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"We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"
You do this every year, we are used to it!
LGBTQ* Pride is an annual celebration of gender and sexual minorities. Held in many cities in many countries, the event's social status and inclusiveness vary wildly from place to place. For these parades in media, see Pride Parade. Regarding Real Life:
OriginThe two most common perspectives on the origin of the pride movement is that it started with parades for gay men and that it started with the Stonewall riots. Both versions are true, it's a matter of perspective. The first perspective is more peaceful but also more gay-centric, while the second perspective highlight the struggle for equality and that this struggle has never truly been about one single group. At the riots we had all kinds of non-normative people, with transgender people being one of the core groups. When the parades started, however, they were only about mainstream (and thus "respectable") gay men, excluding everyone else. Of course, transgender people and other minorities was still welcome to participate as long as they kept a low profile and masqueraded as either being gay or as simply supporting the gays. However, this Gay movement grew into LGBT, and later expanded into LGBTQ with the addition of queer theory and expanded perspectives on the nature of gender identity and sexual identity.InclusivenessWhat minorities are included and what minorities are not vary from year to year and from place to place. Transgender is now deeply rooted in most countries (although far from all), while sexual minorities such as fetishists and BDSM people (practicing or otherwise) has started becoming an integral part of the movement in more and more countries. Of course, there is still a lot of tension in many places, with separate (and sometimes mutually hostile) subcultures for groups such as Straight Gay, Camp Gay, Manly Gay, Crossdressers, Transsexuals Fetish/BDSM people, and so on. Sucks for the individual who identify with two minorities or more, and gets told by both that he should "go home" to the other group instead. Other groups that are often included are local ethnic gender identity minorities such as Native American Two-Spirits. Straight allies and families of LGBTQ rights/people may also be in the march.
Sexualization - in the eye of the beholderOf course, what's actually included and what someone notices may be two very different things. A well-behaved group may be mistaken for mainstream gay or even heterosexual (or simply be overlooked), while the most extremely dressed person in the entire parade gets considered poster-boy for how all LGBTQ-people really are. Even if everyone dresses in suits and keeps all their slogans timid, don't be surprised if someone starts shouting Think of The Children (even if the parade is purposely family-friendly). To what extent, if any, the parade is sexualized varies between different years and different places. The same parade can also get very different descriptions depending on who's talking.Parades and Pride FestivalsPride is usually an all-day affair, with related events taking place over an entire week or weekend depending on the city. The day of the parade is often treated like an informal holiday in the LGBTQ community ("Happy Pride!" is an oft-heard greeting), with the Parade around noon, the festival in the afternoon, and the after-parties at night. If the story is gay-centric, then the whole event might be covered. Most mainstream works, however, usually focus on the parade since that's what the general populace is exposed to the most.Regarding other paradesHowever, parades that are not about gender and sexuality issues can count as subversions, inversions, Rule of Symbolism or similar if they are portrayed as "a metaphorical gay pride parade". This is can pop up in stories with fantasy minorities. Claiming to be "openly heterosexual" or "openly white", arranging a parade for "Heterosexual Pride" or "Aryan Pride", is usually meant as an inversion/parody (either by the characters doing it, or by the author). Expect to hear people rant that these things should seriously exist, Completely Missing the Point of why pride parades happen in the first place.
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