San Francisco Pride Loses $300,000 After Sponsors Drop Out: “The Tone Has Changed in This Country”
San Francisco Pride Loses $300,000 After Sponsors Drop Out: “The Tone Has Changed in This Country”
This has always been the case with corporations. They operate for profit and nothing else.
If supporting social causes seems like a way to generate more profit, they do it. If it doesn't, they don't.
Corporations are not moral or ethical entities. They exist to generate money. Period. Anything suggesting the contrary is a lie designed to make more money.
I'm not lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or questioning, but I've been to Pride events in San Francisco, and a few other cities, because they're fun and inspiring and subversive! Pre-corporate, Pride was about announcing yourself and being yourself, and I don't know what the heck Comcast or Anheuser-Busch adds to that, beyond muddying the event by making it about cable TV or beer or something. My straight gut says, going without corporate sponsorships will make the parades and parties more fun.
Oh no, not the corporations. And here we thought they were ride or die and would always have the backs of the LGBTQ community!
Fuck 'em. Who wants or needs them? Queer people are not an "investment."
Now's the time when you see who the real allies are. The corporations were using the gay community for marketing.
Hold pride in the middle of nowhere to save money. Call it "Hot Human". The hookup spot is in the mud pit behind the bushes
Maybe we should have people dying of AIDS on the streets so we can all learn while singing the Bohemian Rhapsody while dancing like Michael Jackson.
The orange fat scarecrow would do that. Over the weekend he personally let Israel bomb Gaza again and Iran the hothies. According to the news which I'm totally misrepresenting and misremembering... A bunch of kids died there. If I had anything to do with something like that, I'd be crying and I would quit. But not orange man. That guy keeps doubling down. How about a bunch of twin babies and their moms? Eh Mr Orange? Is that enough murder?
My take: business interests do not in the main care about Pride or DEI. They care about PR.
Pride is a resistance not a party! Get back to our roots. We don't need another US Bank float.
I want to see big brick as a sponcer.
I get it, but it would be great if we could've kept it as a party. The community has already fought so much. The floats were basically the only way some people understood that LGBT+ was mainstream and accepted now. Rainbow capitalism is bad, obviously, but it's still devastating to see even that get taken away. Our roots should never have had to be resistance and it's sad to see it's come back to that. Same with several other communities. Having struggle be thrust upon you just by virtue of who you are is terrible for mental and physical health. I was looking forward to seeing the next generation thrive. I don't want to see them in the trenches. I want them to party. I want them to celebrate. I want job fairs at pride to be full of the worst Fortune 500 companies desperately trying to recruit from the community. I want them to live normal lives where they're not othered just for being and pride had evolved into a celebration of that.
Brother i'm with ya, but I've also met too many right leaning LGBTQ+ and it breaks my fuckin heart
This how it is. It always has been like that. This is one of the things that helped the right gain power.
As someone that is gay, it's been something that pisses me off too. They use LGBT culture. It's like they market the LGBT stereotypes. I think that a lot of the "normal" naive Republicans saw this as well and didn't understand when they voted for anti dei it actually meant this Nazi esque stuff going on now. I think they actually just wanted to stop the marketing and abuse of LGBT culture by shitty businesses.
LGBT culture was basically sold out the same way hip-hop culture was. Once they can make money off it the culture gets raped.
It's like people only do things because they get paid, and that's just really sad
But yeah, our corporate oligarchs and the billionaire class are evil manipulative money-grubbing leeches and we've let them run unchecked for way too long.
No, many of them want this stuff. People supporting MAGA at this stage don't care.
its called rainbow capitalism, a form of virtue signalling, and also performative politics.
which is the current flavor of politics at the moment, one moment things like shows and movies VIRTUE signal minorities, the next they virtue signal for snowflake Christians.
I’ve been to Pride events outside of the US and not a fucking corporate sponsor in sight with their goofy gayed-out logos and they were awesome. Fun, informative, inclusive and free. We can celebrate all of these “inclusive” events by not buying a single “corporate” product for the whole month, starting with those that used to show support.
I can confirm that. I live in France, and Pride in my (quite small) town doesn't have a single private sponsor. It's all organized by a non profit organization, gathering the various local LGBTQIA+ associations, and associations for STI prevention, human rights activists, feminists and so on.
Before the procession starts, there's a small fair in a public park with (free) stands for all these associations, and stands where goodies are sold to finance the event.
I think now is a great time to separate pride events from these corporate scum. They never have been and will never be allies, just opportunists who would just as willingly burn parades to the ground if it maximizes profit. The capitalist machine will never be your friend.
Straight ally checking in. Started growing my own food last year, mainly as a hobby to keep me from doom scrolling so much. But I really like this idea and am going to try not buying anything but gas the entire month.
