I’m just gonna come out and say it: at this point I really hate pride and the thought that it’s coming up again makes me want to cry.

I don’t want to see the rainbow covered floats of political parties that have contributed to the deaths of queer sex workers and queer migrants and queer people with disabilities this year. I don’t want to see floats and sponsor signs of  companies that are working my poor queer comrades to death while destroying the planet that we need to live on. I don’t want to see the social media updates of all my transfeminine friends who are mocked and groped and photographed without their consent every year at pride. And I definitely I don’t want to see cops that make me afraid for my physical safety and afraid for the very survival of my queer comrades of color.

But more than all that, I don’t want to feel the pain of knowing that the moment I point out how hurt and unsafe all this makes me feel, so many of the people that are supposed to be on my side are going to attack me, are going to dismiss me, are going to try to convince me that this is all somehow a good thing, as if all my pain is not real. The pain of knowing that every time queers have tried to protest against the way pride is unsafe for us, pride organizers and visitors have called the cops on us and endangered us further. All this hurts so much coming from what should be my community. Pride is a yearly reminder that my marganlized comrades and me are not safe in that community at all.

At this point, pride makes me feel isolated and deeply unsafe. Which is why I will probably spend this years’ pride at a radical queer counterprotest again. Because if I’m going to feel isolated and unsafe, I’m gonna get through it by standing side by side with my comrades who know that we deserve better than this.