By drawing on the historical power of LGBTQIA+ riots, its organising may become an overlooked force in the years ahead.
On 14 June, the city’s fourth Radical Pride attracted more than 30,000 people, according to organisers, cementing its place as the city’s main Pride event for the radical queer community.
Organised by a collective of queer associations, two weeks before the more famous Pride of the Inter-LGBT association, this event aimed to keep Pride a riot – especially in the current French political atmosphere.
Alternative prides have always existed in Paris and beyond, but this one feels more decisive than ever.
After a year’s break, such a turnover shows the steadfast political strength of the LGBTQIA+ movement and its solidarity for many other ongoing battles.
The call to march of the 4th edition was “Anti-war and anti-genocide: for the dignity of all migrants and a global de-colonisation.”
Like previous editions, the march was driven by an anti-system politics opposing racism, imperialism, ableism, and capitalism.
Alongside a sea of flags, placards demanded equal access to Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), the regularisation of undocumented migrants, housing for all, and an end to genocide, among other causes.
This explicit commitment to intersectionality is what distinguishes Radical Pride. It seeks to place “the most marginalised at the forefront”, according to Sam, an organiser and member of Décolonisons le Féminisme (Let’s Decolonise Feminism), while making a broad range of queer identities visible.
The march was led, for example, by an anti-racist, non-mixed contingent for queer people of colour.
Intersectionality also implies fighting for human rights and dignity internationally and refusing to be used as an excuse for oppression, which is why this year’s edition was dedicated to ending genocide.
“No pride in genocide” slogans, keffiehs, and Palestinian flags were very present during the march, which are critical in the context of Israel’s pinkwashing campaigns aiming to gain support abroad.
When Splitting Off Becomes Necessary
Why a second Pride? Does it not divide our forces? one may rightfully ask.
Not according to the organising party, which explained that the lack of space created for marginalised groups within the Inter-LGBT and the event’s commercialisation requires the creation of a new space.
The expression of difference is not what divides; it is its systematic invisibilisation that forces the marginalised to split to exist in their own right.
Instead, we should ask how queer people from the banlieues can be expected to feel at ease marching alongside police-affiliated organisations when they routinely face racial profiling and police violence where they live.
Likewise, how can anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist queer groups protest on their own terms when corporations such as L’Oréal march behind them, turning queer identity into a marketing opportunity?
In practice, many participants in the Radical Pride march also join the Inter-LGBT march. However, the march offers them a space to fully express themselves without compromise.
As Sam explains in the podcast Et iels firent un Village, radicality means refusing to compromise, since such compromises are often demanded of the most marginalised, while the values they consider most important are the first to be abandoned.
The expressed need to split from the Inter-LGBT’s pride is part of a broader critique of the political recuperation of queer identities, whether through homonationalist rhetoric or pinkwashing.
It also challenges the tendency to reduce LGBTQIA+ struggles to the achievement of marriage equality while overlooking other pressing issues, such as unequal access to healthcare for trans people, homelessness among queer youth, and the multiple forms of discrimination experienced across the community.
This narrow focus sidelines radical queer theory and activism, which offer a fundamental critique of the state and seek forms of liberation that extend beyond state recognition.
By presenting queer rights as largely secured, this narrative fails to account for the experiences of those facing intersecting forms of marginalisation, including racism, class inequality, ableism, fatphobia, and other structural forms of exclusion.
In this context, the Radical Pride march serves as a reminder of Pride’s origins as a protest movement rather than a celebration of partial legal gains.
From Stonewall to the Groupe du 6 novembre
On 28 June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
Although police raids on LGBTQ+ establishments were common at the time, this one was unusual: it took place on a busy Friday night, when the bar was crowded, and was carried out without prior warning to the owners.
The raid sparked a spontaneous riot that unfolded over the next five days. Local residents, many of them young, working-class, and homeless queer people, gathered outside the Stonewall Inn and repeatedly confronted the police.
One year later, activists organised a commemorative march to mark the anniversary of the uprising. Similar demonstrations soon spread to other cities and eventually evolved into what are now known as Pride marches.
The organising party of Radical Pride reclaims this founding chapter in queer history, especially its opposition to police brutality.
The first victims were the poorest members of the queer community, and today, they are perpetrated in France against people of colour and residents of working-class neighbourhoods.
It is then no surprise that many have started going to alternative prides because of the Inter-LGBT, including the association Flag! for queer members of the police force in the march, which has yet to officially condemn the police brutality faced by people of colour – probably due to its ties to state institutions.
