Set the date, decorate, stock the coolers, and call on your friends to come together to celebrate Pride. If you are looking to bring things closer to home and bring together your friends for a more personal observance, step up to the plate and throw your own Pride party. From marches, to gatherings, to conferences, to city-wide celebrations, the collective action is inspiring and there are plenty of ways to get involved. Pride events are taking place across the country and around the world throughout the month of June. But for a lot of the LGBTQ+ community, pride is still a protest.Pride Month is here, and it is time to gather together, show support for the LGBTQ community, honor those who have fought for equality, commemorate the past, and celebrate the future. Living in a big city can make life easier to be out and proud of who you are. Should the same question be applied to people who tag along to parades? If that’s your one action of solidarity for the whole year, should you be wearing a rainbow at all? Then again, sincere or not, showing the world that much rainbow doesn’t seem so bad either.Īhalya Srikant, Research Fellow: I agree with Jason that sometimes we have to put aside our own standards for the good of the community as a whole. Josie Colt, Gear Fellow: My question is: Do corporations ever fly flags out of sincere support? Unless they’ve shown other actions of allyship, rainbow-washing seems like an attempt to appear hip, hop on the current bandwagon and make a few bucks while they’re at it. Capitalism! But in this case, it also means seeding a homophobic world with more symbols of love and support. Obviously companies want to look cool and sell stuff. Even our stupid cable company supports him.
RAINBOW GAY PRIDE STUFF TV
Then their cable company-distant, bureaucratic, soulless-tweets, I don’t know, a rainbow flag on a TV screen. Maybe they’re religious, or don’t have gay friends, whatever. Jason Kehe, Senior Associate Editor: To be perfectly frank, I don’t know what the big deal is. (I mostly just bring this up to mention Food 4 Thot, because they’re very funny and everyone should listen.) So I imagine it’s something that’ll be discussed for a while. I was actually at a live taping of the Food 4 Thot podcast last weekend and this very topic came up and I was kind of relieved that most of the panel had the same mixed feelings. But my issue isn’t specifically with Apple, a company that actually has a track record of supporting LGBTQ+ causes (and an openly gay CEO), it’s with the way rainbow imagery gets co-opted to benefit groups and individuals who aren’t LGBTQ+.
It irritated me that this massive tech company would be making money off a symbol that not only represents joy and celebration, but also the LGBTQ+ community’s long history of struggle and oppression. Justice Namaste, Social Media Coordinator: Well Angela, I really started thinking about the idea of rainbow-washing after seeing Apple’s ‘Pride Edition’ Apple Watch wristband that they announced during the WWDC keynote a couple of weeks ago. What about you guys? Justice, I think you were the one who first mentioned rainbow-washing the other day. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera take on the cops at Stonewall to sell T-shirts?” And honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever have an answer to that question. Sometimes I walk past a window display and think “Did Marsha P. Over time, my feelings have gone back and forth. They might’ve been shallow attempts, but they always seemed better than the days when companies didn’t want their names associated with LGBTQ+ people at all. For a long time, I would get excited when I saw companies doing Pride-related ads etc.
Angela Watercutter, Senior Associate Editor: I’ll start, but I’ll keep it quick.