Rainbow capitalism is exactly why corporations aren't allowed at pride.
They say they love their gay
wage slavesemployees, they support their transabuse victims"family members", and then in the same breath donation to Republicans who want them gone. Fund politicians at home and abroad who want them removed by any means, "corrected" by camps.Every company that has a rainbow logo in June somehow never has one on twitter for the regions that openly hate and harm LGBT people. Every company that pays lip service for the gays to fork over their cash will gladly kiss Trump's ass as he shoves us into the camps.
No corporation loves gays, even if the CEO and every board member is queer. They will gladly sell themselves if it meant 0.1% gains in stock prices.
There's a reason it's coming from the marketing departments. They're using it to market to people. To sell products. It was never anything more than bastardizing pride to sell cheap crap.
This somehow manages to cause us to backslide. Pride messaging ends up selling well. People who aren't into it, but aren't really bigots are like "eh cool, equality sounds great". Obviously the communities that it targets, it's working on. The people who don't like it - aren't gonna cause a big fuss about it, so the buy their shit and get out.
But then the problem becomes those same people who said nothing in the store - and those who aren't actively "into" it, are now seeing it everywhere. And they aren't tying it in their minds to an equality movement, they're tying it to advertising. But you know how the advertising gets - it's kind of "fad"-y. Well, the rainbow advertising 'fad' as been going on for quite some time.
So now, LGBT stuff is "everywhere", but - people are growing tired of it for the wrong reasons. They're growing tired of the advertising side of it, and it's causing problems on the human-rights side of it...
Reminder that Ellen hung out with George w bush
When called out for going to a sports game with someone who endorsed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, opposed adoption rights, anti hate crime laws, and anti discrimination laws, she doubled down and did a little segment on her show about how he’s alright and posted a selfie
While it is true that bush softened on gay rights issues later that was almost exclusively after he had left the presidency and thus was basically irrelevant. When the man had extreme power his policy was disgusting. When he listened to gay republican groups he did not soften at all. It was merely when his image needed to be rebranded after he was known mostly as a war criminal responsible for murdering 1 million Iraqis that he decided to soften his stance a bit. By then the Republican Party had gotten so fucking loony plenty of people accepted him as downright rational and kind. Instead of what he was, which is basically trump with a bit of impulse control and decorum
The takeaway is exactly what you said. The unifying factor here is social class. Ultra rich gays will happily throw you under the bus for 1 more dollar. Tim Cook will happily support someone who will stop him from adopting children or getting married if it means apples market share grows by 3%. He does not care because if it truly matters to him he will just find a way to circumvent the law with his enormous wealth. He does not worry about spousal decision making because he will hire a private live in physician. He will hire a surrogate to act as a legal agent for adoption in name only. If it comes to camps he obviously won’t go to the camps. If it gets to the point where he would be anywhere near at risk he would expatriate at a moments notice on a private jet. Etc. but you won’t have those luxuries. Fuck you, got mine.
Tim Cook will happily support someone who will stop him from adopting children or getting married if it means apples market share grows by 3%.
Exactly. As you note, rich people can usually buy their way around most anti-LGBT laws. Imagine you're a billionaire or megacorp CEO. Consider your workarounds for various anti-LGBT laws. Imagine you're such a person but happen to be gay and/or trans.
Gay marriage ban? Hire a team of lawyers to draft a series of contracts between you and your partner. Marriage imparts hundreds of protections and benefits, but most of those can also be achieved with a mountain of legal paperwork.
Laws criminalizing gay sex? You live on a giant private compound. How will cops even know what you're doing in there? Even if they could, you can hire the best lawyers money can buy.
Restrictions on gender ID markers? Move your official residence to a state that affirms trans rights. For a passport, get a second or third passport in the form of a golden passport (one where you invest some large sum in a country in exchange for citizenship there.) Now you have a document for international travel with the correct gender marker on it.
Bans on trans medicine? Fly overseas for any medical treatment you need. If they really crack down on it, get treated with those injectable hormone pellets. Fly out of the country a few times a year to have your hormones topped off. Do any surgeries overseas as well.
Bathroom bans? Your limo has a toilet in it. Or you comply, use the restroom of your birth-assigned sex, and have your team of bodyguards guard the door while you do so. Or, more likely, you simply never go places where you would have to use a public restroom in the first place.
The hard truth is that most discriminatory laws can be bypassed or made irrelevant if you have enough cash.
There are simply very few discriminatory laws that can't be bypassed with enough money. They're not at risk until people actually start being sent to camps. And, as you note, they can easily jet off to a friendly country in the event of that ever happening.
