Getting Ready for Pride When No One Thinks You’re Queer

Bailey reflects on how to find joy at Pride when you're not invited.

Every June, I dust off the queerest version of myself I can conjure. Not for me (though I enjoy glitter), but for proof. See? I’m here. I’m queer. I’m still explaining it.

Pride is a celebration. A rebellion-turned-reunion, a chance to throw our arms around one another and say: We made it. We’re still here. We’re still gay as hell.

But for a lot of bisexual+ people, especially women and femmes, it’s also a season of preparation. Not just in the glitter-and-fan sense. In the emotional armor sense.

Because being bi+ means you’re often invisible at your own damn party. Pride doesn’t always feel like it’s for us. You show up, and people look at you like you wandered into the wrong club. Like you’re here on a technicality. You get asked who you’re dating—not out of curiosity, but calculation.

You hear it said out loud, in person, online, whispered with disdain:

• “Don’t bring your boyfriend to Pride.”

• “Why are straight girls even here?”

• “Bisexuals make it all about them.”

• “It’s not oppression if you can just choose to be with a man.”

And just like that, you’re invisible. Or worse: unwelcome. Never mind the truth of your identity. Never mind the years it took to come out. Never mind that you’ve dated women, loved nonbinary folks, felt the weight of internalized biphobia, the ache of being misnamed and misunderstood even by the people you were told would be your community. Queerness, for bi+ women and femmes, is constantly put on trial.

• You’re not gay enough.

• You’re not political enough.

• You’re not partnered correctly.

• Your gender isn’t performing queerness loudly enough for the crowd.

And so Pride becomes a battleground. A space where you have to fight for the right to exist as you are.

Because we don’t just prepare for Pride by planning outfits or RSVPing to events, we prepare by steeling ourselves. Practicing our scripts. Choosing which parts of ourselves to soften or shout, depending on the crowd. We preempt rejection. We wonder if we’re going to spend this year’s parade explaining ourselves to strangers again.

Some of us debate even going at all.

• Will I be stared at for holding his hand?

• Will I be assumed straight unless I declare otherwise?

• Will someone ask me if I’m just here for attention?

The answer, often, is yes. But we go anyway. Not because we feel fully safe, but because we refuse to be pushed out of a movement we belong to.

We go to show ourselves that our queerness is not up for debate. We go for the newly out bi+ babes watching from the sidelines, wondering if she’s allowed to exist in between. We go for the ones who left queer spaces after being told they were “distracting” or “confusing” or “taking up space.” We go because bisexuality isn’t a loophole—it’s an identity. One that holds multitudes, contradictions, and the full force of a spectrum that threatens binaries by its very existence.

And then, we build.

Because here’s the hard truth: no one is going to make space for bi+ people unless we make it ourselves. If we keep waiting for a seat at the table, we’ll die standing.

So we throw our own parties. We plan our own brunches and book clubs and bar crawls and picnics. We build conferences and retreats and healing circles. We start newsletters and podcasts and group chats that hold us when the world won’t. We carve out joy in the margins, and then we widen the margins. We make space for us.

Not because we want to be separate, but because we’re tired of begging to be seen.

Creating bi+ space is not divisive. It’s reparative. It’s an act of care. It’s a way to say: You are real. You are valid. You are enough, exactly as you are.

And if someone tells you that you don’t belong at Pride? Host your own.

If someone rolls their eyes at your flag? Raise it higher.

If someone says, “Don’t bring your boyfriend to Pride”? Bring him and bring your bi+ friends too. Dance anyway. Laugh anyway. Take up all the space you were told to shrink.

You belong at Pride with your whole damn self. Your history. Your contradictions. Your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your theyfriend, your date, or your beautifully uncoupled existence. You belong, whether loud or soft, sparkly or plain, proud or scared.

You don’t need to prove anything. You just need to show up. We’ll be there too.

Don’t let anyone rob you of your joy,
Bailey