I worked with a very conservative woman whose child had bad dragon and a furry website merchandise that they constantly wore. She had zero clue what they were, and I sure as hell wasn't going to snitch on the kid.
Love that kind of “coded” stuff that only people “in the know” would recognize. I wear a silver anniversary pin on my suit jacket for the Fairness Campaign (KY’s LGBTQ group) as a subtle nod since I’m technically not out (at least in the state, I’m far more open outside of it.)
The funny thing is the only reason I know of all that stuff is I've been on the internet for so long and I'm always satisfying my curiosity of new things I read about.
I’m very prone to falling into rabbit holes and learning stuff. One reason I highly recommend “Half as Interesting” on YouTube and have recently found “Extra History”
If your area has one of the stores not doing pride, you may not be safe wearing it, but corps are also extremely risk averse. They would rather have bad press about not carrying it than another incident in a store.
Not to mention most bigots would rather wreck a display than confront an individual.
When I worked for the school board, my boss asked if I had a girlfriend. When I said "no," she said "that was the wrong answer" and forced me to resign before Christmas. Protections for LGBTQ people are so horrible I didn't even have to be gay: just an assumption was enough to ruin my life.
Depending on what state you live in, you may have no recourse or the potential for hell of a lawsuit.
The US is not one country at all, that’s what people forget. Which is why I said “if your area has stores not carrying pride merch”
It's corrupt from the top down. The union said there's nothing they can do. She forced me to resign against my will. It wasn't clear why until I later realized it was homophobia. It's so ubiquitous in Florida there is absolutely no legal recourse.
This is why LGBTQ protections are needed.
My mother went through the legal system to try and get help. For 5 years she couldn't work due to a workplace injury, and our legal system humiliated her to hell and back.
Ordinary protections for people have been completely demolished by Republicans. Just be glad it hasn't happened to you, yet.
Before any case goes federal, it has to go through Florida's legal system, which is corrupt top down. And this happened 9 years ago. On the official record I resigned, and had to provide a letter saying I wanted to resign. So the case can't get off the ground.
Our systems harm LGBTQ people.
I don't even care for corporate pride or rainbow capitalism or whatever. It's a nice gesture, but only if they aren't simultaneously donating to republicans.
And my work has a union so they can't do shit against me, not that they'd want to.
But if anyone is looking to do violence against me or my LGBTQ+ friends, they're gonna have a bad time.
Right. Corporate celebrations of pride are empty gestures. It’s all about the sales to them, and all about what they do with that money to us.
Target could give up on pride merch completely, but if they still donated to queer nonprofits, great. If they still lobby hateful politicians, not great.
I remember when righty-whiteys found out that Chick-fil-A had a DEI department, and they were all shitting bricks and boycotting because of it. Utterly hysterical brain worm behavior.
Florduh is going full 'patrinotic' this summer with the bridges lit red, white, and blue to avoid Pride and several other events. Thanks to pressure on FDOT by dictator Desantis.
