As recently as last year, Walmart donated $150,000 to McConnell and other Republican Senators.
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Mitch McConnell in 2020, is one glaring example of this. American Airlines' flashy display of rainbow-washed cover banners and profile pictures on its social media profiles, while being exposed for donating nearly $50,000 to Sen.It would be impossible to put together a comprehensive list of every corporation that's taken part in rainbow capitalism, but some offenders are especially cringe-inducing. Trans people specifically are twice as likely to be living in poverty trans people of color are three times as likely. Another survey from 2012 found 20% of LGBTQ people living alone had annual incomes of less than $12,000.
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Twenty-two percent of LGBTQ people live in poverty, compared with 16% of cis, straight people. Rainbow capitalism is especially offensive because of the continued economic oppression of queer people. They care about getting our money through any means necessary, including by pretending to care about us. Another word for rainbow capitalism is pandering - billionaires and corporations don't really care about the plight of LGBTQ communities, and certainly not the LGBTQ workers they underpay and exploit. They profit off of their glossy, progressive images, while exploiting LGBTQ workers, donating to anti-LGBTQ politicians, and committing other hypocritical acts. While this particular example applies to women workers, the spirit of McDonald's legendary blunder is the epitome of rainbow capitalism, which refers to corporations' annual attempts to cosplay as LGBTQ allies for approximately one month a year. The hollow gesture was widely mocked on social media, and for good reason - for years, women workers at McDonald's have reported sexual harassment and abusive work environments, low pay, poor conditions, and more, and in return, they received a flipped letter sign. To celebrate International Women's Day in 2018, McDonald's famously flipped its iconic "M" to be a "W," presumably for "women," one might guess. Corporations rehabilitating their image for profit off the backs of LGBTQ people who remain economically and socially marginalized to this day isn't "Pride" - it's rainbow capitalism. Pride is historically rooted in anti-carceral, anti-capitalist sentiment and activism, as well as people-power, community, autonomy and revolution – with or without the approval of billionaires. This phenomenon has become widely known as "rainbow capitalism," which directly contradicts the spirit of Pride itself. But in many parts of society, signaling support for LGBTQ people with symbols and social media posts - while denying LGBTQ workers a living wage - has become profitable and advantageous. And to be clear, this overt and violent oppression has continued in many spaces - just take a look at the dozens of state legislatures introducing bills to practically write transgender kids out of existence. This surface-level show of "support" for LGBTQ people, mostly as a PR stunt, might have seemed like progress as recently as a few years ago, when some in our culture were still debating whether LGBTQ people had a right to exist at all, let alone deserved acknowledgement or celebration. Among corporations that might not overtly harm LGBTQ folks, as Lake suggested in her aforementioned, sizzling one-liner, these corporations have a well-earned reputation for "ditching" LGBTQ people and causes after June, once doing so is no longer as profitable. However, the reality is that many of the corporations that proudly don rainbow symbols and pro-LGBTQ messaging exclusively during Pride either spend the entire year actively perpetuating the oppression of the most marginalized, or even donating large sums of money to anti-LGBTQ politicians. The line couldn't have landed more perfectly during Pride, right now, with social media platforms awash with corporations ranging from weapons manufacturer Raytheon to Bank of America changing their profile pictures to rainbows. "I mean, you say the word, and I will ditch these gays like a corporation after Pride month." "Queens before peens," Lake responds gleefully.
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Rainbow gay pride tail series#
Who knew that a scathing commentary about rainbow capitalism would come from a teen comedy? In Hulu's queer young adult series "Love, Victor," teenager Lake (Bebe Wood) is with pal Victor (Michael Cimino) and his new boyfriend when her friend Mia (Rachel Naomi Hilson) calls, asking to hang out now that she's home from summer camp.