✊
I want to go to Pride in Amsterdam. The parade is a boat parade along the canals.
Pride in Ottawa, Canada this year was pretty much corporate-less because the organisers publicly came out in support of Palestine and said they’d only accept companies on the right side of history in the parade
Corporations being corporations, most dropped out since they always have to be 100% safe on any statements of support obviously. It was actually so much better without them though.
Never forget that Pride started as a riot.
in 20 years there will not be a Donald Trump. there may or may not be a united states. but there will absolutely be gays and trans people.
there will absolutely be gays and trans people.
True, homosexuality isn't going away. However, while I would rate it as quite unlikely, I could imagine a world where sodomy laws returned, social norms changed, and homosexuality became a taboo again. There have been places and times in human history where the acceptability of homosexuality have varied quite a bit. I don't think that social norms on homosexuality are really tightly linked to technology or something where there's a clear "arrow" driving in one direction over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_homosexuality
Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place. Attitudes to male homosexuality have varied from requiring males to engage in same-sex relationships to casual integration, through acceptance, to seeing the practice as a minor sin, repressing it through law enforcement and judicial mechanisms, and to proscribing it under penalty of death. In addition, it has varied as to whether any negative attitudes towards men who have sex with men have extended to all participants, as has been common in Abrahamic religions, or only to passive (penetrated) participants, as was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Female homosexuality has historically been given less acknowledgment, explicit acceptance, and opposition.
Homosexuality was generally accepted in many ancient and medieval eastern cultures such as those influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism.[1][2] Homophobia in the eastern world is often discussed in the context of being an import from the western world,[3][4] with some contending that definitions of "progress" on homosexuality (e.g. LGBT rights) as being Western-centric.[5]
I mean, that's a patchwork at any point in time, and one that hasn't changed in a single direction over time.
That is beautiful.
The way all these companies have ditched gay rights really clarifies how much of an empty gesture the month of rainbow banners was (and how much of an empty gesture this probably is). But I think I liked it better when they did an empty gesture in support of gay rights rather than against them
Kohls is too. They kept the policies but changed the title of the DEI program to hide from conservatives.
Rainbow capitalism.
kinda wanna make a pride float with all the banners of companies that abandoned pride this year
Oh, that's a good one.
But I think I liked it better when they did an empty gesture in support of gay rights rather than against them
Just one of those things. Means nothing about the companies themselves, but means everything about where society in general is at.
Maybe now they can put up swastikas as an empty gesture toward president musk
It seems short sighted because the rest of the west isn’t nearly as bad as the USA. Do they really think the American right wing population is THAT worth pandering to that they’d give up their reputation to everyone else?
including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, Diageo, and La Crema, which is owned by Jackson Family Wines.
Media has to just name names going forward, all of them. This planet needs to know what evil to avoid. Good this article did, although I wonder who they might have omitted.
Unfortunately for Comcast they're so dog shit they don't need to be named haha. Everyone knows how awful they are.
The one time I went to Pride I was disappointed with how it was basically a bunch of corporate advertisements. I'd be happy to go again if the tone changes.
Corporations are everyone's enemy.
Basically. My friends who always made pretty elaborate costumes for Pride stopped going because it was 90% ads and garbage swag.
We'll see how many of those corporations switch their logos come June.
The one time I went to Pride I was disappointed with how it was basically a bunch of corporate advertisements.
If you're selling a product aimed at a gay crowd, aside from profile-driven, targeted online advertising, how many better venues are you going to have to promote your stuff?
Most Pride events that I think that I've seen images of are done in public areas in cities --- kind of the point of them --- and so whoever wants can do whatever.
thinks
I don't think I've seen ads at Burning Man. Might be that they have restrictions on them.
kagis
Yup.
https://survival.burningman.org/rules-and-regulations/commerce-concessions/
Logos & branding
Black Rock City is a decommodified zone where branding is not welcome. Advertising? Hell no. Launching a product? Not in Black Rock City. Burning Man is not a place to promote your business, website, or product.
It'd be possible to go organize something like that in a controlled environment, I think. But if the point of a Pride parade is to increase visibility among the wider population, going to such a controlled environment seems like it'd be kind of counterproductive.
If the products were actually aimed at a gay crowd, I'd be a little more okay with that. But the main funders were T-Mobile and Alaska Airlines.
It's ironic that Burning Man is forced to use the tools of commodification to "protect its brand" against commodification.
This is a real blow if you enjoy corporations throwing a parade to celebrate young athletic cis white gay men.
Reminds me when Tim Cook came out as gay conveniently as all the investigations about Apple's tax dodging were ramping up and rich successful gay white men in the media (*cough Chris Hughes cough) literally shut down stories on Apple's tax dodging because of some bullshit malarkey about how it was attacking Tim Cook. I remember a bunch of bullshit about Tim Cook being "brave."
