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Every Pride, we see corporations proudly display their rainbow logos and merchandise…but what happens to all that on July 1?
In this episode, we dive into the commercialization and commodification of Pride and how some corporations are padding the pockets of anti-LGBTQ+ politicians while donning their faux rainbows.
Additional Resources:
Snarky Opener (0:00)
Pride messaging is cool and all, but those rainbows on social media don't actually protect me, dumbass.
Episode Introduction (0:25)
Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay.
I'm Rob Loveless and, today, I'm a non-jaded gay for a very superficial reason. I went to the dentist yesterday.
Used to hate going to the dentist as a kid, but in recent years I actually enjoy it because I take good care of my teeth, and I want to maintain these nice pearly whites.
So, I was at the dentist. They did like a good cleaning, looking all nice and fresh. And I'm kind of an old man.
I'm a big tea drinker. I drink like five glasses a day. So, to prevent any staining, I decided to buy a pack of metal straws to sip all my tea out of.
Tea and protein shakes. That is correct. So pretty much any beverage that is not clear, I am sipping through a metal straw now.
So, like, you want to get swole, but you want to have nice teeth, too. What can you do?
Corporate Greed & Rainbow Capitalism (1:10)
Anyway, I hope you're all doing well. I hope you're enjoying your Pride month.
I'm sure by now you've seen a ton of rainbow messaging everywhere. Different Pride messages and Pride merchandise out there.
You know, the annual spiel we see all the time. You know, we see it every year. But really, it kind of just seems like this has become a trend for corporations to capitalize on.
That they're more interested in the merchandising and the messaging behind Pride, but not really the true meaning behind it.
And then obviously, you know, we've all seen the joke, where do the rainbows go on July 1?
You know, after Pride, a lot of the corporations go quiet, and it's back to heteros as usual.
So today, we're going to dive into this topic a little bit more. Talk about corporate greed and rainbow capitalism.
But first, let's begin our episode with our tarot reading.
Tarot (1:53)
Okay, so today's card is the Five of Pentacles in reverse. So, just to recap, Pentacles is a suit tied to earth. It's more feminine energy, so it's more meditative in nature.
You could typically think of Pentacles as prosperity, putting in hard work, enjoying the fruits of your labors, and success from the challenges you've gone through.
Now, the Five of Pentacles is a little bit ominous-looking card. It depicts two people outside in the snow, and it looks like they're standing outside a church.
There's a traditional stained-glass window, and the five Pentacles are depicted within that window. Outside, we see two people walking barefoot.
One looks to be a woman that's wrapped in a shawl, kind of covering herself from the cold. Another, it looks like there's a child. He's barefoot, and he's walking on crutches, again, barefoot in the snow.
So, you know, kind of braving the elements. There's a lot of darkness on this card. The background is primarily black.
So, initially, this card could look pretty scary. But luckily, we drew this in reverse, and the reverse meaning is actually pretty optimistic.
It's typically tied to moving on from challenges, which I think is very appropriate for Pride Month.
In numerology, the number five is tied to challenges and difficulties, as you can imagine with these two people standing outside the church gazing up at the Pentacles.
So, in general, the Five of Pentacles can indicate that we're feeling a sense of lack and loss and that we might even be afraid of going without.
But when drawn in reverse, this card is actually an indication that we're moving away from any financial challenges we've been experiencing, but we might have some lingering fears about falling back into hardship.
And while Pentacles is typically tied to more of our financial struggles, you can actually apply this card more broadly to just our personal lives and struggles as well.
In summary, it's kind of giving us some, you know, positive outlook on the horizon, that we can finally see a way out of our difficulties and that our hope is being renewed.
And interestingly enough, this can potentially indicate that we've been placing too much importance on our material wealth and the thing, the superficial things we have in life and neglecting our kind of spiritual well-being and the people that we surround ourselves with.
So, we can actually be feeling isolated because we've been focusing more on the pretty things around us, as opposed to the positive energy we're putting around us.
But again, overall, I feel that this is a pretty positive card to draw. I think it is a good sign that, you know, the tough times we're going through, they're coming towards an end.
But with Pentacles being feminine energy, it's just asking us to kind of reflect on ourselves. See where we're putting our focus in life.
Are we focusing purely on the material wealth, or are we focusing on surrounding ourselves with good people who support us and who we can support, and having a a safe community to be a part of?
So, we need to take the time to think through that, reflect on where we are, you know, give credit where credit's due, for overcoming the hardships kind of, you know, having some optimism and feeling renewed joy, for seeing that we have some positive changes on the horizon.
But always being mindful of what we need to place our importance on and having that kind of action plan in place of what we need to do to get from point A to point B. We're almost out of the hardships.
