By Jemima Jefferson, co-chair, LGB Business Forum

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It’s June, so LinkedIn is chock-a-block with articles about Pride. Amid the rainbows and sparkles, one particular post caught my eye, from a gay CEO sharing how surprised his younger self would have been if he knew he’d grow up to become a business leader.

He’s right to be proud – and to be thankful. The world today is far better for gay men than it was 30 years ago. For lesbians, though, the picture is more clouded. Especially when it comes to Pride.

Let me explain. I was a late bloomer; I only discovered I was a lesbian in my 30s. My first Pride was magical: buzzing, welcoming, and inclusive in the best sense of the word.

I have so many happy memories of Pride down the years: going along with a gaggle of my colleagues from Goldman’s; the year when Sheboom led the march and the streets shook with the beat of their drums; Amnesty’s infamous Pink Tank in ‘05. No barriers, no wristbands, just everyone celebrating the one day in the year when everyone could be out and proud (and safe) in public.

Sadly, perfection is never permanent. After a few years, I sensed that the ‘party’ element was beginning to edge out the ‘protest’. Pride turned into a Parade, and that meant everything from policing to clean-up had to be paid for. That’s when Barclays, EY, and other corporates started sponsoring the event. (Where were you when we needed you, Barclays? Why so shy in ‘85, Tesco?)

We all know why they were there: it was their chance to look ‘inclusive’ and capture the so-called ‘Pink Pound’.

For me and many LGB people, this marked the beginning of the end. It signalled the surrender of the community ethos which made Pride great, and its replacement by a sanitised, sterile corporate-friendly facsimile, marketed to straights as much as to gays as a “fun day out for all the family”.

This is the dark side of inclusion, when it’s used as a euphemism for edging people out of their own spaces and taking possession of magical things they themselves created.

What happened to Pride is a perfect metaphor for what’s happened to the wider LGB movement. Just as corporates took over the Parade without consulting the community, so gays and lesbians have seen ourselves ‘teamed’ with TQ+ against our wishes.

Before you brand me an unreconstructed bigot who can’t cope with a few more letters added to the LGB, consider the real world results of ‘inclusion’. It leads to the CEO of the UK’s best-known lesbian and gay charity – our charity, once – describing lesbians as “sexual racists” for not sleeping with men who claim to be women. It makes us afraid to challenge 1970s-era homophobia (such as the concept of the “male lesbian”) in the workplace.

I wonder if that proud gay CEO knew that most LGB workers fly under the radar for fear of losing their jobs, for fear of being attacked and accused of being ‘transphobic’ or a ‘bigot’ or even a ‘Nazi’? If he’d read Compelled Conformity – the first survey of LGB employees’ experience of EDI – and listened to how they’re being “forced back in the closet” at work, maybe he’d agree that inclusivity has lost its way.

If you believe everything on LinkedIn, the biggest threat to the ‘LGBTQ+’ is insufficient inclusivity. But for the LGB (and lesbians especially) it’s today’s mania to include everyone in everything at all times. One in four women, gay or straight, has been sexually assaulted – and they’re called bigots for demanding their rights to single-sex spaces, or even welcoming the Supreme Court’s ruling that “sex means sex”. My gay friends tell me about women with beards coming on to them in digital and physical spaces. The only lesbian bar in London excludes women who only want to date women.

I agree with the CEO when he says we don’t measure inclusion by looking at how the most privileged people are doing. But glance at the Pride posts on LinkedIn this month, and ask yourself: which group is centred, lionised, cheered, praised, and included more than any other?

Because, just like Pride, it sure as hell ain’t LGB any more.

So, to all lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, I wish you a happy Pride. And to everyone championing the virtues of “inclusion” I’ll leave you with a final question: Are you posting about Pride because you want to – or because you have to?