The best Pride Month memes of 2019

Heather Dockray

June is Pride Month: the time of year when the LGBTQ community comes together to proudly and collectively make memes.

There's more to Pride than memes, of course. There are parades, protest marches, dance parties, queer soup nights, fundraisers, and Calvin Klein rainbow jockstraps. There are rainbow granola bars and queer-affirming mouthwashes. But it's the memes — good ol' cynical, dumb memes — where the queer and trans community truly comes alive.

Memes have historically played a special role in the LGBTQ community. Queer and trans folks, particularly those located in rural areas, don't always have access to LGBTQ-friendly bars or community centers in their hometowns. But the internet allows people to participate in LGBTQ cultural life and humor regardless of their geographical location.

Thankfully, this year's Pride Month brought us particularly good, dark, sarcastic, and sometimes even empowering meme content. It was a meme goddamn harvest.

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If I were to classify Pride memes scientifically, I'd say that they tend to fall into one of two categories: anti-corporate Pride memes, which mock corporations for their participation in Pride Month, or extremely niche pro-gay Pride memes, which are far more affirming and serve the LGBTQ community directly.

Here are the best Pride memes from 2019 in both categories.

Anti-corporate pride memes

Anti-corporate memes typically target corporations who exploit Pride Month for their personal gain and profit, a phenomenon known as rainbow capitalism or gay capitalism.

Critics and meme artists often accuse corporations of demonstrating superficial support for the queer and trans community. Memes will sometimes mock corporations for changing their logo to rainbow for Pride Month while ignoring LGBTQ rights the rest of the year. Alternatively, meme artists will slam corporations for shilling useless rainbow merchandise while refusing to help the LGBTQ community with any money or structural support.

Anti-corporate Pride Month memes are a blessing. They're also just one type of Pride meme.

Extremely pro-gay memes

Extremely pro-gay memes are memes that only people in the LGBTQ community will likely understand. These memes aren't necessarily for a general audience, and that's totally OK.

Many address issues of serious and current concern in the queer community, including whether or not it's acceptable to invite the police, who have a historically conflicted relationship with the LGBTQ community, to Pride parades. Then there are jokes that are so niche and so obscure I can barely understand them. Nonetheless, I appreciate the sentimental value they most hold for others. 

All of these memes share one thing in common: they're here to celebrate the LGBTQ community. Who cares if no one else is in on the joke?

To the meme community: Thank you for making this rainbow-saturated month truly special. Without you, I would have had to confront Pride Month earnestly and head-on. It is because of your dedication to exposing the fraudulence of late-stage Pride capitalism and your willingness to make a ton of jokes that only like five queer people can understand, that I, a sarcastic gay person, will be able to make it to the end of the month with a smile on my face.

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