I'm straight and I won't either. I don't do business with bigots. Leave people the fuck alone. Mind your own damn business.
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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and so do the rest of us who don't have our heads up our asses, it was a choice for each of those companies...
I don't think Trump is the only reason they're stopping. I think this is an example of where social media engagement algorithms - specifically, outrage driving views - made it a rational choice to stop. They were damned if they did ("rainbow-washing" and other accusations from the left, making more and more demands for authenticity under threat of boycott and bad PR), and damned if they didn't ("gay agenda" and other accusations, threat of boycott from right-wing crazies who are now a significant demographic). Trump just gave them cover to throw up their hands and stop trying.
To be clear, they were rainbow-washing, they were pandering. But I think there may have been a path where the loudest voices didn't fence in the entire PR conversations, and I wish we were on that path.
Because let's be reasonable: it is objectively better that Target et al gives free PR to Pride and LGBTQ causes, even if yes, we all know they are a corporation and don't mean it. That act of putting rainbow flags on t-shirts, of normalizing it in areas where it isn't normalized, is itself an act that creates a safer space for LGTBQ people. It reinforces the social expectation and pressure to be tolerant, even if you're a bigot.
To be fair most LGBT+ people forget after every pride month that companies only observed it to make a buck.
I do appreciate the rainbow cakes and 2in inseam shorts for sale though. The one month a year when you can find some cute stuff in bright colors. (At least physically, and indie)
What does it matter? It was always virtue signaling anyways. They've NEVER cared about LGBTQ+ people. They don't even care about regular people. Hopefully less people will use these corporations and they will lose profit.
At least we can now tell who was in it for the right reasons and who looked at it as a cynical cash grab. We went out for breakfast for the first time in years to a bougie little brunch place and they had pride flags everywhere. You don't see a lot of them in the little town I live in.
Not that any corporation is your friend.
Shouldn't have supported capitalist cooptation of pride in the first place. Their support is and always has been marketing to sell more shit in the pursuit of profits in the guise of having an iota of humanity in the profit-seeking machine.
After years of disingenuous showy tributes and 100% accurate accusations of ‘rainbow-washing’, US companies are shrinking back ~~for fear of Donald Trump~~ because they think it's more profitable, Io Dodds reports
On the one hand it's not a great sign about which way the winds are blowing, but on the other hand my mind is just so much more at ease not seeing the cursed pride logos of Raytheon and the Pinkertons.