On queer pride & corporate profits
A few days before the Pride celebrations last weekend, I received a press release from the popular toothpaste brand Close-Up. It was about their Pride art installation in different parts of Metro Manila. Featuring portraits of over 150 queer couples, the brand’s heart mural was supposed to honor “different couples from the LGBTQIA+ community while encouraging more people to be more open to seeing all types of love”, as part of their #FreeToLove Pride campaign.
To be fair, Close-Up has been walking the talk, as the brand has consistently featured queer people in their advertising (worth mentioning: they also sponsored the new gay dating series “Sparks Camp”.) Meanwhile, its parent company Unilever has been recognized for its global diversity and inclusion efforts, despite how the multinational’s support for queer people has wavered in countries where queer people are oppressed.
(In 2018, Unilever caved under pressure after some Indonesians attacked them for their Australian ice cream product Golden Gaytime, sold under their ice cream brand Wall’s. Their crisis statement highlighted how they “respect and uphold the cultural and religious values and norms in Indonesia” – even when some of these values and norms are weaponized against the queer community and are antithetical to the Unilever global queer network’s mission statement of being “a beacon of inclusion for the LGBTQI+ community and allies, amplifying their voice in society.”)
I believe in the power of alliance and putting our money where our mouth is. In 2016, when the late Brian Tenorio approached me (and a handful of queer people) to found the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce, we were excited at how more brands were suddenly celebrating the queer community. Sure, it was mostly gay guys. Often, it veered towards elitism. But we hungered for representation and we were hopeful for the future: an out and proud trans woman had just been elected into Congress then, and the future of the SOGIE Equality Bill seemed brighter than ever before.
But we also wanted to hold companies accountable for pinkwashing and raise awareness of the queer contribution to Philippine business. We were sick and tired of hypocritical and performative corporate alliances that quickly recoiled when their profit margins were threatened. It was no longer enough to feature queer people in promotional materials – does the community materially benefit from these brand efforts, or is it mere virtue signaling?
I can’t help but feel betrayed seeing how easy it has been for supposedly inclusive global brands to shake us off. Look at Starbucks, which recently celebrated a trans woman in their ad in India, suddenly banning Pride decorations in some of their US stores because of far-right hate. But is it really surprising?
Christina Cauterruci, in her Slate article “The Dirty Secret of Corporate Pride,” thinks it’s not:
“This co-opting of queer celebration happened so quickly, and so shamelessly, in some of the strangest corners of the corporate universe that it seemed to trick a lot of us into thinking that our culture had made more of a decisive, permanent breakthrough on LGBTQ+ issues than it actually had.
“The overwhelming reason companies have sold Pride merchandise or promulgated rainbow versions of their logos is because risk-averse executives have calculated that it is more profitable for them to do so than not—and the benefits of corporate Pride participation accrue primarily to the corporations, not to the queers.
“That is why, for the past couple of years, as anti-LGBTQ+ movements have amassed an increasing share of cultural and political power, companies have started to dial back their enthusiasm for Pride month. Fewer companies appear to be designing those rainbow logos, or they’re keeping them up on social media for just a day or two at the beginning of June.
“The zeitgeist that once incentivized corporate rainbow-washing has mutated: Now, there are no straightforward wins to be had from festooning one’s stores and brand assets in Pride paraphernalia. It’s starting to look like a liability, and companies are changing their approach in real-time.”
The Chamber itself has undergone some soul-searching these past few years, gradually deciding to focus more and more on uplifting and championing queer-owned and -allied small businesses instead of large companies. After all, small businesses have a huge chance of failing and shutting down (as we clearly saw during the early years of the pandemic). A queer-owned or -allied business operating in a non-inclusive society, even more so.
It’s interesting to read about profit-chasing disguised as altruism, knowing that capitalism may have helped the queer community come out of the closet: in the essay “Capitalism and the Gay Identity,” professor John D’Emilio argued that the change of economic system (with the family as the center) into a capitalist one allowed the exploration and expression of non-cisgender, heterosexual relations and identities. However, this also made queer people the target of conservatives, who saw us as the scapegoat for the weakened familial bonds and the collapse of their archaic socioeconomic structure.
Early this month, I decided to give a call to economist Lee Badgett, whose pioneering work on the economic cost of LGBT+ exclusion had been crucial for the Chamber to make a case for greater SOGIESC diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Philippines. Based on her research, Lee argued that countries that discriminate queer people through oppressive laws and policies stand to lose about one percent of their total GDP. Meanwhile, every point towards greater LGBT+ acceptance (which Lee assessed using the eight-point Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation) resulted in just over $2,000 in GDP per capita.
I was curious whether her argument for queer inclusion through an economic lens had spurred governments to reassess their anti-queer rhetoric.
“That’s a tough question,” Lee replied, then saying that she has given a couple of webinars in African as well as South and Southeast Asian countries. She shared an anecdote in Uganda, a country that has recently enacted one of the most horrible LGBT+ laws worldwide: “Some activists told me that my research has been printed out and handed to the President. I know that it’s kind of made its way there, you know, in different kinds of ways, sometimes through the UN–the UNDP in particular, or the World Bank, USAID. Sometimes these agencies are the conduit for it. It’s also an opportunity for them to have these conversations with these countries.”
I asked whether the economic case could sway more developed countries (such as Singapore and Malaysia) into adopting more queer-inclusive policies.
“Just because a country is a relatively high-income country, doesn’t mean you’re not losing, you know,” she pointed out, adding that anti-queer countries stand turning away multinationals supportive of queer diversity and inclusion.
Lee then told me about an intriguing chain of events: in May 2021, she gave an online talk to a community group in Singapore working with the US Embassy there. The Singaporean government called out the US Ambassador to complain that they were messing with internal affairs. The year after, the Singaporean government repealed Section 377A and finally decriminalized gay sex. Was it a sign of shifting social mores? Could the economic argument have swayed legal opinion? It’s hard to say if it’s exclusively one or the other.
I asked Lee if she thought there was a danger in arguing that queer inclusion is good because it’s good for the economy. Do we only deserve rights because giving us those rights would make us happy, productive citizens that boost GDPs?
“I offered it as an argument, but it’s not the only argument. But sometimes it’s the only argument that people will listen to,” she said, stressing that she does believe that human rights arguments are the best ones.
“The economic argument does a few things: it helps people who are supportive give some good reasons to ground those opinions. It’s certainly useful at the business level to ground the opinion of shareholders.
“It shifts the terrain. It takes it out of just talking about the moral and cultural and religious values, and says there’s a lot more at stake here. You might have those opinions but you can also understand what’s at stake: I mean, it’s the lives, it’s the livelihoods of people, it’s their mental health that’s at stake. These are all at stake.
“It’s good for the economy, but it’s also good for them. Why would you not want that for people?”
What I’ve learned is this: it’s important to win the battle on all fronts. Knowing our allies is equally as important as knowing who stands against us. At the same time, we should eye corporate celebrations of queer people with cautious optimism.
I mean, it has to be willful blindness to assume toothpaste brands launch Pride campaigns wholly for the sake of inclusive love and better oral health, right?