But what do we need to think through so we can really take action to get completely out of that and to make the new step into the positive horizons?
And how funny that we're talking about overcoming hardships and putting too much emphasis on material wealth because today, we're talking about corporate greed surrounding Pride.
I know this is a topic that's become more relevant in recent years. There's been a lot more discussion around it.
And I feel like the community is kind of, you know, split in half on where they view, you know, having corporate sponsors within Pride.
You know, is Pride becoming too commercialized? And are we forgetting the political roots of where Pride actually comes from?
The History of Pride (5:19)
Just to recap on the history, let's go back in time to see how Pride started.
While there had been previous LGBTQ equality movements, we all widely know about the Stonewall Riots, which occurred during the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. So, back in that time, it wasn't unusual.
There were police raids on local gay bars. You know, people get arrested, their names would be slandered and published in the paper, and it would bring a lot of shame to the family and everything like that.
So finally, June 28, 1969, just enough was enough, and these Stonewall Riots occurred in response to a police raid, and it actually lasted six days.
Again, while this wasn't the first riot or movement tied to LGBTQ equality, it was the first to get major media coverage, and it really brought this situation to the mainstream.
And as a result, it's been widely recognized as the event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the 20th-century fight for equality in the United States.
So then, following the Stonewall Riots a year later, in June 1970, several LGBTQ groups held Pride marches to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in larger cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. You know, the gay hubs.
Now, today, we've seen these marches grow over the years and transform into the Pride we know and celebrate today.
Corporate Pride (6:29)
But in recent years, it's become pretty commonplace to see companies and brands participate in Pride Month, whether it's simply sponsoring an event or selling rainbow merchandise, or even just participating in the conversation online and through their advertisements.
And while I couldn't find anything specific, I did do a little digging, and it turns out that corporate sponsorships and Pride go back to the 1990s.
Again, I couldn't pinpoint the exact date, but New York City Pride saw its first corporate sponsors in the 1990s.
And I guess you could kind of connect that to the gay Renaissance we talked about in gay representation in TV and film.
As you remember, the community had been villainized in the early post-World War II days. In the 70s, saw some initial acceptance.
And then in the 80s, with the rise of, you know, the AIDS pandemic and a more conservative Christian fundamentalist movement, we saw a decline again in positive representation because of that.
And then, coming into the 90s, we had some of those breakthrough shows with, you know, Ellen, Will & Grace, Queer as Folk. So, at that time, there was a little bit more social acceptance around that.
So, I don't have any evidence to support this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a tie-in between the increased support and acceptance of the LGBTQ community at that time, tied into media, and then also tied into corporate sponsorships around Pride events.
And in a 2017 Market Watch article, the media director at the time for New York City Pride, his name's James Valerino. He said:
"We wouldn't have been able to grow into who we are today, the size and scope of the events, without the corporate sponsorships. I don't know if we'd even be able to produce just the march and two other events without corporate donations."
I understand what he's saying, but this quote doesn't really sit well with me, and it seems like a catch-22.
You know, the origins of Pride, as we talked about, it was really a political response to fighting for LGBTQ equality at a time when we really were marginalized and our voices were not heard, and we were villainized.
And, obviously, we need our allies' support in our fight for equality. However, if this is true, it's a little dangerous to think that, as an LGBTQ community, our own actions, our own words, our own experiences aren't enough to prove that we deserve equality.
That we need to rely on the heteronormative society to also support us in that. And furthermore, we need the support of corporate donors to help amplify our messages.
And in a way, it kind of feels like then we're a slave to corporations because we need their funding to get our messages out there for equality.
But on the flip side, you know, some of these organizations, some of these corporations, they're just slapping rainbows on whatever, and they're not really doing anything to push the movement forward other than brand awareness.
But then a good number of corporations that participate in Pride, they're funding Pride events, but then they're also donating to anti-LGBTQ politicians and legislation and movements that are actually hurting us.
So, we're relying on them to help us while they're hurting us. And you know, their help is fake because they're really just kind of marketing towards us because they recognize us as a target market and then use those dollars to fight against us.
Doesn't make any sense now, does it? And even if they're not working actively to harm the community, actions speak louder than words.
Putting a rainbow up once a year isn't enough to cut it. It's the bare minimum. And, with that little rant that I just had, that brings us to the concept of rainbow capitalism.
What is Rainbow Capitalism? (9:43)
According to a Refinery29 article from June 2021, rainbow capitalism is the commercialization and commodification of LGBTQ movements, most notably Pride.
So basically, as support for the LGBTQ community has risen, this group has also been recognized as a target market that has significant purchasing power.
