We Come from Fire: Pride as Protest, Inheritance, and the Queer Continuum
Survival, Rebellion, and Healing as Resistance
Riot Before Record: Erasure and Origins
Pride, in its current form, stands on the shoulders of many who came before us—folx who have been historically erased or sanitized by dominant narratives. What we know as Pride today was born in protest against hegemonic violence in the 1960s. But LGBTQIA2S+ people have been resisting and creating alternatives to dominant culture for centuries before that.
Early expressions of the queer continuum in the U.S. date back far beyond Stonewall or the Harlem ballroom scene. Drag balls were organized by enslaved and free Black people—including gender non-conforming folx—in Washington D.C. in the late 1700s and early 1800s. These clandestine gatherings offered solidarity, resistance, and respite in a world that criminalized their very existence.
One of the most powerful figures from this era was William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved Black man who, in the 1880s and 1890s, called themself the “Queen of Drag” and hosted drag balls in defiance of police raids and societal repression. Swann was arrested multiple times, and in 1896 became the first person known to pursue legal action to defend the right to LGBTQ+ assembly—requesting a presidential pardon after a drag ball raid. Though denied, their act was historic. Swann’s legacy is one of embodied resistance, radical joy, and fierce queer visibility long before such language existed.
Swann’s story also reminds us that Black resistance is foundational to queer liberation. As Pride Month and Juneteenth intersect, we are called to recognize how deeply queer culture is rooted in Black cultural innovation, survival, and defiance.
Even earlier, many Indigenous nations across Turtle Island revered what we now call Two-Spirit people—though that term itself is a contemporary umbrella, as each tribe had its own language and understanding. Two-Spirit individuals often held ceremonial roles as healers, visionaries, and even chiefs. These identities weren’t exceptions—they were embedded in the sacred. And as we mark Indigenous History Month, we uplift and honor the deep cultural, spiritual, and communal traditions of Indigenous gender diversity that existed long before settler colonialism attempted to erase them.
Beyond U.S. history, we see queer and trans existence rooted across global cultures. In precolonial Yorùbá traditions (present-day Nigeria, Benin, and Togo), gender roles were fluid and divine energy (Olodumare) transcended the gender binary frameworks, expressed through the Orishas. In South Asia, Hijra communities have existed for over 2,000 years as a third-gender identity, historically honored and spiritually significant, with complex roles that continue to evolve today.
All of this is to say: Queerness, transness, and gender nonconformity have always existed. We have cultivated ceremony, community, and wholeness throughout time—and we are not going anywhere.
From Survival to Ballroom: Culture as Protest
Jumping ahead in time—and back to the U.S.—the drag balls of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s carried forward that radical spark. These were spaces of joyful defiance and creative resistance, even under constant threat and surveillance.
Drag houses (popularized more recently through shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race) became chosen families for those exiled from their homes. These houses were not just about performance—they were survival networks, sites of joy, mutual care, and deep resilience. It bears repeating that, broader LGBTQIA2S+ activism and culture is rooted in Black resistance and cultural innovation—from the ballroom houses founded by Black and Latinx queer and trans folx, to the radical organizing of Black queer leaders who shaped movements for both racial and LGBTQIA2S+ liberation; Black queer and trans folx have shaped the very structures that continue to hold us today. Pride and Juneteenth are not separate stories—they are interwoven acts of refusal, joy, and collective survival. Watch Paris Is Burning or The Queen (1968), and you’ll witness a sacred lineage of style, strength, and innovation.
During the AIDS crisis, queer organizing took on new, urgent forms. ACT UP mobilized a generation into action—through protest, die-ins, research, and unapologetic confrontation. “Silence = Death” wasn’t just a slogan; it was a life-saving demand. Importantly, the HIV/AIDS activism of this era—especially evident in the tireless research, treatment advocacy, and clinical trials initiated by and for the queer community—laid critical groundwork for the development of modern mRNA vaccine technology. The same scientific advancements that emerged from HIV/AIDS research were later instrumental in the creation of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Queer culture doesn’t just survive—it innovates. It builds. And still, we persist.
We Are Queer Fire Bearers: Pride as Continuum, Not Brand
Pride was not invented in the 1970s. It cannot be co-opted by a corporation or contained by rainbow capitalism or pink washing. Pride is a constellation of sacred rebellion, healing, creativity, and refusal. It is ceremony. It is disruption. It is memory.
We are the fire-bearers now, carrying forward a continuum that cannot be erased. Queerness, transness, and gender nonconformity are not trends or identities to be tolerated—they are sacred technologies of survival and transformation.
Pride as Frontline: Holding the Now
We are living through a coordinated, well-funded assault on queer and trans existence. Book bans. Bathroom bills. Anti-trans healthcare laws. Criminalization of drag and gender expression. It is not theoretical—it’s here, and it’s deadly. Trans healthcare is trauma-informed care, and denying or attempting to legislate out our community out of existence is an infliction of trauma.
This war is not new—it is escalating. It cloaks itself in legislation, school policy, moral panic, and media distortion. It weaponizes terms like "concern," "protection," and "safeguarding" as a form of enacting cruelty. This is violence cloaked in civility.
And still—we resist. We dance, we organize, we make art, we gather in joy, we protect our kin, and we hold each other closer in the tempest of violence and oppression. We heal in defiance. We refuse erasure not just with survival or by existing as a radical act—but by daring to imagine and embody a future on our own terms.
More than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in the past year alone (yes, 2025). Trans youth are being denied life-saving care and our stories are being banned. This is not an echo of the past—it is the present.
Pride is sanctuary made visible. It is political medicine in resistance. It is protection and it is necessary.
Healing Praxis: Pride and the Sacred Work of Now
Therapy, rest, ritual, and art are not luxuries. They are tools of revolution.
Healing and activism are not opposites—they move in tandem with one another. For Black and Brown communities, for trans and gender-diverse people, for disabled and neurodivergent folx, healing is an act of resistance. To rest is to refuse the pace of extraction. To feel joy is to refuse erasure. To make art is to map a way forward.
The studio, the queer bar, the group gatherings, the dance floor—these are all altars. These are sanctuaries. They are where healing becomes praxis. Where grief and glitter coexist. Where we build the world we deserve.
The Fire We Carry: An Invocation for the Future
We are the tenders of this flame until others come to carry it further. We stand on the shoulders of those who made space in back rooms, in secret gatherings, and in front-line marches. We honor their memory every time we show up for each other now—with care, with craft, with courage.
This moment is not isolated—it is part of a queer continuum that stretches back thousands of years and forward into futures we are still dreaming into being.
May we meet the moment.
May healing be our protest.
May Pride be our praxis.
And may we carry the fire well.
Written by Corbly Brockman. Brockman is a queer artist, therapist, and co-founder of Roots & Rays Center for Creative Medicine. Corbly writes from the fire—where protest meets healing, and memory becomes medicine.
