Writing Better Pride Copy: Researching San Antonio's Queer Community

In this series on improving your copy for Pride Month, we are going in depth on three tips I gave you in Three Tips for Writing Copy for Pride Month. In the last blog, we looked at how knowing your local queer community can improve your pride copy. Building on that, I’m going to show you how I would start researching the local queer community of San Antonio, Texas. I chose San Antonio because it's not my personal queer community, and I wanted to be sure that the search results that I see are more like the ones that you would see. (We'd probably get vastly different results if I used New York City as the test case!) 

In this blog, I’ll show you: what I searched, what I found, and what those websites tell me about this community. Then I'll give you some ideas for next steps to discover more about your local queer community. 

And if you want l someone to read your pride copy to check that it does what you want it to do (aka a sensitivity reading) or if you need someone to write that copy for you, book a 15 minute call with me. We’ll discuss your priorities and goals and how I can help make your copy for your local queer community the best that it can be.

What to Search and Where to Search for Your Local Queer Community

First, I decided to use two different search engines: Google and DuckDuckGo. I did this because I wanted to check that the results I was getting were complete. Plus, you might find some interesting stuff one versus the other. 

Second, I decided to do two searches: pride San Antonio 2024 and queer community San Antonio. I chose pride San Antonio 2024 because it's Pride Month and this is a great time to see what kind of events are happening for Pride, which can give you insight into what is important to this queer community. 

I chose queer community San Antonio so I could see what else was going on with the community not connected to Pride Month. It’s a great way to just dig in and see what a local queer community is putting out into the world (aka the Internet).

Reviewing Three Websites for San Antonio’s Queer Community

From these searches, I got a lot of results. So now I’m going to walk you through three websites from those searches and show you what they tell me about this queer community. We’ll look at the official Pride website, an article on Pride Month events, and the website for a queer magazine out of San Antonio.

San Antonio’s Official Pride Website

The first website I'm going to analyze is San Antonio’s official pride website. 

Looking at the homepage, the name of their Pride is “Pride Bigger than Texas”, which as someone from Texas, that’s amazing. It also gives you a sense that this community is not only proud but they have a clever sense of humor. 

The logo for this year’s pride includes a number of symbols and statements. First, you can see it underneath the logo it says, “Pride Past, Present, Future.” Within the PRIDE bubble letters, you have a sign that says, “Gay Power”, the ACTUP pink triangle flag next to a red ribbon, then a  “Love Wins” sign, a “Trans Rights” sign next to the trans flag, and finally a sign that says “Defend Drag”. 

So just from this you can see that this queer community is a politically engaged one, particularly around trans rights and gender issues. They call out the attacks on drag shows, but it’s bigger than that. 

They’re also looking to the past by including a call back to the ACTUP “Silence = Death” flag* and a red ribbon. The red ribbon is for the fight against AIDS and to support people living with AIDS. ACTUP was founded to force the government to acknowledge and do something about the epidemic in our community in the 1980s. It is still active today!

*Bonus knowledge! The pink triangle on the ACTUP sign is a reclaimed symbol. In Nazi Germany, gay men were forced to wear pink triangles. ACTUP took that symbol, turned it upside down, and put it on the flag for their “Silence=Death” campaign.

So you can see that this community is politically engaged on some very public issues and wants to continue to remember the past issues. To me, the past and the present are intertwined, so it’s important to keep our past close as we navigate the present. Because as we all know, the oppressions the community faces have not disappeared, even if some things are getting better.

If you dig further into this website, you’ll see more information about their Pride Festival, a Pride Crosswalk, a Queer Film Festival, Queer Sports leagues, and Pride Memorial page. All of these tell me more about where the community is engaged and what is important to them (and also where you can potentially get involved). 