In fact, this is pretty interesting. In 2019, the LGBTQ community had $3.7 trillion in purchasing power. And because of this, companies specifically target the inclusion of our community for the sole purpose of driving profits.
It's important to note, obviously, there are corporations out there who genuinely support the LGBTQ community. They sponsor Pride events, put their money where their mouths are, and aren't just looking to profit off of us.
So, there are some good companies out there. However, the way I look at it, rainbow capitalism applies to companies who want to slap rainbows on their company and say love is love.
But then they take actions that directly contradict those messages.
Rainbow Capitalism’s Ties to Pinkwashing (10:41)
Now, rainbow capitalism is also tied to pinkwashing, which is described as using gay-related issues in positive ways in order to distract attention from an entity's negative actions.
And this is a pretty broad sense, but you can apply it specifically to marketing and politics.
So, keeping it in the lens of Pride Month, an example of pinkwashing is marketing to the LGBTQ community with messages that are laced with superficial sympathy and allyship to promote things that have little or nothing to do with the community.
And there's some companies that have done this that are really bad, and we'll get to it.
Interestingly enough, though, the term pinkwashing was actually coined by Breast Cancer Action in 2002 when the organization launched its Think Before You Pink campaign.
And this campaign specifically took issue with companies and marketers using pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness on their products while simultaneously producing, manufacturing, or selling products that contained chemicals linked to breast cancer.
So, as you can see, there's an overlap between pinkwashing referencing the LGBTQ community and then rainbow capitalism.
Corporate Disconnect with Pride (11:40)
And rainbow capitalism was actually a newer term I'd never heard before.
I obviously knew the situation, that people were not happy, that Pride was becoming so commercialized, and that companies weren't necessarily taking appropriate action.
They were just slapping, like I said, just slapping rainbows on whatever.
But when I Googled rainbow capitalism, there were actually quite a bit of articles out there with people, you know, taking issue with this concept.
One article I came across, it's a 2018 article from Vox, the author, Alex Abad-Santos, explored how Pride Month became a branded holiday. And I'm going to read a direct quote from this:
"As the general support for LGBTQ rights grows, so does the corporate incentive for brands and companies to position themselves in sync with that growing sentiment. But in that commercialization lies the disconnect. Brands promoting Gay Pride and the LGBTQ community may not always be consistent in actually supporting the LGBTQ community, but they still capitalize on the help that people want to give that community."
And because all these corporations want a piece of our target market, because we're obviously so profitable now, we're presented with Pride campaigns and products that are, at best, ridiculously bad and, at worst, completely hypocritical and problematic.
Funny Examples of Rainbow Capitalism (12:52)
So just for shits and gigs, let's look at some of the funnier Pride fails from 2021.
Starting off, we have Bud Light.
Because when I think gay, the first thing that comes to mind is beer.
Anyway, Bud Light put out an advertisement that showed one of their beer bottles that's rainbow colored and has the letters LGBTQ in vertical next to it.
And yay, LGBTQ representation. But wait till you find out what that actually stands for.
Listed next to the respective letters was the phrase, Let's Grab Beers Tonight, Queens. I mean, at least they had the decency to say queens and not queers.
Somebody on that marketing team had some sense because even though let's grab beers tonight, queers rolls off the tongue better than queens, I really don't want anybody outside this community referring to me as a queer.
And again, I consider beer to be straight. So, what are you doing, Bud Light? Beer? Come on. It's Pride. Half of us are in crop tops. Do we really want to have a beer bloat at Pride? I don't think so.
And if we are going to indulge in beer, I can assure you that I'm going to go for boujee-er brands than Bud Light. Not to sound like a snob, but Bud Light is hella straight.
Moving on, we have Skittles.
Which I'm sure you've seen this the past few years.
They have this whole campaign where they get rid of all the color in their packaging, so it's just solid white wrapper and white candy with the slogan, only one rainbow matters during Pride.
Which, you know, I get what you're doing there, but it's kind of the opposite because instead of promoting the rainbow, you're whitewashing it away.
So, I don't really know how I feel about this, but honestly, having rainbows taken out of a candy doesn't do much for me.
One, I don't really eat candy because calories, ew. But two, like, I don't know. Skittles, what are you doing?
Next, we have Listerine.
And this one's pretty funny. So, you know, unsurprisingly, we have a rainbow bottle of mouthwash.
They did add the words onto the bottle that says life, healing, sunlight, nature, peace, harmony, and spirit, which, yeah, all nice things.
But, like, why are we putting rainbows on mouthwash because, what does that have to do with Pride?
Except for the fact that some people spoke out on Twitter and thought that this was actually a reference to using mouthwash after oral sex.
