It’s that time of year again. You know, when corporations suddenly remember that LGBTQIA+ people exist and there is money to be made out of showing support for them. And when bigots and cookers make a point of seeking out anything that might be vaguely rainbow-themed so they can whinge and lie and grandstand about it. Yes, it’s Pride month.
World Pride’s not in Australia this year, so the hysteria about queer folk taking over isn’t quite as loud. Last year, as I wrote at Something for Cate, self-important cookers took it upon themselves to terrorise volunteers at a NSW surf life-saving club and to vandalise church steps in Sydney. A group of peaceful protesters was violently attacked by a mob for daring to stand on the other side of the road from a building in which Mark Latham was spewing hateful lies about trans folk. And police high-fived Nazis and gave them an escort when they decided to directly provoke queer and ally counter-protesters right outside Victoria’s Parliament.
So far, this year hasn’t been as violent. There was an ugly incident at the Midsumma Pride March where a bigot who’d taken it upon himself to attend the parade in order to shout hate decided to assault a photographer. That bigot’s arrest was the only one that day. At the same march, a small group of protesters who objected to the presence of police marching with them were subjected to chokeholds, punches and abuse by those same police. Their mates who were actually on duty that day joined in, and then proceeded to tell the country that they were the victims.
It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when we can say that this was a ‘good’ result compared to last year.
The hate hasn’t stopped there, though. For a small but vocal part of the population, the mere thought of acknowledging queerness (let alone supporting or – heaven forfend – celebrating it) is enough to get the blood boiling.
Take Bonds unGENderwear, for example. The iconic underwear manufacturer has an entire line of products designed to be worn by people of any gender. Not that you’d know if you looked at any of these pieces – they look just like every other singlet or underpants or tracksuit. The difference is largely in the marketing. UnGENderwear has been on sale since 2022, and – strangely – Australia has not collapsed into a dystopian hellscape. So what’s the problem here?
The “problem” is that this year, Bonds decided to ramp up the marketing for Pride, and hire Mikey Sakinofsky, a model who identifies as nonbinary to be photographed wearing their products. This, apparently, was a Step Too Far for bigots.
Mikey Safinosky (image source: Bonds)
Cue the backlash. Bigots fell all over themselves to get to their social media accounts to scream about how terrible this was. It was “woke”! It was “disgusting”! It was “men encroaching on women’s spaces!” (No, don’t ask me to explain that one. It just doesn’t make sense.) To their credit, Bonds doubled down on their commitment to inclusion, and Safinosky put out their own video explaining a few inconvenient facts about the real, devastating consequences of hate.
Moana Bikini adopted the same tactic after Jake Young (who identifies as male) modelled one of their products. They responded to a barrage of accusations that this was somehow disempowering women with with this: “If Jake in our bikini upsets you that much, we feel as though this may be a you problem.”
Jake Young modelling Moana Bikini swimwear (image source: Moana Bikini)
Sadly, the same can’t be said for Rip Curl, who pulled an advertising campaign featuring professional longboarder Sasha Lowerson after a hate campaign from transphobes. Idiotically, some of those objecting to Sasha’s existence decided to demonstrate their anger by buying Rip Curl products and filming themselves destroying them. Worse, Rip Curl actually apologised to those same transphobes for not considering that their precious feelings might have been hurt by seeing a transwoman, and reassured bigots that Sasha wasn’t part of their surfing team.
Sasha Lowerson (image source: YouTube)
Lest I leave you with the impression that this is all about fashion, however, consider this latest source of outrage: rainbow cupcakes.
Cupcakes, apparently, can make you gay (Image source: Woolworths)
Right about now I imagine many of you are facepalming as hard as I did when I first saw people complaining on social media about these. The inevitable accusation of “wokeness” featured prominently, of course, but these cupcakes were not only woke, they were – wait for it – grooming children. Yeah, you read that right. And why? Because of a label informing customers that a percentage of sales would be donated to Minus18, an excellent charity dedicated to supporting queer young people and providing education on inclusion and diversity for schools and workplaces.
And so, out come the cookers. The language they’re using on social media is so disgusting that I won’t repeat it here – suffice it to say that their objections are rife with accusations that Woolworths was “sexualising” children and promoting child abuse. One post, since mocked into oblivion, even suggested that eating the cupcakes would cause people to have “gay sex”. Then there are the videos Like the “hero” who bought the cupcakes and then declared he was “saving the kids” by asking the poor checkout operator to throw them in the bin for him.
Checkout operators have to put up with so much.
Apparently it didn’t occur to him that, by buying the cupcakes, he’d just donated money to the very cause he was opposing.
In all these examples, the people who objected made it very clear that they were personally hurt by what they were seeing. They were distressed and disgusted. They metaphorically wrung their hands and lamented the loss of “the Australian way of life”. One person said she’d cried when she saw the Moana ad. Middle-aged men on TikTok foamed at the mouth and gave vent to expletive-laden rants as they burned their Rip Curl board shorts. And more than one person complained that Pride had “ruined the rainbow” for them.
I have a question for those people: how, exactly, does it hurt you to walk past a box of cupcakes decorated with Pride hearts? What damage is done to you by clicking on a link and seeing a nonbinary model with gorgeous hair modelling a pink crop top and undies? What part of your world is destroyed when an organisation refers to a trans woman as a woman?
What’s that? You’re saving the kids? From what? Oh, right – from your imaginary worldwide conspiracy that claims kids are being forcibly transitioned without their parents’ consent in order to – (checks notes) – provide victims for a shadowy paedophile industry. Except that everything about that idea is a proven lie. Children cannot undergo gender-affirming surgery in Australia, nor can they be prescribed puberty blockers or hormone treatments without parental or guardians’ consent. As for the idea that affirming a young person’s gender identity makes them vulnerable to sexual abuse, that’s been so thoroughly debunked that I’m not going to spend any more time on it.
