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A Rainbow Façade When I scroll through Instagram and TikTok during pride month and see all the ads from companies, changing their logos to rainbow, I cannot help but cringe. When I was younger and did not know better, I thought companies acknowledging the queer community was a step in the right direction. Surely it was, especially after decades, even centuries, of discrimination against the LGBTIQ+ community perpetuated by companies and society alike. Little did I realise the insidious nature of businesses donning the rainbow colours of the pride flag. Now, it makes my blood boil. One of the most important points to remember is that companies are not your friends and they don’t really care about you. What they do care about is profit. Think about it, it is good business to expand your market to encompass the LGBTIQ+ community. If a company throws some rainbow patterns on sneakers, stickers or other paraphernalia, of course they have opened up a new market of — specifically queer — consumers who can buy more products and ultimately make them more money. Unfortunately, a lot of queer people do actually lap this up. A recent survey found that 66 per cent of queer adults would be likely to “remain loyal to a company or brand they believed to be supportive of the LGBT community.” However, quite often, a lot of the profit that businesses make goes straight back to bigoted politicians or charities that support awful practices such as conversion therapy. With a quick Google search, I found dozens of companies that do just this. In fact, from 2017 to 2018, nine corporations alone donated over $14 million to homophobic and transphobic politicians, including Pfizer (yes, looks like I’ve got a homophobic vaccine in me), FedEx, Home Depot and Verizon. Yet hypocritically, they all donned pride flags and rainbow merchandise. Wow, what great allies. Why is it that companies did not plaster rainbows across everything before? Well, in the past 10–20 years, LGBTIQ+ rights and representation have advanced, and society in general has become more accepting of the queer community. Consequently, it has also become less of a risk for companies to openly support the queer community. Whilst in the past, opening up the market to LGBTIQ+ people would not have garnered as much of a profit as it does today due to the backlash they would’ve received.