So, I mean, hey, it's always good to have a clean mouth. You know, you should use mouthwash after every time you brush your teeth.
Don't know if that's what you're doing there, Listerine, but hey, thanks for good hygiene.
And kind of going along with that theme, we have Cottonelle's flushable wipes.
Specifically, they had the slogan on it: our flushable wipes will give you that just showered feeling so you can keep the love going.
Which, okay, might sound sweet enough until you get to this next part. Printed on the packaging were eggplant and pussycats.
So, I guess they were just giving us all a friendly reminder to wash our genitals, which, again, yay, hygiene. But I don't know if I need Pride-themed flushable wipes to tell me that.
Although you know eggplant emojis, it's got a certain appeal. I can't...I don't know.
So again, obviously, these are some lighter examples of rainbow capitalism and Pride fails. But there is a darker side of things, which we're going to go into.
Dark Examples of Rainbow Capitalism (15:48)
So, hope you had a few laughs because now things are going to get dark.
So American Airlines.
In 2021, they updated their social branding to rainbow for Pride. Obviously, so groundbreaking. No other corporation has done it, right? Here's the thing, though.
In 2020, the company donated more than $46,000 to Mitch McConnell's 2020 campaign. And just a reminder that at that time, good old Mitch McConnell, he was actively blocking the Equality Act from being passed.
So again, here's an example of, yeah, let's put some rainbows out there, but we're actually donating money to people who want to hurt you. And American Airlines was not the only offender in that regard.
AT&T did something similar with their rainbow messaging.
But they actually donated more than $56,000 to Mitch McConnell's campaign.
Moving on to Cigna.
They wished their followers a Happy Pride Month on Twitter last year, but they neglected to highlight that they had actually rolled back changes to their coverage policies, which hurt the community.
And specifically, I'm talking about the fact that they re-implemented coverage exclusions for gender dysphoria care.
This one really hurt me, and I'm sure it's gonna hurt you, too.
But here we are with Google.
They set up a Pride animation that popped up when users searched for words like gay and queer.
So, you know, sometimes you just want to browse the internet without having, you know, animated confetti thrown in your face.
But, whatever, they were trying to be cute. Here's a problem, though. The kicker is the company had been allowing advertisers to exclude non-binary people from seeing job ads.
And in 2019, YouTube, which is owned by Google, was sued for suppressing video content by LGBTQ creators.
But hey, throw some rainbow confetti on the screen, and we can forget about that, right?
And lastly, let's not forget the supportive Pride message from our friends over at ICE along with the rainbow-themed Make America Great Again Pride hats.
Yeah. You know what? I don't even want to get into it. I'm not going to provide any commentary. If you have nothing nice to say, come sit by me.
So, with that being said, just, we're gonna gloss right over that piece and move on.
Inauthentic, Empty Gestures (17:43)
So, across the board, whether a company is trying to join the conversation or is actively hurting the LGBTQ+ community while profiting from rainbow capitalism, I think most of us realize that these Pride messages and merchandise feel pretty inauthentic.
Especially considering, come July 1, we go back to the land of heteros, and corporations largely forget to represent us unless they forget to change their social media icons so that their rainbow icons stay up a little bit longer.
And like I said, more recently, many people in the community are taking issue with this. I actually came across a really interesting interview PBS aired last June that looked into rainbow capitalism and questions raised around corporate commitments during Pride.
They spoke to Karen Tongson, an author and professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California, about this, and she had a really great response to this topic.
So, I'm going to just read a direct quote from her:
"I think we must understand that it's a gesture of support, but gestures of support, nice words, visible images of solidarity, aren't always enough. They're often never enough, actually. And so, it's not that people are angry that corporations are showing some effort at making a gesture to the LGBT communities, but it's like, what backs it up? What is there behind the gesture? Is there anything substantial material that will actually help transform the worlds that we are in and make it better for all of us?"
And this is absolutely true because I just gave you that list of examples of rainbow capitalism that are essentially just empty gestures. I mean, let's get beers tonight, queens, hello.
25 Corporations Guilty of Rainbow Capitalism (19:06)
And sure, some organizations may donate a portion of their profits to LGBTQ+ organizations.
Although I was doing some research and I did see, I'm not going to say any names, but I did see that one retailer who was selling Pride merchandise only donated 10% of those proceeds to LGBTQ+ charities and organizations, which is fucking weak if you ask me.
However, it's often surprising to find out how many corporations are participating in Pride and yet still donate to anti-LGBTQ politicians.
In fact, in June 2021, Popular Information published a list of 25 corporations guilty of rainbow capitalism who had donated heavily to anti-gay politicians of that year.
