Gay TV personality Jillian Michaels is facing a backlash for comparing Pride month to “adult fetish conventions”.
The former fitness trainer on The Biggest Loser, who caused controversy five years ago by airing her thoughts about Lizzo’s body, made the new comments in a Daily Mail article on Monday (16 June).
Michaels, who came out as gay in 2012, wrote that she had always had a complicated relationship with Pride month because she had “never been ‘proud’ to be gay” because being gay “isn’t a merit badge, it’s a fact of my existence”.
LGBTQ+ rights in the past, when queer people were the “punchline at best, a pervert at worst”, meant “being gay wasn’t cool – it was dangerous”, she said, adding: “So, yes, I understand how Pride started. I understand why it mattered. The original Pride wasn’t a party, it was a protest.
“They fought back against brutality, against invisibility, against erasure. Pride parades became a vehicle for visibility, a way to commemorate those lost to hatred, disease and silence. It was defiance in the face of rejection, it was necessary.”
But, nowadays, Pride has become a “lightning rod” and was “synonymous with shock value, sexual exhibitionism and corporate hypocrisy”, she claimed.
“We’ve all seen the footage: leather daddies in a*s-less chaps simulating sex acts in public, drag queens twerking in thongs in front of children. Parades that look more like adult fetish conventions than civil rights celebrations.
“I’m all for sexual liberation but not on a sidewalk in broad daylight with families in the crowd. Keep your kink, straight or gay, in private where it belongs. [You] don’t have to be a conservative Christian mom to think that maybe the Pride movement has lost the plot… maybe it’s time for a reset.”
Michaels went on to suggest that instead of “30 days of identity politics”, Pride should be reduced to “one powerful day of shared humanity”.
Many Daily Mail readers backed her views, calling the piece “very articulate”, and praised Michaels for being the “sane voice in the gay community”.
However, on social media, the response from fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community was different.
“What a ridiculous headline, not surprising though for the Daily Mail,” one Bluesky user wrote. “Managed to find someone in the community who wants to support targeting us/our events. The old ‘hijacked’ claim is so tedious.”
Another wrote of the piece: “Oh, this title p**ses me off. I’m personally not in that scene but kink has always been a staple of Pride, and [an unfortunate] side effect of the commercialisation of Pride is that people think it should be homogenised and made wholly acceptable to all ages. F**k Jillian Michaels.”
Someone else said: “Jillian Michaels not knowing that it’s not only men [who] are part of the leather scene doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
Other didn’t mince their words, calling Michaels “the dumbest person who’s ever lived” and “just stupid”.
Appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast in May, Michaels attacked gender-affirming care for trans youngsters, describing it as “the sterilisation of kids” and “a medical travesty”.
She went on to tell the controversial podcaster: “I’m for personal freedoms… if you want to change your gender as an adult, that’s absolutely up to you. I would fight for your right to do that and live with dignity. But when your personal choices impact the rights and the freedoms of others, this is a far more nuanced conversation.”
And last year, she weighed in on the opening ceremony of Paris Olympics, which became the focus of conservatives’ fury because it featured a segment with drag queens and visibly queer people.
“Dear fellow gays,” she wrote on X/Twitter at the time, “we demand tolerance and respect but then make a mockery of something sacred for over two billion Christians.
“This type of hypocrisy and lack of understanding is a bad look. We get outraged when the extreme right bashes us but then we do this sh*t. What kind of reaction do you think they will have towards the LGBTQ+ community after this? This is not how we break down barriers, it’s how you build them.”
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