- We The 66
- Posts
- 🌊 How Pride Became R-Rated
🌊 How Pride Became R-Rated
The story of how furries and bondage made it into Pride parades
Did someone forward you this? Subscribe here free!
By Max Frost
If you attend an event during this Pride month, you’ll see a lot more than gay people waving rainbow flags. You’ll see men walking each other down the street in leashes, spanking each other, and dressed as animals.
As we reported earlier this month, this is one explanation for why corporate support for Pride Month has plummeted:
Mastercard, Citi, Pepsi, Nissan, and PwC have pulled their sponsorship of NYC Pride, the nation’s biggest pride festival, entirely. Four of the five companies that were Platinum sponsors last year – sponsors who gave $175,000 or more – have either scaled back, backed out, or asked for their support to be anonymous. The lone Platinum sponsor to fully return is L’Oreal, although via an employee pride organization, not the company directly. Target – which has faced boycotts from both conservatives (for being too woke) and liberals (for not being woke enough) – has remained a top sponsor but asked for its support to go unpublicized.
A similar Pride boycott is happening in DC and San Francisco. Longtime DC Pride staples Booz Allen Hamilton and Deloitte are dropping their Pride sponsorships this year, while Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, and Diageo stopped sponsoring San Francisco Pride.
The mainstream narrative is that Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives caused this. Yet our recent investigation found a number of other explanations, ranging from fear of boycotts to the expansion of Gay Pride into a broader kink-infused “LGBTQIA++” movement.
Pride parades have since taken place across the nation. And as they have, clips and photos have once again highlighted how the events are no longer the G-rated, “be yourself” festivals they are often billed as.
Today, we explore how Pride became a kink event, and share the surprising takes our LGBTQ readers have about that.
The rest of this report is for paid subscribers, who fund our journalism. If you start a two-week free trial today, you’ll be automatically entered to win a free year. Once you sign up, you can access all of our articles here!
Editor’s Note
So what do you think? Have you noticed a shift in Pride events? Do you think the criticisms are fair? Let us know by replying to this email.
In case you missed our latest stories, find them here:
And below we share some mixed replies on Zohran in response to yesterday’s story:
Maribeth wrote:
If the New Yorkers want to destroy their city, let them. But, don’t ask for any federal money to bail them out. I do not want to pay for their bad decisions. Choices have consequences, and they will have to live with theirs.
Jim wrote:
It makes me question the quality of our education system in NY if the most educated think a socialist is the best mayoral candidate. Although there have been successful socialist mayors in our nation, there has never been one in a mega city. Should be interesting to watch.
And Dillon wrote:
The DNC needs to stop their wishy washy centrist approach and see that people want leaders with direction and a message to improve material conditions for working people. They have to stop being the party of “not Trump” and do away with culture war rhetoric. It’s a class war. Always has been.
Thanks for reading. See you back here tomorrow.
–Max and Max