So You Want To Celebrate Pride...

A Handy Guide for Corporations

Pride Month is here! Are you a corporation that wants to cash in show your support for the ‘Community’ but don’t know how to go about it? Sure, it’s easy to proclaim vague slogans like “Everyone Belongs” and “Love is Love”...but what do you as a company REALLY stand for? And do you really know what ‘Pride’ is about? Before you send out that tweet or email, take a few minutes to read this list of questions I’ve compiled to help you decide whether or not you should chase the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow:

• Which ‘Pride Community’ are you proclaiming to support? LGBT? LGBTQ+? LGBTQIA+? 2SLGBTQIA+? Some other acronym? Do you know what all those letters stand for? Can you give a clear definition for each one?

• Didn’t it used to be called ‘Gay Pride’? When and why did this change?

• Do you know the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity? Do these two groups even belong together in a ‘community’? Why are they joined together?

• Should straight people who ‘identify’ as ‘Queer’ be included in Pride?

• Many gay people hate the word ‘Queer’ and consider it a slur. Do you care?

• Do you know the definition of ‘trans’? IS THERE a concrete definition of ‘trans’? Can you list all the different identities under the ‘Trans’ umbrella?

• What does the ‘+’ signify? In other words, how far are you going to take this ‘inclusion journey’? When it includes EVERYONE, does ‘Pride Month’ become pointless?

• Some read the ‘+’ as including extreme fetishes as ‘further sexualities’. This includes ageplay (an adult identifying as a baby or young child) and furry fetishes, for example. Do you include these under your Pride umbrella?

• Do you know what autogynephilia is?

• Do you believe that everyone has a ‘gender identity’, or a ‘gendered soul’? Isn’t that…a religious belief? Is your corporation endorsing a religion?

• Can you provide a detailed definition of all these sexual orientations?

  A-spec, Abrosexual, Aceflux, Achillean, Aromantic asexual, Bisexual, Ceterosexual, Demisexual, Enbian, Fraysexual, Freysexual, Gay, Graysexual, Heterosexual, Lesbian, Multisexual, Omnisexual, Pansexual, Polysexual, Pomosexual, Queer, Sapphic, Toric, Trixic

• And, naturally, you must be completely familiar with all these gender identities, right?

  Agender, Androgyne, Aporagender, Bigender, Demigender, Egogender, Gender neutral, Genderfluid, Genderflux, Genderfuck, Genderqueer, Graygender, Intergender, Maverique, Multigender, Neurogender, Neutrois, Non-binary, Pangender, Polygender, Transfeminine, Transgender, Transmasculine, Trigender, Xenogender

  (Keep in mind that this is only a partial list! There are 330 gender identities as of this writing!)

• Is ‘cake gender’ a gender identity you support in your Pride umbrella?

• Are you including kids? If so, at what age does a child know his or her sexual orientation? At what age do kids know everything they need to know about themselves in order to be their ‘true selves’? At what age can children consent to drugs and surgeries that alter their bodies?

• Are you against conversion therapy? Isn’t transitioning gender non-conforming children who will most likely grow up to be gay or lesbian a form of…conversion?

• Will you add a D for Detransitioners? Are they welcome, or ostracized?

• Are drag shows appropriate for children? Should young boys be encouraged to be drag queens?

• Are you familiar with any of these terms: cotton ceiling, forced teaming, woke homophobia?

• Is a man a woman simply if he says he is? What is the definition of ‘woman’? What is the definition of ‘lesbian’? Can a lesbian have a penis?

• If a woman ‘identifies’ as a man, and then identifies as gay, has she literally ‘become’ a gay man? A gay man with a vagina?? Does a gay man need to know how to eat pussy?

Are these questions uncomfortable for you? If so, then you have no business wading into the worlds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Perhaps your corporation should stay out of these matters entirely, cancel your ‘Pride Month’ celebrations, and just go back to selling cookies or sneakers, or whatever it is you do.

*****BONUS QUESTION*****

to see how much you know about gay history:

• Marsha P. Johnson was:

A. a drag queen who, in his own words, identified as male and did not arrive at Stonewall until the riots were in full swing.

B. a transwoman who singlehandedly started the Stonewall riots, wrote the Village People song ‘YMCA’, invented lube, gave birth to RuPaul, and served as a Supreme Court Justice who gave us gay marriage.

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Thank you for reading! Please send this post to any corporation riding the Rainbow…and feel free to add any questions I may have missed in the Comments below!