Happy Pride Month!
The Sex-Positive Blog celebrates 40 years of Houston Pride
June 1st marked the beginning of Pride, a month-long celebration of LGBTQ+ identity and the many and varied contributions made by queer and trans folks.
Pride Month is celebrated in June to honor the Stonewall Riots, an uprising led by Black and Latinx queer and trans people in response to police violence in Manhattan, New York in June of 1969. This riot is known as the beginning of the modern-day LGBTQ+ rights movement that continues today.
After Stonewall, the last Sunday in June was known as “Gay Pride Day” around the United States. In 1994 a group of organizers selected October as Gay Pride Month. Over time, October became LGBTQ History month and the designation of Pride Month shifted back to June. With this shift, the scope of the celebration expanded from just gay pride to the entire LGBTQ+ spectrum.
Celebrations during this month include parades, parties, concerts, as well as memorials to honor members of the community lost to hate crimes or HIV/AIDS.
While Pride Month is known as a time of celebration and our society has certainly made progress in the time since the Stonewall Riots, it’s important to remember that LGBTQ+ people still face violence, discrimination in our country and society at large. This month, we’ll be bringing you content geared towards celebrating the LGBTQ+ spectrum of identities and the amazing people who are part of the community. But the work for LGBTQ+ rights doesn’t end on June 30th.
One way Mystiq is contributing to visibility, pride and sex-positivity is by pledging (along with other progressive companies and organizations) to be sex-positive in 2018.
What does that mean? It means that we’re committed to educating ourselves and our customers about health and sexuality, to embracing and promoting diversity, to advocating for disenfranchised individuals and populations, to de-stigmatizing pleasure and conversations about sex.
If you want to promote sex-positivity, you can take the pledge, too, and there is an embeddable badge for your websites, social media profiles, etc. It’s a small thing, but it’s an important thing. Click the link below to explore the Sex-Positive Pledge.
