June 1st
Listen, marketing-as-exploitation discussions aside, Rainbow Capitalism is, has been, and continues to be the canary in the coal mine of social acceptance for the queer community.
If youâll all pardon my Americentrism for a moment, the amount, visibility, and flamboyance of Pride merch available in clothing, home goods, and comestibles stores is a DIRECT reflection of how safe it is to be queer in public in the United States.
How? Simple. Out groups arenât profitable. If youâre not âacceptableâ in the current social climate, big franchise businesses will not market to you. (Prime example - Look how quickly Target dropped all their Pride merch after having been wall-to-wall rainbows every June for almost a decade prior.)
Sure, capitalism sucks and being viewed as an exploitable marketing demographic isnât a fun concept.
HOWEVER.
The grim truth is that being normalized enough to be considered profitable by corporations IS A GOOD THING in terms of the barometer of social acceptance.
Same thing goes for smaller businesses that throw kitschy Pride events or even just put a token rainbow flag in the window or somewhere inside the shop. Thatâs a level of acceptance that DID NOT EXIST thirty years ago, and I can tell you because I was there.
The fact that we can scoff and bitch about being an exploitable marketing demographic nowadays means we have made GIGANTIC strides since the 1990s. It also speaks to the fact that the drive and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance are continuing. And getting louder.
You can be cynical about it if you want. But I will take a store that puts out lip-service rainbow merch over a world that pretends we donât exist any day of the week. Because that will always mean something.
Sincerely, An Elder Queer
Agreed, and also, it has always struck me as a little bit of a double-standard in queer politics when people used to point out the exclusion of queerness from mainstream capitalist products as evidence of their marginalization (e.g., there are no m/m or f/f wedding cards)
Yet, when they start being included, they are like âwell, thatâs just capitalism taking advantage of us, so it doesnât count.â Like, you canât use your EXCLUSION from something as evidence of general societal marginalization and then claim that once youâve started to be included, it is politically meaningless. You donât really get to have it both ways. Thatâs moving the political goal posts.
I get that we shouldnât consider Target pride merchandise as like the pinnacle of queer politics or even the pinnacle of queer inclusion. I get that inclusion in capitalist intuitions is a very ambivalent form of social progress. But the truth is, capitalism is a big part of what creates our social reality right now (unfortunately).
Capitalism makes TV shows, and movies, and books, and ads, and greeting cards, and toys, and clothing, and, andâŠ
When every single aspect of commercial social reality excludes queerness, that DOES create a real sense of social alienation. I donât love that capitalism is responsible for creating so much of our collective social reality. But granting that it does, I think weâre forced to accept that our inclusion in it IS politically and socially important.
And yes we should still be trying to resist capitalism as the primary means of meeting human needs. But we can resist treating capitalism as an inevitability or an inherent good, AND ALSO acknowledge that our inclusion within it remains politically important while it still holds so much power and responsibility for creating our shared reality.
See also a recent article from NPR (published May 30, 2026) discussing how pride celebrations have struggled financially with the loss of corporate sponsorships. Organizing big visible events (and fairly compensating the labor of those who make them possible) is expensive.
Public support for the LGBTQ+ community by corporations has become politically risky, public relations expert says.
