Pride Month is upon us. It’s a time to celebrate and defend LGBTQ equality and rights. It’s also a time for corporate America to lean in on the rainbow branding, to let the queer community know that they’re with them — or at least they would like them to think they are for the month of June. But this year’s Pride is hitting differently, due to the current political climate in the United States and the anti-trans sentiment sweeping much of the American right.
Conservative angst about brands being too “woke” has been on the rise, specifically when it comes to appealing to queer people and, more specifically, trans people. Bud Light inadvertently kicked up a firestorm in early April when it sent a handful of beers to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The right is now on the hunt for more targets. It’s found one, pun clearly intended, in Target, which on May 24 said it would remove some items from its annual Pride collection after it “experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work.” To be clear, plenty of Pride-themed merchandise is still available at the retailer and is still featured quite prominently on its website. (These queer Tarot cards, for example, seem neat.) But Target deciding to pull some items is a sign it’s on edge, as are, potentially, many companies.
Given all the marketing campaigns in the pipeline for Pride 2023, it’s highly unlikely Target will be the last major corporation to find itself on the receiving end of conservative ire — and having to make some tough decisions about what to do about it. It’s quite the corporate conundrum.
“Companies are getting backlash that they’ve never gotten before,” said Joanna Schwartz, a marketing professor at Georgia College & State University who specializes in LGBTQ marketing. “It’s really hard to find products that completely disregard the LGBT…
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