What’s that? You’re protecting women? Really? You really think that cis women are so fragile that the mere sight of one man in a swimsuit will destroy decades of effort striving for equality? That calling a trans woman a woman might undo women’s empowerment? If that was the case, surely by now the mere presence of Caitlin Jenner in the world would have seen women banished back to the kitchen.
What’s that? Non-binary is not real? Even if you believe that (which, frankly, beggars belief these days), how are you harmed by Mikey Safinosky (or Rhys Nicholson or Montaigne or Ruby Rose) identifying outside an artificially constructed gender binary?
Not one of the people objecting to these ad campaigns or Pride marketing have ever produced any evidence that shows how they’re hurt by them. Because they’re not. All this anger and distress and flimsy reasoning has one aim – to rationalise their bigotry and excuse themselves for acting in hateful, appalling ways. They are, in fact, the only ones causing harm, with their vicious rhetoric and their threats of violence. Of course, they’ll never admit that, but that’s the cold, hard truth, and deep down, they know it and don’t care.
As queer folk, we’re often advised to just ignore the hate, or laugh about how absurd it is to freak out about a cupcake or gender-neutral underwear. We shouldn’t “let” ourselves be bothered by it. That’s a very easy thing to say. It’s a lot harder to do. There’s only so many times we can hit the block button before we start having difficulty seeing the funny side. When we’ve just had to go through your social media notifications yet again in order to clear out the hate and the threats, we don’t tend to be in the mood to crack jokes. When we’ve been subjected to relentless cyber-bullying for daring to put a trans flag or pronouns in our bios, when we’ve been the victim of whispering campaigns in the workplace for just existing as queer folk, when we see ourselves smeared and accused of horrific crimes day after day after day, we can’t just shake it off.
We’re also told that we have to “take some responsibility”. We choose to put our pronouns in our bios, we choose to repost articles celebrating diversity. We stan Elliot Page and chat excitedly about going to our queer formals. We cheer when we see queer representation in movies and praise those few politicians that are real allies. We watch Drag Race, for goodness’ sake! Why are we doing this if we’re not prepared to attract negative attention? Maybe we like the attention?
Look at what’s happening here. Queer folk are, yet again, being told that it’s up to us to fix the situation. It’s not the fault of those who threaten us, it’s our fault for being visible. If we “really” don’t want people bullying and threatening us, we should change our behaviour. Oh, and lighten up, already. People have a “right” to their opinions.
Don’t like queer people? That’s fine. Your loss. But that doesn’t grant you the right to insist that the rest of the world obeys your prejudices.
All this confected outrage about underwear and cupcakes is just plain absurd, but it’s a mistake to think that it’s harmless. At its heart, it’s no different from the call for bathroom bans – an objection to the mere idea of queerness, and an insistence that the world pretends that queer folk don’t exist. It’s not socially acceptable in Australia anymore to bash someone who “looks gay” or “acts queer”. The abusive practice of so-called “conversion therapy” is in the process of being banned across the board, and finding out a TV personality is queer is no longer a career death knell. What’s a poor oppressed bigot to do, in such dire circumstances, but shriek hysterically about a nonbinary model in pink underwear in the hopes that they can strike a blow against queer representation?
And too often, they are getting what they want. Big W removed the book Welcome to Sex< from its shelves after bigots objected to its chapters on queer identities. Rip Curl apologised to bigots for featuring a trans woman on its Instagram page. In the US, Budweiser hurriedly replaced Dylan Mulvaney with an ad dripping with 1970s nostalgia, and said they “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people”. Libraries around Australia have cancelled Rainbow Story Time after bigots threatened the families of their staff, and last year’s Rainbow Ball in Wangaratta was delayed for the same reasons.
Every time this happens, it’s not “keeping the peace”. It’s sending a message that harassment and threats work, and that only emboldens bigots. It’s also sending a message that, for all their protestations of allyship and celebrating diversity, companies and organisations would rather pander to an abusive minority than show any real support.
If you’re really an ally, don’t pull your advertising campaigns as soon as someone whines that their straight-person peace of mind is threatened by the sight of a nonbinary person. And don’t apologise to bigots as though you did something wrong by acknowledging that trans people exist. Stand your ground. Affirm your commitment to diversity and inclusion. You won’t go broke if you “go woke”, despite what bigots want you to believe. (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/woke-companies-broke-profits-1234710724/) Oh, and pro-tip? Allyship doesn’t end when Pride month does.
And those out there who are fainting at the idea of queer representation of any kind? Those cupcakes aren’t going to make you have gay sex. That pink underwear isn’t plotting to take away your rights. And I promise you that nothing terrible will happen if, next time you’re at the beach, you see someone who might be a cis man wearing a bikini. After all, if I have to put up with budgie smugglers and socks-with-sandals, you can put up with someone who has a beard wearing a fabulous skirt.
You might not like it, but guess what – it’s not about you.
UPDATE: The ABC has now joined the ranks of organisations caving in to pressure from bigots, announcing that it has cancelled a Drag Story Time event that had been planned to be recorded and broadcast as part of Mardi Gras coverage. At the time of writing, there are no arrangements to hold the event elsewhere, although an ABC spokesperson said the broadcaster was “considering how we can safely host it”.
Having announced this capitulation to bullies, the spokesperson had the gall to remind people that the ABC was the official Mardi Gras broadcaster, and said “the ABC showcases the diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community”.
Apparently all it takes to change that are some angry emails from hateful people who choose to spout lies. If you really have our back, ABC, re-schedule the event and, this time, actually hold it.
