Capitalism Corrupted: Do Companies Support the LGBT?

It’s PRIDE month, so should we praise companies for posting rainbow logos?

One of these is a Pepe the frog meme, one is the logo for CNBC, which has always been rainbow. A couple are human rights or LGBTQ activist sites. So even this picture is misleading.

I criticize Capitalism a lot for someone who claims to not be anti-Capitalism. But I swear that I am not anti-Capitalism, I am just against the bad parts that need to be called out. So what is so wrong with companies claiming to be supportive of the LGBTQ for PRIDE?

The Hypocrisy

Well, the biggest issue has to be with the fact that many of these companies are hypocrites. For instance, they claim to be all for LGBT rights, but they are well known for a variety of human rights violations.

For instance, Disney is well known for paying their employees so little that they cannot even afford to live in the place they work. EA is in the middle of a controversy where they are involved in illegal gambling practices with children. PETA objectifies women and slaughters most of the animals they “save.” YouTube is well known for demonetizing LGBT content and defending homophobes. And that is just the kind things many of these companies do.

Apple workers in China are paid 2$ an hour, and work in horrific conditions. GAP and H&M both use overseas sweatshops that pay people less than a dollar an hour and break child labor laws. And this does not even take into account the horrific issues the Fast Fashion industry is having on the environment and the harming of economies in less affluent countries. And tons more.

In my opinion, companies that have various human rights abuses under their belt don’t really care about the LGBT one bit. And this is not even referring to the companies that have donated funds to anti-LGBTQ causes. But then, why do they add the rainbow to their logos?

Well…

The Exploitation

While I could not find any solid statistics to prove this, it can be assumed that companies earn a nifty profit by catering to LGBT people. Given that they make up 7% of the population, or 6.8% of the total US buying power in 2015, making up almost 1 trillion US dollars. American Airlines in the 1990s claimed:

“The community is one that travels more than others and we wanted to make sure we had a slice of that market share,”

Although not all countries are this blatant in this advertising to the LGBTQ.

Many companies sell PRIDE-based merchandise during this month, donating a tiny amount of those particular sales to LGBT organizations. It’s safe to say that companies would not do this if it was not profitable. Especially because it has boomed in the past 5 years, when it is safer to support the LGBT.

Before then, any company trying to pander to the LGBT demographic was boycotted. Groups like One Million Moms were popular in boycotting anything they deemed as immoral. So I guess they just ate grass for a few years.

But what are these companies doing to actually help the struggles that LGBTQ+ people go through on a daily basis?

Almost nothing.

I never see Nike talk about the poverty and homelessness rate among LGBT teens. I never see AirBnB talk about the fact that it is still legal to fire gay and transpeople or deny them housing in many states. EA is certainly not talking about the current rise of TERFs and hate speech against transpeople, or the rolling back of rights that many transpeople need.

Also, almost all talk of the LGBT vanishes once July comes around. Odd.

It’s worse than annoying

So why is it so bad? I mean, companies claiming to support us is only beneficial, right? Well, no. In fact, quite the opposite.

These companies exploiting the LGBTQ for profit is causing many on the right to believe that we are 100% accepted by society, when we are far from it. For instance:

• LGBT people are still imprisoned or jailed in many countries simply for being who they are
• You can still be fired or denied housing simply for being who you are in many states.

There is even all of this in the US alone:

This is even far worse for people who are trans. Claiming the LGBT people are accepted in the US because companies like to exploit us, when the LGBT can be denied healthcare, health insurance, can be fired, denied housing, are often victims of hate crimes, and can have a hard time even donating blood, is ludicrous.

But sadly, the Right does not need an excuse to attack the LGBT. But companies exploiting us for profit gives them ammunition to deny us even more rights.

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