Corporate Pride Month - The Act of Pander Slander : Mad Scribbler

It’s June, and this is now Pride Month 😠 where corporations offer empty gestures towards another marginalized community with the hopes of furthering boiler-plate marketing agendas. I believe Pride Month is an important moment to reconcile some grievous errors of the past, much as Black History Month and the like, but it takes a heady turn when corporations attempt to play along in what I like to call ‘Corporate Pride Month.’

June

June has been my month for a while, and I guess Pride Month has shifted from October (noted as Pride Month in 1994) towards June. I’m OK with sharing, but it does kind of rain on my parade. See, my birthday is in June, and so is Father’s Day. Every year, June is the perfect storm of adoration and appreciation towards me that I relish and keeps me far enough away from hooking my testicles* up to the car battery in the following months.

As far as I can decipher, this (the shift of Pride Month from October to June) was originally done by Bill Clinton in 1999, meaning I’ve just been absolutely oblivious to Pride Month since becoming a father around 2010. This is likely exacerbated by the former administration refusing to acknowledge Pride Month, meaning I’ve just enjoyed the month of June for the past four years as my sole domain.

*I think when you get older, testicles should be referred to as examicles since it’s more difficult to discern how the prune-sacks operate past 50.)

The Sisyphean Struggle of Marginalized Groups

Those within the LGBT😠 community have dealt with a heft of unfortunate events since the dawn of time, stemming from some outlandish theory that beliefs supersede human dignity. Even in the modern age, some pastors continue to stand in front of their ~~cash cows~~ congregation and monologue how god is striking down those that aren’t exactly the same as the congregation.

An Appropriate String of Letters

I consistently refer to the marginalized group of LGBT within this piece. My editor, as is her job, corrected me to ‘LGBTQIA’. In research, I’ve found that even more letters have been added to the currently ‘correct’ term, which is now represented as ‘LGBTQQIP2SAA’. This discovery makes me far more woke than my editor, which I will lord over her appropriately. Over time, more letters will likely be added to the acronym in the spirit of fair representation, but I’m sure as shit not hopping in here once a month to double-check the used acronym still stands.

Throughout the entirety of this website, we consistently say that everyone can (and should) do whatever the fuck they like with their genitals, people can feel any way they choose, and any idea of normalcy is donkey-shit heaped on top of a farce. Don’t fuck kids, don’t fuck animals, but beyond that feel free to rub anything (or nothing), everywhere (or nowhere), as long as you have consent. Your opinions, feelings, and beliefs are valid until they infringe upon human rights.

Using the incorrect acronym, or even joining the debate as to how many letters the acronym should use cannot, should not, and will not infringe upon that.

Yet the disdain for LGBT dudes is now, at the least, a bit more closeted in the modern era. For many (if not most), individuals identifying as LGTB are now recognized as being human.

This isn’t universal, however – the Middle East still hates gays with a passion matched only by their penchant for human right violations, many religious individuals within the United States still view LGBT as somehow subhuman, and entire political parties toe a line that offers strong views on where people put their naughty bits. Concerning yourself with what another human does with their naughty bits is absurdly stupid. That’s damn near akin to having approved sex positions in the bedroom, as though doggy style somehow brings an omnipotent being shame.

If you have two consenting adults, mix it the fuck up any way that rocks your world. You’re young all of once, and you and your partner are consistently deteriorating with every passing second in the idle march closer to inevitable death. Go find some god damned toys, shove them in a bunch of orifices, and orgasm until you can’t see straight. I promise that the deity that slept through the Holocaust isn’t suddenly going to rend the Earth because you licked someone’s asshole.

Small Victories For Great People

Yet now, for the Western world, the LGBT community has been deemed as acceptable. For companies participating in Corporate Pride Month, that means it’s now profitable to pander towards those communities once every ~330 days. The very same corporations that are profiting from slave labor in China offer a consumer-friendly image towards users to show that they’re ‘woke’. It’s rainbow image time, ladies.

Now, yes, the knee-jerk reaction is that of frustration. After a long and arduous fight with damn-near everyone, now LGBT groups are apparently being pandered to with half-assed marketing attempts of Corporate Pride. This pandering is met, by the same corporations, by an apparent slandering within the Middle East where LGBT rights aren’t nearly the level that they are in the United States.

In the Middle East, they actively hunt and murder¹ those within the LGBT groups. In the United States, they primarily talk about wanting to. What a difference.