Corporations at some time: Doing whatever they think will make them more money
Corporations at other time: Doing whatever they think will make them more money
Regardless of rainbow capitalism, I'm excited for this June just to see maga heads explode because of a rainbow.
There will most likely be death and bomb threats canceling some events, unfortunately. We've seen that before.
We've seen that before.
For those who don't know:
At least 11 different LGBTQ Pride events across the United States have been disrupted by right-wing protesters or delayed due to threats of violence in the past two months, according to research by TIME and the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters. Those numbers reflect a “step up in aggressive activity targeting LGBTQ people,” compared to recent history, according to Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow with Right Wing Watch, a project by the progressive group People For the American Way.
Pretty sure there will be a lot of violence this year
Nah
Reason #2024783670234 to stop voting for capitalists.
coolprofitableFtfy.
The thing about dei initiatives is that they don't even work. All of this bullcrap and none of them were even close to hitting their targets anyway.
It's like the Paris accords. We're in the Paris accords, then we're out of the Paris accords. Then we're in them again, and then out of them again....and the whole time the world is burning record breaking amounts of fossil fuels.
Edit: Oh I'm sorry, you're right guys, the Paris accords are totally working and dei initiatives that don't ever hit any targets are great actually...just like...Jenny Craig and friends?
You can stay getting upset about whether or not we're doing some marketing-based, ineffective, half-measure bullshit thing or whether it's been rolled back again. I personally am done giving a shit.
Absolutionist garbage.
Granted, it's a low percentage of initiatives that are reaching their goals, typical of many new initiatives, but it's certainly not none. The majority of research and data on DEI initiatives shows that they are benefiting a majority of employees, despite only 5% of initiatives meeting their goals.
It's like saying all weightloss routines are bullcrap because nobody ever meets their weightloss goals.
Sometimes they're used to just point at it in case of an anti-discrimination lawsuit. Sometimes it was a real policy that did real change.
And who's fault that we got out of the Paris accords?
Well, its the most obvious Virtue Signaling that doesn't cost anything to them.
Good that there are actually, sadly rather few, corpos that actually do care and not just during Pride Month but all Months. For example Paizo.
Hopefully it will cost them some sales.
We need a list of every company that sold out its minorities with this shit.
Next pride month is going to be super awkard
and the most important in a while
Next pride month we gon' be throwin' the bricks
I mean their logo is a fucking red target. Not exactly what I think of when I hear "gay friendly".
The bright side is, that they'll never get to pander to us again hopefully, because how do you recover from doing such an about face on a community?
I envy your faith in the general public's long term memory.
Oh, it's actually super easy when you have no shame.
As gross as pandering to the community is/was I’d take that over the “back in the closet”
There's a bright side to this? /s
Of course they get to pander.
They do this because they have the incentives to do so. If it is less profitable for business instead of more they will get back to it in a pinch
If not, they won't.
Unless of course, they were being forced to do it, in which case, yikes.
It doesn't matter how craven the corpos are, commercial recognition is important for mainstreaming queer existence. That's why reactionaries hate it.
This. Corpos are fuckwads, but them acknowledging Pride is a matter of societal institutions bowing to the reality that queer people are people, are entitled to rights and dignity.
Corporations aren't allies, but when they strike the rainbow colors, it is still a loss and a disadvantage to our side.
I honestly don't like pride month for this reason, love idea behind it and support it but hate how companies don't care about us they just care for money.
It's telling that the takeaway is "the hive mind amalgam at the core of this corporation wasn't a real progressive ally" and not "it's super important to avoid fascists in power because as they go, so do the economic powers."
We'll learn the wrong lessons into oblivion. It's likely we already did.
When it comes to corporations, it's just a case of whatever way the wind blows. With the far-right on the rise across the western world, they're just protecting themselves from the consequences if and when a far-right government takes power.
They are parasites and will never be allies.
They want our money, but if that's not gonna happen, they want us dead.
Yeah no shit. It's a corpo that just follow the money
You means corporations actually care about nothing other than money? That can't be!
Nice Dear Loss-Leader y’all gots.
When I lived in rural areas basically the only sign of gay people was the pride merchandise put out by large corporations.
It doesn't matter in cities that are full of open gay people, but the universal application of these initiatives means it ends up normalizing this stuff in areas that might otherwise not experience it, and for that alone it's a problem that these kinds of things are going away.
It's honestly kinda wild to me how many gay folks are so "I hate pride stuff!" these days tbh, but I guess that's differing perspectives for you.
