ people, and celebrating hard-won freedoms. Pride can be dangerous, and activists must make strategic calculations as to the value of visibility. Some communities have adapted the concept of “Pride” to define events centered on LGBTIQ community building, with visibility as a goal only among LGBTIQ people and not engaging the wider public. Pride in this sense can include educational events, social events, and provision of services for LGBTIQ people. In other contexts, LGBTIQ people have preferred to be visible in solidarity with other movements, bringing queer visibility to protests against police brutality, corruption, or gender inequality. In 2021, LGBTIQ groups considering Pride commemorations were also contending with the COVID-19 pandemic, which offered unexpected 1 This report uses the acronym LGBTIQ – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer – in most general discussions of Pride events and visibility. In some contexts, intersex people, who may be of any sexual orientation or gender identity, experience forms of oppression and marginalization closely related to those experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, and sometimes they organize as part of the same movements. In other contexts, intersex people might experience different forms of oppression. For instance, laws that target people on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity might not directly impact them, and movements might operate in silos. For this reason, when it is more accurate and appropriate, we refer to LGBTQ people or movements, resisting a “cosmetic” inclusion of intersex people when discussing issues that may not pertain to them. In the case studies, we adopt language used by activists interviewed, some of whom referred to, for instance, “LGBTI” visibility. Throughout this report, OutRight also uses “queer” as shorthand intended to be inclusive of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people as well as those who identify with other diverse sexual or gender identities.
SUMMARY
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