NYC Pride Parade: Uprising RAW Dating App Celebrates First Pride Outing With ‘Queer Lady Godiva’ Parade

Emerging dating app RAW marked their first pride appearance last month at NYC Pride Parade with a Lady Godiva inspired parade to highlight issues queer women face. 

The platform, which launched in July 2023, celebrated their first LBGTQ+ season at the annual event on June 30 using a picture banner of a naked queer femme on a horse. 

Lady Godiva was known to be a mythologized twelfth-century woman who rode naked through her hometown Coventry to protest against unjust taxation. The 11th century noblewoman is considered to be a key historical figure for women as she was one of the most powerful females in the Dark Ages Britain era. 

The female dominantly-run team brand showcased the centerpiece to highlight issues like respecting space boundaries, equitable healthcare access and awareness, as well as disproportionate objectification. 

These issues were reported as findings through their in-house research, which they surveyed 241 queer women and femme enbies in the Tri-State area. 

“So many times me and my various partners were catcalled on the subway or on the street by men wolf-whistling and telling us to put on a show for them,” said Aysha, an international student and consulting researcher on RAW’s Queer Godiva project. 

The 24-year-old added: “Objectifying queer women is so normalized in the culture, and we’d thought we’d turn to Godiva’s nudity to reclaim the narrative in a way that’s like ‘Look, I’m naked, and now that we got your attention, we will talk about all these things.’”

RAW was founded by women and has become a new top-charting dating app in the US and the UK Google Play since its launch.