Right, So It's Almost June Again. George From HR Has Already Sent The Pride Email Out.

Which means rainbows on everything. Your bank app. A crisp packet. People wearing badges.

George from HR who always sends the email. You know the one. "This month we celebrate our LGBTQ+ colleagues" — mate, you’ve not once said hello to me in the kitchen. I bet he doesn’t even know my name.

And every year there's the argument. Is Pride still relevant? Is it too commercial with all the corporate sponsorship these days? Is it a protest or just an excuse for a big party? Should it be abolished? Should we have a month for people who aren’t LGBTQ+ so they don’t feel left out?

Everyone's got an opinion. For some it’s a chance to show they’re a true ally. You know, help put the banners up, come along to one of the big events in London or Brighton with their gay friend. And for others it’s an opportunity to slag off the community. “I dunno why them poofters think they’re so special” type of thing.

Whatever. But it is worth knowing where it all started because that does make a difference to the significance of it.

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Stonewall Inn

So. 1969. New York. Bar called the Stonewall Inn.

And from what I know — this was a dive. No running water behind the bar. Everything sticky. Mob-owned. The kind of place you went specifically because nowhere else would have you, which is exactly why LGBTQ+ people went.

Police raided it. Which wasn't unusual — this happened constantly. In the USA, being gay in public was basically illegal back then. And there was this law — genuinely, this was a real law — you had to be wearing at least three items of gender-appropriate clothing or they could arrest you. Three.

Think about just how stupid this is. Imagine. Hot July day. A girl is out walking wearing a light summer dress and a pair of sandals. Shit. That’s only two items! Or do her knickers count as one. Or the sandals one each lol.

Anyway, the police raided it. Like they always did.

Except this time people fought back.

Bottles thrown. A parking meter ripped up and used as a battering ram. The cops ended up barricading themselves inside the bar — inside the bar they'd just raided — while the crowd outside got bigger and louder and angrier.

It went on for days.

Here's what got left out. The people actually at the front of it.

Marsha P. Johnson. Black trans woman from New Jersey, moved to New York with a few dollars and nothing else. Spent years surviving on the streets, sex work, whatever it took. Always wore flowers in her hair. Always. Someone asked her once what the P in her name stood for. "Pay it no mind" she said. Which was also more or less her answer to anyone who asked about her gender. Love it.

Sylvia Rivera. Venezuelan and Puerto Rican. Thrown out of her home at eleven — eleven — after her grandmother caught her wearing makeup. Living on the streets, surviving however she could, until Marsha found her and took her in. Rivera said later that Marsha was like a mother to her. She was seventeen. Sylvia was eleven. That's who was looking after who.

After Stonewall they founded STAR together — Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries — a shelter for homeless LGBT kids who had nowhere else to go. They ran it out of a truck at first because that's all they had.

And then they got written out of their own story. Because the movement decided it had an image to maintain. A whole community built on the backs of two homeless trans women of colour and the first thing it did when it got respectable was hide them.

Marsha died in 1992. Body found in the Hudson river. Ruled a suicide. Later reclassified as undetermined. She was 46. Nobody was ever charged with anything.

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The First Marches

A year later — June 1970, first anniversary — people marched. New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago. Not some massively coordinated operation, more like the same anger in different cities going off at the same time.

No floats. No corporate sponsors. Nobody handing out free stuff with a logo on.

Just people walking through streets as themselves. Which sounds like nothing now. But turn up to that march in 1970 and someone sees you — a neighbour, a colleague, your boss — and your life could be over by Monday. Not kidding here. People lost jobs. Lost housing. Got disowned by their entire families, not just a stuck up aunt they didn’t care about anyway, the whole lot. Got arrested. Got sectioned — because being gay was still classified as a mental illness until 1973 — so turning up visibly queer in public wasn't just brave, it was genuinely considered grounds for locking you up.

And they did it anyway. Knowing all of that. They did it anyway.

You see where I’m going with the significance bit now.

Pride Through The Decades

Pride spread through the 70s. The UK got its first one in 1972 — Hyde Park, about 2,000 people. Small by today's standards. Massive in what it meant though.

Then the 80s happened and it got very dark very quickly.

AIDS (and no it doesn’t stand for Arse Injected Death Sentence). And the response from governments — Reagan in the US, Thatcher here — was basically cock all. People were dying in enormous numbers and the official position was more or less a shrug. In some cases it felt like something worse than a shrug, if I'm honest. Like a clear out of certain types of people in society.

Pride in the 80s wasn't a party. It was people watching their friends die and then having to fight the government for the right to be angry about it. Protesters lying silent in the street, playing dead, because a banner wasn't going to cut it anymore. Storming buildings. Interrupting broadcasts. Making themselves impossible to ignore because being ignorable was killing them. The community took care of its own. Nobody else was coming.

