Pride 2025: A Beautiful Black "Fuck You"

Pride 2025: A Beautiful Black ‘Fuck You’

By J.R. Whittington

This year, Pride feels different.

It don’t just sparkle—it stings.

It don’t just march—it roars.

It’s not about party favors and RuPaul quotes, baby. This year, Pride walks with a limp, wrapped in rage and rhinestones.

Because I’m not just here to be seen.

I’m here to be reckoned with.

I am Black.

I am gay.

I am Afro-Latino.

I am an artist.

That means I live at a crossroads—where the country tries to erase me in stereo sound, where the bullets don’t know whether to aim for my skin, my love, or my voice first.

I wake up every day with the kind of breath that don’t come easy.

Like I’m underwater, lungs burning, while the world argues about whether I deserve to float.

This administration? These bastards in suits?

They’re playing tug-of-war with my humanity like it’s a damn bill up for debate.

Stripping rights with a grin, targeting my people like it’s sport.

They want us scared, small, silent.

And baby, I ain’t built for silence.

This year, Pride is a political act.

It’s a performance and a protest.

It’s me showing up in all my queerness and Blackness and brilliance and saying:

“Nah. You won’t legislate me into hiding.”

I’ll be outside. Chest out. Hips loose. Lip gloss poppin’.

Singing “I will survive” in falsetto while these demons try to pass laws that erase my reflection.

I will be loud. I will be soft. I will be holy. I will be horny.

And you better believe I’ll be free.

What I do in the sheets? Ain’t your business unless you paying rent.

And yes, since you’re so pressed—I’m amazing in the sheets. Let’s not play.

I have the right to exist.

Not tolerate. Not survive.

Exist. Fully. Fiercely.

I have the right to create art that rubs salt in shame and stitches it back into something sacred.

To tell stories soaked in sweat, glitter, grief, and gospel.

To kiss men on the mouth and cry in public and still be worth a damn.

This isn’t some pride-wrapped photo op.

This is legacy work.

This is me showing up so the kids behind me can breathe easier.

So they can choose softness without fear.

So they can love out loud without looking over their shoulder.

So they can be as Black and gay and ridiculously free as they want to be.

The ancestors are watching.

The ballroom girls who got chased into the night.

The queens who were told to hush.

The femmes who snapped their fingers and risked their lives for one moment of joy.

The lesbians who stood like stone.

The trans warriors who bled in silence so we could live out loud.

I feel them in my bones this year.

I carry their prayers in my laughter, their courage in my posture, the weight of their fight in my walk.

I am not draped in sequins, but in memory. Not wearing eyeliner, but history.

I move like a man shaped by both softness and steel—queer, yes, but not here to perform for comfort.

I’m here to live, loud and whole, like they dreamed I would.

So yes.

Pride 2025 is a beautiful, glitter-covered, poetic-ass, revolutionary fuck you.

To the administration.

To shame.

To fear.

To every closet, every side-eye, every law, every lie.

And it’s a full-throated thank you to the ones who came before.

I honor them with every sashay, every story, every kiss, every word.

I’m not just proud this year.

I’m on fire.

Happy Pride.

We ain’t going nowhere.

We’re just getting louder.