Yeah, a rich white guy in charge of one of the world's richest companies who definitely has his own private security, that's real fucking brave. What a joke. Actual bravery is a gay kid in the deep South coming out in their 500 person hometown.
Shit, I knew a white kid from a town like that in Louisiana, and he wasn't gay, just atheist, and some kids on the football team found out and beat the living shit out of him. His mom told him he asked for it for his beliefs. He filed for emancipation, applied for college, went to college at 16 and started double-majoring in molecular biology and botany. I hope he's doing well.
Source for my Chris Hughes claim:
Hughes’s eroding relationship with the staff took on an ideological edge. On the morning that Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, announced that he was gay, MacGillis wrote a note to “the Plank,” T.N.R.’s internal e-mail listserv for writers and editors. “I see the celebration of his announcement, while entirely justifiable, as another sign of what’s happened to liberalism today, where rights/identity liberalism trumps economic liberalism,” he wrote. “This is, after all, a guy who embodies so much of what’s amiss in the age of inequality—pulling down $378 million in 2011 alone; Apple skirting taxes more brazenly than anyone else—yet those revelations have caused barely a stir.”
Hughes responded to the note six minutes later: “I think those are valid issues, although Apple has acted squarely within the law,” he wrote. “The law itself is fucked up. But I don’t think you can underestimate the difficulty of his decision or how tone deaf that argument would be today.”
The other editorial employees on the list were surprised by the response. It was an internal listserv for writers and editors, and the staffers didn’t realize that Hughes, who had relinquished his title as editor-in-chief when he installed Vidra, was on it. MacGillis responded by saying that he would hold off on writing, but added, “Just for the record, though, it is not so clear that Apple acted squarely within the law. The law’s a mess, but Apple pushed the bounds of it more than anyone.” He pasted text from a piece in the Times that questioned some of Apple’s practices.
“I’m confused,” Hughes wrote back. “Has anyone, including this article, said what they did was illegal? Companies have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize shareholder value, including through strategic tax planning.”
Agree with everything except the circumstances of Tim Cook’s “bravery”. He was outed on tv in a catty way, which generated a big bubble of support for him before he carefully opened the closet door.
Heartwarming: This billionaire con-artist who has swindled people into giving away digital autonomy, dodged taxes, uses inhumane labor overseas, and pretends to care about their end users is gay! ✨🌈
Maybe where you're at, but our pride was full of all colors of the rainbow and all walks of life. There were speeches from much older people talking about their joy when they were able to be married to their partner of several decades. There were people presenting from all over the gender spectrum. There were drag performers of all sizes and races and people who were just enjoying being themselves. There was a nonbinary artist with a beard in a dress that had a huge audience. It felt like a time to be around people who would love and accept you unconditionally.
To your point about the cis white gay men: There was a much older lady running a booth (not selling just handing out fliers) for a first time sponsor, and I had such a lovely chat with her. Her husband came to keep her company and they were both expressing how they never really knew much about LGBT stuff but seeing people there and the joy really affected her. I don’t know if she was anti lgbt before, but you could tell she was really moved by seeing people basically just being at a fair, but able to be themselves. She told me about a gay couple that stopped by with their kids and how happy the kids looked. She even asked me about the flags (our pride had like every lgbt flag under the sun as freebies). Sure, maybe she's only affected by the hetero seeming people that fit into the cis white 2.5 kids mold, but I really think it had an impact on her. So, to your point, sure I won't argue that the hot cis white guys are probably more visible/"palatable" at pride, but it's still a really important event for the community as a whole, and it's gotten more open and accepting every year.
The president himself couldn't save Tesla stock. The president doesn't have the power that the people do.
These companies are on the wrong fucking side.
Not from where they're sitting. We have to make this a true statement through collective action. Lemmy, and other decentralized forms of communication, will likely need to play a central role in organizing those actions. They're not going to let us work towards removing their power using the platforms they control.
Oh no, not $300k! How will the parade survive the absolutely no difference that will make?
The article states they need $1.2 million to pull it off, so $300K is 1/4 of the budget.
They need 1.2 million to pull it off as planned. Scale back on the rainbow bunting. It’s a huge event and the vendors and businesses in the area rake in cash. It’s got some momentum and this year, based on
<gestures at everything >
it’s going to be a big pride season.I do not need corporate money in order to be gay in public.
Never have we seen a community under fire in my generation. Than we are seeing today.
You must not get out much.
Black people have been under fire for the past 300 years, and are still under fire to this day due to DEI rollbacks, so your comment sounds like you are trolling.
I can understand that. I am wrong for saying that though. You are right. But even more. We need to take back what they are rolling back. All at risk individuals. Including myself with my terrible memory.