Then the 90s. Laws started to shift. Slowly, grudgingly, the kind of progress that makes you want to headbutt a wall. But shift they did. And something changed in the mood — for the first time being visible didn't feel like it was purely going to get you destroyed. Gay people started appearing on actual mainstream telly as human beings rather than jokes. Will & Grace. Queer as Folk. Small things. But they mattered. Pride got bigger, louder, more colour, more noise. Not because everyone suddenly relaxed and forgot the previous thirty years. But because for the first time it felt like there was actually something to celebrate.

But this is also when the tension started. Protest or party. Serious or celebratory. And that argument has been running ever since and will never be resolved because everyone involved thinks they're obviously right.

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Corporate Pride

Then at some point — late 90s, getting much worse through the 2000s — companies noticed that gay people had disposable income and would quite like some of it. So whoopee shit, we got corporate Pride.

And look, the first time a mainstream brand acknowledged queer people existed it actually meant something. In 1998 — 1998, not 1968 — Unilever ran an Impulse body spray advert featuring a gay couple. Plays out with a man accidentally bumping into a woman causing her to drop her shopping, sultry looks, a touch of hands, you know where this is going — except at the end he walks off arm in arm with his boyfriend who'd been standing there the whole time watching it happen. That was it. That was the radical act. A deodorant advert. And it was genuinely significant because the bar was that low.

But there is something specifically mental about a company that's quietly donated to anti-trans politicians in October and then releases a rainbow water bottle in June. The front of it. We all see it. We all know we all see it. It carries on anyway.

George from HR puts the banner up. Meanwhile the CEO is at a fundraiser for someone trying to ban trans kids from sport. Everyone smiles for the photo.

Why it Still Matters

The question everyone argues about every single June — is Pride still relevant, is it a protest or a party, does it even mean anything anymore.

Honestly? Both camps are right and neither will admit it.

The "it's still a protest" lot — yeah. In 2026 being visibly queer is still dangerous in huge chunks of the world, including big bits of the West that like to think they're past all that. Trans people specifically are living through a political moment that is — and I say this as someone living it — absolutely bullshit. Rights that were fought for are being actively picked apart right now, this year, with real enthusiasm from people in actual power.

And the "it's just a big party" lot — also yeah. After everything. After the raids and the AIDS crisis and the politicians and the conversion therapy and the families who threw their kids out and the decades of being told you were mentally ill for existing — after all of that — if people want to put on something fabulous and dance in the street then frankly they've earned it haven't they.

It was always both. Marsha P. Johnson throwing things at police officers while dressed exactly how she wanted to be dressed in a dress — that's protest and celebration in the same moment. They were never separate things.

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Personal View

I've never actually been to Pride. Which probably sounds odd given everything I've just written. In my corporate career I have received plenty of Pride emails though!

It's not the crowds. It's not the noise. It's not even the bloke in the feather boa at 10am — good for him honestly. It's the fact that the same corporations who spend the rest of the year making life harder for the community now get to plonk a branded float in the middle of it and call themselves allies. And everyone's supposed to just crack on and be grateful for the visibility. Nah, that just winds me up.

Marsha P. Johnson didn't fight cops in 1969 for HSBC to hand out tote bags in her honour.

She did it so people like me could exist out loud. And that still matters. The history still matters. I just wish the people who'd decided to own it now hadn't made it so difficult to actually show up.

Maybe one year.

I am a D&I consultant, keynote speaker, Mental Health First Aider, writer and transgender woman with 20+ years of senior corporate leadership experience. I work with businesses across all sectors to build genuinely inclusive cultures whilst also supporting transgender individuals and their families through every stage of the journey. If this piece resonated, you can find more articles on andreaking.net  or  book a free discovery call if you'd like to talk.

The views expressed in this article are my own and are based on personal experience and perspective. They are not intended as medical, legal or professional advice.

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Additional Reading - Right, So It's Almost June Again. George From HR Has Already Sent The Pride Email Out.

Desiree Peralta argues in her Medium article that corporate Pride support was a fleeting marketing trend abandoned for profit-driven reasons when the political climate shifted. This quiet withdrawal highlights that genuine advocacy is separate from corporate branding, placing the focus back on community-led progress rather than corporate participation. Read the full article at Medium.

This article from the Headland Consultancy details how brands are retreating from loud Pride marketing due to rising political backlash, social media attacks, and falling sales. Using examples like the heavily criticised Marks & Spencer "LGBT sandwich", the piece argues that superficial June campaigns are no longer effective. Instead, corporations must shift from public "rainbow washing" toward quiet, year-round internal support, transparent policies, and direct financial backing for the LGBTQ+ community.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is Pride about?

Pride began as protest and remembrance, not just celebration, and it still carries both meanings today.

Who started the Stonewall uprising?

Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and many others were among the people at the front of it.

Was the first Pride a parade?

No. The first marches were protests marking the anniversary of Stonewall.

Why do people criticise corporate Pride?

Because some companies use rainbow branding in June while supporting or ignoring harmful policies the rest of the year.

Is Pride still relevant?

Yes — because LGBTQ+ people still face discrimination, political attacks and social hostility in many places.

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