Based on this website alone, if I were writing copy for Pride for the San Antonio market, I would be leaning into the joy of their name, “Pride Bigger than Texas” while also making sure to engage on the issues that they are calling out: trans rights and defending drag. I would potentially focus my pride copy on the trans community, and once Pride Month was over, I would be sure to keep an eye on trans-specific days (such a Transgender Day of Remembrance and Transgender Day of Visibility) to make sure to send an email or post a blog in support of the community on those days. 

San Antonio Report: Pride Calendar

So the next website we’re looking at is an article from the San Antonio Report that covers more events during Pride Month. 

It’s important to look beyond the official events for Pride Month to see what else is going on in the queer community. For example, in New York City there is the official Pride March, but there are also alternative Pride marches, which will tell you more about the diversity within this community. 

Here we see that in addition to the regular Pride March, San Antonio has a Pride River Parade. If you haven’t been to San Antonio, you should definitely go. It is a great city, and one of the main attractions (aside from the Alamo) is the Riverwalk. Having pride parades down the river is just a pretty cool thing. Because this tells me that San Antonio as a whole is welcoming to its queer community. (Which is important to know for your non-Pride copywriting.)

Then there is a Queer Voices Pachanga. This event has a clothing swap and market, live drag, burlesque, all kinds of art, and it’s held in a space that seeks to foster cross-cultural collaboration and is a safe space for queer folks and other marginalized people. From this, I’m seeing that this is a queer community that values uplifting more marginalized voices. 

As I go through the list, I see a lot of drag events and other fun things that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with Pride Month, such as a candle making workshop. There are a lot more pride celebrations across very different types of spaces, and a lot of these are being hosted and led by drag performers.

This article confirms to me what I saw above: that this queer community is very supportive of the trans, drag, and gender non-conforming part of the community. And also, they have fun. So you can make your Pride Copy fun, while also centering what matters to this community.

Out In SA: An Online Queer Magazine

The final website we’re going to take a look at in this blog post is an online queer magazine called Out in SA. 

A local media outlet by and for the queer community is an important place to go when you are researching, because that will show you quickly (and close to real-time) what matters to them and what’s newsworthy, as well as the things that they celebrate. 

You can see here that aside from reporting on the news, there are sections for food, arts and culture, health and fitness, nightlife, as well as columns about family, love and lust. There is even a section for “Living” that covers entertaining and real estate. So from this one website, you see a much more robust view of the queer community.

To dig a little further, in the News section, there are multiple articles about monkeypox and vaccinations related to it. I’m also seeing other political issues such as which Texas Republicans voted to protect marriage equality, safety concerns during Pride Month, and the Texas Supreme Court, allowing the state to investigate families with transgender teens. 

But the news also includes an article about RuPaul‘s drag race and one about a food truck journeys for a member of the community. 

Like the prior websites, I’m seeing a concern about trans issues, but I’m also seeing a community joy here: from local business owners to entertainment. 

Bonus Tip! You can use this media to find articles that relate to your business area, so that you can write copy for Pride Month that really speaks to this queer community and your business.

Now What? Next Steps to Learn More About Your Local Queer Community

So this blog covers how I would start to research a local queer community. My goal for this is just to get a sense of what matters to the community and an initial sense of what they are like (like are they funny, aggressive, bubbly?). 

If I were going to continue to learn about San Antonio’s queer community, I would do a few things next. First, I would do some research in Spanish, because I have Spanish language skills and the demographics of San Antonio itself, which has a high percentage of Spanish speakers. 

The best thing that you can do is go to a Pride event. Pride Month is a great time for you to get a personal understanding of who this community is in their most out and proud moment. It will probably tell you far more about this queer community than reading about them online will. Go to a Pride Festival. You will have the opportunity to meet people, see local queer artists, and see people being proud and happy with who they are and what that means to them.

So, get out there and learn about your local queer community!

And if you need someone to give your Pride Copy a read before it goes live, book a 15 minute call with me to discuss what you need, what part of the community you are writing for, and your turnaround time is. I’m excited to help make your Pride copy the best that it can be!

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