Let me make this clear before somebody with a corporate sponsorship and a rainbow lanyard starts hyperventilating into their oat latte: I do not hate Pride. I fucking love Pride. I love the chaos of it, the sweat of it, the noise, the clatter, the sequins melting in the sun, the fabulous mess of thousands of queer people taking over a city and reminding the straight world we are here, we are queer, and we are absolutely not going back in the box.


Pride is protest. Pride is community. Pride is defiance with glitter on it. Pride is joy with teeth.


What I hate is the grotesque little capitalist parasite some people have tried to attach to it and call it "necessary funding."


No, babes. A ticket price is not activism. A paywall is not solidarity. And charging queer people to attend a celebration of queer existence is not "supporting the community," it's a fucking shakedown with a rainbow banner over it.


I've attended loads of Pride festivals. I've marched in some. I've organised some. I've done the graft, the sweat, the bullshit, the begging, the chasing, the volunteer wrangling, the "can you just help us with this one thing" that turns into twenty-seven jobs and a migraine. I've been there in the background making things happen, for nothing, like so many queer organisers do because apparently queer joy still depends on unpaid labour and emotional blackmail.


And let me tell you something: I have never paid to go to a Pride event, and I have never organised one where the community had to buy a ticket just to walk through the fucking gate and clap for itself.


That should be the bare minimum. Not a radical opinion. Not controversial. The bare minimum.


Because who the hell are these ticketed Prides actually for?


Not the queer kid with no support who's trying to scrape together bus fare while pretending not to panic.

Not the trans person living on crumbs and courage.

Not the broke dyke, the exhausted bi guy, the newly out person who is already terrified enough without a financial barrier being shoved in front of them like a velvet rope at a wanker convention.

Not the people living day to day, choosing between Pride and rent, Pride and food, Pride and the electricity meter.


Those people do not need a ticket. They need access. They need belonging. They need a space that says come in, not tap here to validate your existence.


And yes, I know events cost money. Venue hire costs money. Sound costs money. Security costs money. Insurance costs money. Bathrooms cost money. Everything costs money because the world is a greedy little cunt and won't let anyone have anything beautiful unless a spreadsheet approves it.


But do not sit there and tell me ticketing the community is the only option. It isn't. It's just the easiest one. The lazy one. The one that shifts the burden onto the very people the event claims to serve.


Fundraise. Hustle. Negotiate. Beg. Barter. Charm. Flatter. Cry if you must. Ask for room discounts. Ask for free performance slots. Ask local acts to show up for love, for visibility, for community. There are dozens of performers who will do Pride for a reduced fee or nothing at all because they understand what it means to be part of something bigger than their invoice.


Use them.


Stop pretending you need a budget the size of a small nuclear programme to put on a meaningful Pride. You don't. You need commitment, creativity, and a willingness to stop acting like the only good event is one with a corporate stage and a headliner who hasn't cared about queer people since the millennium.


And don't come at me with that insufferable "but the money goes back to the community" line, because that's the favourite excuse of people who have become very comfortable with the shape of the machine they claim to resist. Maybe some of it does go back. Brilliant. Gold star. A donation is nice.


But how much goes to staff? How much goes to admin? How much goes to production companies, consultants, branded bollocks, sponsorship deliverables, VIP areas, and the entire polished bureaucracy that appears the second a grassroots gathering gets too respectable for its own good?


At some point, you are no longer running a community event. You are running a rainbow-themed enterprise with a conscience problem.


And that is what really stinks: Pride gets packaged, priced, branded, and sold back to us as if we should be grateful for the privilege. As if queer liberation now comes with a booking fee and a processing charge. As if the people who fought for our right to gather would have spent all that time and rage just so we could end up paying fifty quid to queue for a warm cider and a celebrity that doesn't know where Birmingham is.


Fuck that.


Pride should be free because Pride is ours.


Not theirs. Not the sponsors'. Not the event company's. Not the brand activation team's. Ours.


It belongs to the people who built it in anger and necessity.

It belongs to the people who still need it.

It belongs to the people who will stand in that crowd, soaked in sweat and joy, and feel, maybe for one bloody day, that they are not alone.


That is what Pride is for.


So no — paid Pride is not something to be proud of. It is a betrayal dressed as a festival. A velvet-rope version of a movement. A cash grab in a rainbow wig.


If you want Pride to mean something, stop charging the damned community to walk into it.