Beyond the myth of Stonewall, the memory of forgotten groups like the Groupe du 6 novembre: lesbiennes issues du colonialisme, de l’esclavage et de l’immigration (“6th of November group: Lesbians Begotten of/Out of Colonialism, Slavery and Immigration”) is brought to light by the speeches before the march.
The association was founded in Paris on 6 November 1999, right after the lesbian convention Cineffable, which had let down lesbians of colour who had a difficult time being heard about the racism and fetishisation within the community.
The Groupe aimed to create a space where they could define themselves and their politics outside of a lesbian world largely dictated by its white members.
According to academic Blase Provitola, the place they currently hold in queer history is itself a testimony of how people of colour were treated within queer movements in the West and more specifically France – their name is largely unknown and their publications hard to come by.
Nonetheless, events like Radical Pride aim to re-ignite those reflections and the fight for an anti-racist queer community, and an anti-racist society at large.
Much like the Groupe, the associations behind Radical Pride felt the need to create their own space for the sake of visibility, which implies being seen by others but, perhaps most importantly, to be able to see and define oneself.
A Shifting Political Atmosphere
If the need for militant resistance appeared self-evident in the 1960s in the face of intense state repression, and if the emergence of separatist lesbian movements in the 1990s reflected the need to confront racism and other exclusions within feminist and LGBTQ+ spaces, similar questions have re-emerged in the 2020s.
Despite the perception that Western societies have become increasingly accepting of LGBTQIA+ people, recent political developments have led many activists to argue that renewed forms of radical mobilisation are necessary.
In France, the growing electoral strength of the far right and the broader shift of political discourse towards more conservative and exclusionary positions have contributed to this renewed sense of urgency among LGBTQIA+ organisations.
Over the past decade, commentators have increasingly described the French political landscape as undergoing a process of droitisation (“rightward shift”), referring to the normalisation of hardline positions on issues such as immigration, national identity, and security.
Within this context, Radical Pride can be understood as part of a broader effort to resist these political developments while reasserting Pride’s origins as a protest movement.
Electoral sociologist Vincent Tiberj points out that such a shift applies to the political and media landscape, answering to a logic of its own rather than to a true increase in conservative values among people.
French society, much like its European counterparts, remains highly discriminatory, according to multiple reports from the Inequality Observatory.
That being said, there is still an increase in progressivism in polls: the CDNH tolerance index has been steadily increasing since 1990 and has stabilised at around 64 out of 100.
The increase in racist discourse and far-right voting in the polls is strongly linked to an increase in abstention and a normalisation of such a vote among long-standing right-wing voters and not so much a rise in conservatism at large.
As a result of the droitisation of those spheres, Radical Pride aims to be a strong opposition to growing hate speech and discrimination.
While the main reason for this Pride’s creation was the dynamics within the movement itself, this event also tells the story of voices raised against a political sphere that no longer represents them or their ideals.
Radical Pride tells us the story of people who refuse to march alongside political parties who claim to protect their rights while silencing their concrete demands and ignoring their protests.
What Role Can LGBTQIA+ Politics Play?
Radical Pride serves as a reminder that LGBTQIA+ politics are historically radical and will not settle for symbolic recognition only.
Although the event receives limited coverage outside independent left-wing media, it highlights a dense, dynamic network of radical intersectional organisations in Paris and the surrounding banlieues.
Both Radical Pride and Pride des Banlieues, which share similar political orientations and levels of visibility, play a key role in sustaining this ecosystem. They help strengthen affiliated organisations by providing spaces for fundraising, political outreach, and recruitment.
Anti-racist queer movements, once highly marginal in the 1990s—as illustrated by the history of the Groupe—now mobilise thousands of participants each year.
More broadly, these events function as convergence points for multiple struggles, amplifying their presence in public debate by bringing them together under a shared political framework.
Such positioning does not restrict itself to the Parisian bubble either.
Radical Pride events are organised in Lille, Lyon and Montpellier, while rural prides are also multiplying – proving that queer presence does not end outside of cities.
In the context of the rise of the far right and the state’s growing marginalisation of citizen participation, this protest underscores the strength of queer politics beyond the notion of the “lavender vote”—the assumption that LGBTQIA+ voters will systematically align with the political left.
LGBTQIA+ people and their allies are active political agents both within and beyond electoral politics, engaging across a wide range of struggles and forms of mobilisation.
In this sense, a protest space where participants can collectively define their demands and recognise their political agency becomes particularly significant.
Photograph courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.
