LOCATION
GLBT Historical Society Museum
4127 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

ADMISSION
$15 admission; Free for GLBT Historical Society Members

RSVP and reserve your tickets here

Pride started as a protest. The first march in San Francisco drew 20 to 30 people and was explicitly political — a direct response to police violence and state persecution. Fifty years later, it had floats sponsored by banks, tech companies, and beer brands. For a long time, corporate adoption felt like victory, proof that queer identity had gone mainstream. In recent years, however, the climate has shifted: our community has come under renewed attack across the country, and many companies have retreated from their embrace of the rainbow.

Join speakers Shawn Sprockett, Suzanne Ford, Elizabeth Hudy, and others to be announced, for an in-conversation event at the GLBT Historical Society Museum, to ask the question activists have been raising since the 1970s: what does it mean when your liberation becomes a marketing strategy?

This panel traces the tension between assimilation and resistance that has defined queer politics from the beginning, and asks whether the corporate retreat is a crisis, or an opportunity to remember what Pride was actually for.

Speakers

MODERATOR: Shawn Sprockett (he/him) is an Adjunct Professor at the California College of Arts in the graduate Interaction Design program, where he teaches visual design and creative thinking. He started developing Unspeakable Vice, a volunteer-based queer history walking tour project, in 2018. The project explores lesser known stories of LGBTQ San Francisco, particularly the influence of People of Color and women in the development of queer culture and activism.

Suzanne Ford (she/her) is the Executive Director of SF Pride. The first trans woman to hold the office, she is a fierce activist working toward equal rights for the trans community. She is a founding member of the SF Pride Golf Tournament, the first and only PGA-endorsed event ensuring queer visibility in one of the most cis-heteronormative spaces in the world– as well as SF Pride’s most lucrative board-led annual fundraiser to date. Suzanne has also served as President of the board of the Spahr Center in Marin County and as a board member, Vice President, and Treasurer of SF Pride. Originally from Kentucky, she graduated with honors with a BA in History from Murray State University. She then attended Howard Law School. She was employed as a Regional Sales Manager at Revere Packaging for over 11 years, and was named by Plastic News as one of Women Breaking the Mold in the Packaging Industry in 2017. The Trans Day of Visibility Committee of San Francisco recognized her with the Legacy Award in 2022. Suzanne was chosen for the prestigious Horizons’ Foundation Leadership Award in 2024.  Suzanne recently moved to the iconic Castro neighborhood and is available to speak to groups or employers about trans issues and her experience facing the world as a trans woman.

Photo credit: Jessi Chapman

Elizabeth Hudy (she/her) is a queer leftist artist and business owner creating playfully enraged propaganda rooted in community building, radical empathy, and maximalism. Since starting The Peach Fuzz in 2017, she has raised over $300k for mutual aid/nonprofits, and provided dozens of free resources for fellow small business owners.

Members Perks
Interested in becoming a member of the GLBT Historical Society? Members enjoy all sorts of perks, including free access to this event. Learn more.

About the series

Speaking Of is a program series curated and hosted as a collaboration between the GLBT Historical Society and Unspeakable Vice walking tours. History can be a powerful way for queer individuals to connect with their community and find a sense of belonging. But history often raises as many questions as it answers. From daily visitors to the museum to guests on Unspeakable Vice’s historical walking tours, many San Francisco residents and visitors to the city alike continue to ask significant questions about the history of San Francisco’s queer communities and legacy, and how things have changed: why are gay bars disappearing? Is queer activism fading in San Francisco? Is the Castro still a destination for queer people? This quarterly panel series invites community members to answer today’s questions as framed and moderated by historians and researchers through a variety of topics.