While I originally intended to drag these companies through the mud for the pander/slander, a bit of reflection on the subject matter has actually shifted the conversation entirely. Human rights for historically marginalized groups have consistently been a battle of inches. Not that it makes a damn lick of sense but trying to get these marginalized groups recognized (such as LGBT, African Americans, Asian Americans, etc.) as human is an uphill battle.

In parts of the Middle East, being an atheist (apostasy) means being branded as a terrorist, and punishable by death². In Iran, those with homosexual desires can be forced to have gender reassignment surgery³ 😠 to better match the standard of normalcy in that region. This isn’t the most progressive place in the world, here, folks. Perhaps not the best place for Corporate Pride marketing tactics, when it can result in literal beheadings.

Gender Swap By Any Other Name

If we let the humor get dark enough, there’s absolutely a gem in there about the most anti-human regions bringing sex-change operations, or gender reassignment surgery, for homosexuals. The cost is typically prohibitive for many experiencing transgenderism, but the way that it’s done is lacking even a glimpse of humor. Further, homosexuality is not transgenderism – the process sounds atrocious for any unfortunate enough to reside there.

Imagine the government suddenly calling out everyone that eats steak, and having udders attached surgically to replace your dick as punishment. It denies any fathomable attempt of understanding.

Let’s Get Technical

Now, companies can absolutely leverage their products as a means to encourage these back-water nations to get with the metaphorical times (i.e., stop killing people who don’t match their value system precisely) during Corporate Pride. For luxury vehicles such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, this is a seemingly fair request.

Cisco and Lenovo are technology companies, however, and would likely struggle to gate their technologies to only work within certain regions without bringing a specific anti-consumer practice, known as region-locking, to all products. For these specific companies, having a region-specific brand voice is likely valuable. Bethesda bridges between a luxury product (video games) and technology – their existence within the Middle East seems rational as well.

To presume that these companies seek a presence within the Middle East due to their anti-human rights, Corporate Pride Month be damned, is disingenuous. More so that a market exists, and money makes the world go round😠.

The Dick-Sucking Quota

There is a game that I think all straight men play called ‘Would you suck a dick.’ The idea is that you put a price on sucking a dick, and that price goes higher and higher until someone says ‘Yeah, I’d suck a dick for that much money.’ When I was younger, that price for dick sucking was exorbitant, around the hundreds of millions range. Now, I am a much cheaper date – a couple hundred grand, maybe a million, and I’d blow the clarinet while finger-plunging the poop chute.

It’s less about how much I enjoy or disdain dick, but more so a focus on how hard-up I am for money. I want to be able to provide for my loving family the best I can, and if that means I slobber the salami annually to afford a decent set of golf clubs, I’m all for it. I think this figure (which we’ll call the dick-sucking quota, or DSQ) shifts dynamically depending on environmental variables.

The DSQ in Iran is likely astronomical for straight men. For a small family in the US that lost everything in the pandemic, that DSQ is likely going to be closer to whatever they can get their hands (and mouths) on. If you’re ever perplexed about how hard life is going, I would wager that figuring out your DSQ for that moment should help bring clarity.)

The actual outrage that should be front and center during Pride Month isn’t whether companies are servicing regions that are steeped in absurd religious beliefs. It’s that these countries are becoming entangled in a belief system which, as they all tend to offer, has strict opinions on what should and should not be allowed.

Let’s Not Lose Our Head

If a social media manager for Iran pushed a message on a Middle East-facing platform about the LGBT community for Corporate Pride Month, that person will likely have their head separated from their shoulders with little pushback from the world at large. This is a standard means of operating for these nations, embroiled in whichever boogeyman religion they deem acceptable.

To posit a question regarding human rights one month out of the year about which corporations are adding a rainbow flag behind their shit logo seems to miss the forest for the trees. Why are millions of people suffering in a region, for decades, to the chagrin of anyone that isn’t a straight male. Perhaps that’s precisely what the frustration echoed across social media platforms about this pander/slander is about; that companies are throwing images up instead of offering any modicum of pressure.

Sources:

BBC. (2015, October 13). What you can be flogged for in Saudi Arabia. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-34513278
BBC. (2003, June 5). Middle East | Saudi executioner tells all. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2966790.stm
Deutsche Welle. (n.d.). The difficulties of being gay in Iran: DW: 26.02.2021. DW.COM. https://www.dw.com/en/the-difficulties-of-being-gay-in-iran/a-56717484

Corporate Pride Month – The Act of Pander Slander

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