So, I'm gonna go through this list of the 25 guilty corporations and the amount that they actually donated to anti-LGBTQ politicians the same year that they were pitching Pride campaigns.
So, kicking us off, we have:
So, collectively, these 25 corporations donated more than ten million dollars to anti-gay politicians, and yet they still want to participate in the Pride festivities? Fuck all the way out of here with that.
You know, it's frustrating because, for a lot of us, we shop at some of these companies on a day-to-day basis.
And our dollars, our friends' dollars, our family's dollars, our allies' dollars, they're all being spent on their products here.
And those dollars may end up being donated to politicians who not only don't support us but actually want to hurt us.
So, as we continue celebrating Pride, be mindful of what corporations are participating in rainbow capitalism and pinkwashing.
And you know, it'll be interesting to see what happens because, obviously, Disney was embroiled with that Don't Say Gay bill this past year.
And Disney always tries to act so gayly, and they always do something for Pride. This year, though, let's see if they actually put their money where their mouth is and take some action.
So, let's stay tuned and find out.
Episode Closing (22:07)
But that being said, if you see an ad of a brand you like participating in Pride, do a little research to see what actions they've actually taken to help our community.
You know, do a quick Google search, or maybe I should say Bing because fuck Google. Oh, can I say that this podcast is on Google podcast, so I probably shouldn't say that.
Anyway, search somewhere online other than Google and look into the retailer's history. See if they have a track record of donating to anti-LGBTQ politicians and initiatives or if they seem to be down with the gays.
And like I said at the beginning, pay attention to see where the rainbows go come July 1. You know, once Pride is over, are your favorite brands and companies still advocating for the LGBTQ+ community, or do they go quiet until next Pride?
So, wrapping things up, obviously, this is a complicated issue because, yes, like, you know, the director of the New York City Pride said back in 2017, corporate support does play a big part of getting our movement out there because they're donating dollars that typically, our LGBT organizations can't necessarily raise on their own.
But it could potentially come at a price where we're spending money on these corporations and their products, and then our dollars are going to pad the pockets of people who want to hurt us.
So, you know, there's no way to be perfect. We're all guilty of shopping at these corporations, but like I said, just be mindful.
Do your research and call it any bad behavior you see. Try to encourage brands and corporations to actually put their money where their mouth is.
And connecting back to the tarot, it's kind of twofold. One, Pride is obviously a time that recognizes the hardships we've gone through and the progress we've made and kind of gives us a temporary time to celebrate those wins.
But it also reminds us that there's a lot of work to do, which I think for us personally, ties into the tarot reading, where, you know, there's hope on the horizon and optimism on the horizon.
We're starting to come out of our hardships and move into easier times. So, you know, we're in the right direction. Keep on fighting the good fight.
But I think there's also that reminder of, you know, the tarot talked about the balance of putting too much emphasis on material wealth versus having connections and relationships and feeling isolated and lonely if we don't have those, if we're putting too much emphasis on the wealth.
And you can look at that through a few lenses. One, are we somebody who pays attention to where we're putting our dollars? Are we paying attention to make sure that we're donating to corporations that are sustainable and not looking to hurt us?
And secondly, it's also kind of a reflection of the corporations that, you know, they're not afraid to share those corporate dollars to support us, but a lot of times, it's just empty gestures.
So, I think for this episode it's really calling for us to meditate and reflect on all that we've achieved and where we want to go, and the actions we can take to get there.
And how we can, you know, how we can make a change in our own communities. And it's also a reflection of, you know, how can we hold corporations accountable? How can we balance the commercialization of Pride with its true political meanings?
Because, you know, as much as everybody loves a good party, except me, because I have social anxiety and I don't like crowds and I don't drink a lot, we can't forget the origins of where Pride began.
With those Stonewall Riots back in 1969 and the movements that preceded that even. There's so much gay history out there that, you know, sadly, was not taught to us in schools that I definitely want to cover in later episodes.
But as you're celebrating this year, just take the time to reflect on those true meanings of Pride. And also, you know, pay attention to rainbow capitalism and calling it out when you see it.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. And if you didn't like this episode, fuck off. I don't know what else to say. Anyway, thanks for listening.
And remember every day is all we have, so you gotta make your own happiness.
Mmm-bye.
Outtake (25:58)
And today, I'm a non-jaded gay for a very superficial reason.
So today, we're going to dive. But again, overall, I feel that this is a pretty positive card to draw, because today we're talking about corporate greed surrounding Pride.
As you remember, you know, gay men had. So, just to recap on the history, we can't just do this on our own, but.
And rainbow capitalism and our voices were not heard and we were villainized.
