PINK WASH ING
Do the brands cashing in on LGBT+ Pride care more about equity than equality?
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s the sun starts to shine in June, there is another awakening. Rainbow flags start appearing in store-front windows, social media profile pictures, and your neighbour’s front garden (well, maybe that’s just my neighbour’s rather questionable flagpole, currently sporting a Gerry Cinnamon flag). I digress. June has been the unofficial month celebrating queerness for decades. But as we see more and more rainbow products popping up around Pride month, it’s important to ask ourselves whether or not the gay rights movement has sold out to capitalism, specifically, by considering a concept called ‘Pinkwashing’.
Pride month sees demonstrations and celebrations across the country, dedicated to celebrating LGBT+ people. In London, gay police officers march in uniform, and the red arrows fly overhead, in a statement of support for the community.
‘Pinkwashing’ is a term used to describe a process by which conservative institutions declare their support of gay rights to become visibly more enlightened, modern, and tolerant. Is there a problem with that?
The issue with this fixation on inclusion at all costs is that it’s somewhat of a Faustian pact. Some queer people – most notably the white, middle-class, gay men in the community – are afforded the opportunity to lead a relatively normal, public
It could easily be argued that this is a positive thing – surely a contemporary gay rights movement should support queer people in all parts of public life, including these most traditional and powerful of British institutions. It must be a good thing that we have openly gay police officers and soldiers – the gay rights movement is all about acceptance and inclusion, right?
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life. You can get married, you can excel in the workplace, and you are allowed a variety of legal rights. In exchange for these small mercies, you must not question these institutions any further, and you also must stifle the voices of the more demanding and inconvenient members of your community. In recent years, Pride in London has been sponsored by a nationally recognised bank. This institution has not only been complicit in driving up global food prices, but also holds a 4.25% shareholding in a well-known arms dealer we’ll nickname, ‘BS’. BS, themselves, even participate in London Pride, showcasing their credentials as a supposedly LGBT-friendly employer. However, as of 2016, BS have dealt arms to at least thirteen sovereign powers, known to be committing homophobic and transphobic human rights violations against their own LGBT+ citizens. Is that something to be proud of?
