owlsofstarlight:

jadelyn:

jezi-belle:

beeinternet:

susiephone:

since pride month is coming up, that also means we’re getting closer to the month when there’ll be 10000 posts reminding us that all the gay pride merch is just a corporate cash-in, that these corporations don’t care about us, that the world isn’t really any better, that none of the pride merch and ads actually mean anything, that it isn’t really progressive, blah blah blah

let me just say

i know. most people on here know. you are not the sole thinking person in a world of sheep. i promise you that the person you’re making all these points to has heard it 100 times 100 ways from 100 other people. we know, tumblr. we know. 

but dammit, one month a year i get rainbow everything, and that’s a breath of fresh air after eleven months of straight nonsense. i LOVE seeing pride everywhere, even if it is just a corporate cash-grab. and it’s not like i can just opt out of this capitalist society, so fuck it, imma buy all the rainbow, pride-themed, gay merch i can get my hands on.

the world is a capitalist hellhole and there is no escape, so we may as well have what fun we can with it while we try and make things better.

happy pride, folks.

As an added point, a lot of sponsorships and merch go a long way toward funding local LGBT agency operations, some of them for the full year. It’s not the system we want, but tanking sales of rainbow merch at pride events really only hurts local agencies! Support your local community centers and social service centers working for LGBTQ people!

I’m just going to leave this thread here from my own Twitter account last June.

Look. Here’s thing about “just a corporate cashgrab” Discourse.

Yes, the corporations just want our money. We know.

That is because they are corporations, and that is what corporations do. That is the sole purpose of their existence, to try to get their grubby hands on your money, my money, literally all of everyone’s money.

It’s not that they think the queer community is uniquely susceptible to being bamboozled into trusting them. What the hell do you think regular advertising is? They do this to literally everyone because that is the nature of corporate behavior: see opportunity to sell more stuff, jump on it, ???, profit.

The only difference is that with Pride-related cashgrabs, they are saying publicly that they acknowledge queer folks as a demographic and that yes in fact they would like to stick their hands into our wallets just like they do to the str8s.

Also like… They’re normalizing being lgbt+

Changing some ads and adding rainbows to things for June. It’s turning Pride into another part of the seasonal merch cycle.

We have Valentine’s day, easter, christmas, holloween, memorial day, labor day, vetrans day, st Patrick’s day, the fourth of july, back to school, star of summer, new years, sinco de mayo, this weekend only!, black Friday, thanksgiving, columbus day like… when have corporations not used something as an excuse to sell more stuff and make more money? Like i only remember most of these things exist because i see commercials for sales for them.

But hey if a company wants to plasters rainbows over all their shit and be supportive of the community – which let’s be real, acknowledging pride month and selling merch for it is about as big an endorsement as a company can give in terms of being visibly supportive because every customer that walks by it is going to know what it’s for- well let them add another holiday to their calendar. Let them make it completely normal for june to be a month of rainbows and normalizing our community as a thing.

Like when we see national ad campaigns for pride month merch, for sales going on, that’s when I’ll be satisfied with corporations trying to get my money. Until then, they’re still working on it.