How much of Pride is for me?

The LGBTQ+ community is very diverse – in terms of race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, you name it. It also includes a wide variety of things - sexual orientations, sexualities, sexes, gender identities, relationship arrangements, and more. As inclusive as the community is in theory, how much of this is actually reflected in Pride celebrations?

Like previous posts have explained, I compiled a dataset of parade lineups from a large liberal city in the northeast for 2011-2017. I manually researched each of the entries to keep track of which group(s) the entry was focused on or reflective of (e.g. Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Racial/Ethnic/Cultural Group, etc).

Shockingly, for the 1 day of the year dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community, very little of the parade is reflective, or focused on, LGBTQ+ people! Only about 20-30% of the parade entries in the last 7 years were aligned with any group under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. The majority of entries are not LGBTQ+ affiliated at all!

Split of LGBTQ+ and Non-LGBT focused Parade Entries Over Time

What makes up the other 70-ish%? Mostly businesses (so, they might not be for you but they are for your money!) and Religious Organizations.

Category of non-LGBTQ+ Focused Entries, Over all Years

Important to note is that companies were not classified as a non-LGBTQ+ group by default. Corporate entities that registered their LGBT group or initiative were counted as such. Other categories were also held to this standard. Even with this, the numbers are still disappointingly high. This is the 1 day a year LGBTQ+ people are encouraged to show up and be authentic. But even on this 1 day, the majority of messages we are literally parading through the streets are not reflective of the larger LGBTQ+ community.

The picture is even bleaker when we start focusing in on specific subgroups within the community. So to help prepare you for your next Pride parade, I made a handy calculator that allows you to estimate how much of Pride you can expect to reflect you. Just plug in how you identify and see historically how much you were featured in Pride.

"How much of Pride is for me?" Calculator

While a little disheartening, the good news is as part of the community we can change this! So head down to your local Pride planning committee and see what you can do to engage a wider variety of groups! We can improve this and ensure that Pride reflects the beautiful diversity and inclusiveness the LGBTQ+ community is known for!

Data Deets:

Those familiar with LGBTQ+ initiatives will know support for L’s and G’s is much more abundant than the rest of the letters. For this reason, groups advertising a general “LGBT” focus with no explicit mention of B or T resources/initiatives were only included in the “Gay” and “Lesbian” categories of the Pride Calculator.
The focus or affiliation of a group was determined with manual research based on the provided entry information, not actual observation of the parade. There is most likely some misclassification. In addition, even entries with no LGBTQ+ affiliation could have featured elements of diversity in their presentation that is not reflected in the data.
The “Non-White” category reflects any racial, ethnic, or cultural entry (e.g. Latinx Pride, Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, Anti-Racism Groups, Immigrant Centers, etc). Entities in this group can be both LGBTQ+ affiliated or not.
The categories in the Pride Calculator are the only ones I labeled in the data. Additional research and data enrichment would be interesting to look at diversity in religion, class, ability, etc. However, I can imagine representation is similarly low.

Data prep was performed in R and the calculator visualization with d3.js. Code and data can be found here. Feel free to share this and check out other Gayta Science commentaries with this Pride data here, and here!

About the Author

Kelsey Campbell

Kelsey is an Economist turned Data Scientist with a special interest in data visualization, text mining, and social justice. Genderfluid and determined to #SmashTheBinary, they constantly strive to be open and authentic with varying degrees of success. When not working or Gayta Science-ing, you can find them kickboxing, hiking, protesting, or cheering while their high school sweetheart kicks ass at roller derby. All pronouns are ok.