Pride is a Protest: Mental Health, Liberation, and Queer Resistance

Photo by Sophie Popplewell

It’s June, we hope to still see across cities and towns, the rainbow flags flying high, fluttering from windows and storefronts. Pride Month is a celebration — yes, but let’s never forget that it began as a protest. The first Pride was a riot by people who were tired of hiding, tired of policing themselves to survive.

In 1969, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two trans women of color, threw bricks and refused to back down during the Stonewall Uprising. It was about survival. Dignity. Liberation. And that spirit still matters, more than ever today. 

Pride must include the fight for mental health care that doesn’t pathologize queerness. We need liberation-based care — care that sees our identities not as problems, but as portals to power. That honors the ways we’ve survived: through found family, ballroom culture, protest, drag, and mutual aid. That doesn’t require us to conform to white, cis, heteronormative models of “wellness.”

Too often, mental health conversations in LGBTQIA+ spaces are reduced to sanitized wellness tips: breathe, journal, try yoga. These are great, but they don’t address the root causes of distress. We don’t just need bubble baths. We need justice. Queer people are navigating systems built to deny their existence. That stress-the microaggressions, the hate crimes, the policies stripping rights — gets coded into the nervous system. It’s not “anxiety.” It’s a survival instinct.

Photo by Bryan Kyed

AND there’s also the need for joy. Real joy. Not just the glitter. twerk kind (though we love that too). The deep joy of being fully seen, of making love and making art in spite of a world that tries to erase us. Joy is resistance. So is rest. So is therapy and having a therapist that knows your pain has history — and doesn’t try to erase that history with medication alone.

Pride isn’t just a parade. It’s showing up for trans kids when school boards don’t. It’s demanding mental health access for Black queer folks when resources are stripped away. It’s protecting each other when laws won’t. And it’s telling the truth about why we struggle — and how we heal.

Healing, in this context, is political. To be queer and mentally well in a society that benefits from your erasure is revolutionary. Pride is not just about being out. It’s about being whole. Being loud. Being free.

So this Pride, let’s remember: we carry the torch lit at Stonewall. We honor our ancestors by fighting not just for visibility, but for liberation. And we protect our joy like our lives depend on it — because they do.