A message to DPD

To sell and promote their product? Do tell me if I have missed something?

Virtue signalling makes a mockery of any cause. I don’t want to be forced to look at flags and lanyards by people who pledge allegiance to something irrelevant to selling vegetables or delivering parcels.

I just can't get the Purple People Eater out of my head.

The whole, entire point of branding/marketing is to make a statement.

If the statement is pissing people off, instead of encouraging them, it's failing. If it's making the wrong impact, or the message is confusing, it's failing. If it's pissing off precisely the people its ostensibly targeting, it's failing very badly indeed.

Then you really don't have the slightest grasp of what marketing/branding means or is for.

They're only supporting the harm to safeguarding for children, sterilisation, medical harm, removal of the equalities and rights of women and homosexual people -

yes, that all affects me. A lot.

Pride month is a virtual signalling joke.

How many multinationals display the Pride version of their logos in the West but wouldn’t dare to in areas the Middle East where LGB people are actually persecuted?

If people in the West want to celebrate Pride then go ahead and party (why not?) but don’t think that a flag in the Uk means anything in say Russia.

But for DOES impact me in MANY ways.

it hurts gay people, it does nothing to reduce hate crime, it is divisive, performative bull.

Unfortunately I don't think it's satire, it's from the hospital's Facebook page and the mural is on a hospital building.

😂
Ah yes we’ve gone from Personnel Officers to Human Resources Officers and now People Officers it seems.

I don't really see why it matters that much what colours they put on their marketing/branding.

I guess if they're just doing the easiest way of claiming to be LGBTQ inclusive but it's just a flag but they still don't treat staff equally then it's crap.

Something that isn’t complaining about emojis on an app that you use for 2.5 seconds to track a parcel and doesn’t impact you in any way

Just rereading that - WTF is a Chief People Officer? Is this satire?

I've just been walking through a store where they're playing some message at intervals virtue signalling about x thousands donated to rainbow, which will largely have been about sterilising and medically harming children.

It will not have been anything to do with anyone actually gay. We were bullied out years ago.

It's simple, really.

If Pride is a party, the neighbours have the right to complain it's getting out of hand. And it can be shut down without any handwringing about bigotry. If all Pride is about is twerking to Gaga in your underwear, you can do that at the club. You don't have to stop traffic to do it on a parade float in the middle of town.

If, on the other hand, Pride is a vehicle to combat homophobia, then the organisers need to bring the whole thing back to its roots and actually do that.

Pride doesn't serve the community anymore.

All this "know your history" stuff is bizarre. History is important, yes. But not more important than the struggles you're facing in the modern day. Many young gay people won't have lived through the era Pride was conceived as a reaction against. Many of them have grown up in a largely more tolerant society. The homophobia they face is more subtle, as represented through the TQ movement. When they look at Pride, all they see is their forebears ignoring the current reality, to revel in the memory of past sufferings.

You can feel sad about the AIDS crisis, but if you're, say, a young butch woman watching all your friends turn into self-hating "straight men" shooting up T, then you're living through your own crisis. And if the older generation would rather wallow in the past than acknowledge it, of course you don't want to to show up at Pride and party down with them. Of course you start to hate the month of June, and the false 'community' and 'support' that comes with it.

It's not at all surprising.

That is impressive. A starkly utilitarian piece of ugly infrastructure plastered with the ghastly design fail that is the designed-by-committee Progress Pride flag.

Disjointed, doesn't line up, mish-mash of non-sequiturs failing to cover up fundamentally poorly thought-through planning. It's certainly a testament.

Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love.

People love to talk about how Pride represents resistance and the community still needs it. But it doesn't. It hasn't for a long time. It represents the privileged problems of the TQ set. It's a big party, with some performative "orange man bad" political commentary thrown in as panto.

Think about it. When was the last time you heard about a Pride parade that platformed an ex-Muslim gay person as a speaker? Can you even imagine these events letting someone get up and talk honestly about the homophobia within Islam? Can you imagine them letting a detransitioner speak about how their transition was essentially conversion therapy? Can you imagine them allowing someone to march under a "gays against surrogacy" banner? Can you imagine a gay man as speaker, talking about the harms of chemsex or pornography? Can you imagine anyone fundraising to support the victims of homophobic violence in Uganda?

None of that would be allowed at modern Pride. It would bring the vibe down.

I totally agree with the OP.
I lived and worked in Brighton from the mid 80’s, I had numerous gay, lesbian, bi friends, colleagues and clients. I lived in Kemptown ( if anyone knows Brighton.) At that time Brighton was considered a gay friendly place BUT my friends were still regularly being beaten up for being gay or being lesbian and having the temerity of rejecting unwanted advances from groups of drunk young men!

I had friends and clients DYING from HIV/AIDS on what seemed like a weekly basis.

I had young clients left to die in squalor in Lewes Prison because no prison officers wanted to “catch it”.

At the time Pride and the work of the LGB Charities in Brighton was vital in helping so many people.

But by the mid 00’s everything in Brighton had changed. The focus was on the T of the LGBT Charities. The annual Pride celebrations were increasingly dominated by the extreme groups pushing the acceptance of “fetish” rather than LGB.

Behind the scenes the LGB were being sidelined by elements that had other more nefarious objectives, aided by their handmaidens.

I also find it truly pathetic that people keep focusing on about “trans” hate crimes being on the increase and have so little understanding of the concept of Safeguarding.

I was there, so please don’t tell me that I don’t know what exactly happened or that I am talking shit!

Just ignore it if it bothers you.

Also as an LGB woman, I hate the progress flag but I've also come to dislike the original rainbow one too. Pride at least in my city, is a far cry from 20 years ago. The recent Pride events with their trans focus and fetish displays are a huge turn off (for me )and I'm convinced they've done the LGB community more harm than good.

I think all these new 'gays' and 'lesbians' that claim to happily date trans people, should just state they are queer or pansexual or whatever. Same-sex attraction can never include the opposite sex. I'd have thought that was glaringly obvious and easy to understand. A lesbian isn't 'same gender attracted'. Not the definition I'm aware of for several decades..
Don't re-define lesbian to include penis people aka men. Create your own word and definition. This one has already been taken.

I want to write to companies and explain why their Pride support concerns me, but I'm tired and time poor so I asked AI to help...
Was pleasantly surprised! Here it is in case anyone wants to borrow bits (bold emphasis is mine):

Dear [Company Name] Team,
I’m writing to respectfully explain why I will not be supporting your brand during your promotion of Pride Month initiatives.
While I fully support the right of all individuals to live free from discrimination and to be treated with dignity, I am increasingly concerned about the direction and tone of some aspects of Pride events and messaging—particularly where these intersect with children and young people.

Many Pride celebrations today include a wide range of participants and themes, from family-friendly inclusivity to overtly adult-oriented content such as kink, fetish displays, and sexualized imagery. I believe brands should be cautious in their endorsement of events where these elements are not clearly separated, especially when the events are presented as suitable for all ages. I’m concerned that this lack of distinction can blur important boundaries and create confusion or discomfort for families.

Moreover, I believe companies should be careful in aligning with activist campaigns that may unintentionally promote contested ideas—such as the medicalisation of gender-questioning children—without acknowledging the growing debate and evidence cautioning against early intervention. Recent policy shifts in the UK, Finland, and Sweden reflect a more evidence-based, cautious approach to youth gender care, favoring psychological support over irreversible medical treatments.

Additionally, I noted the recent UK Supreme Court ruling (in For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers, 2024) which confirmed that, for the purposes of the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act, “woman” must refer to biological sex. This ruling affirms that legal clarity is sometimes necessary where gender identity and biological sex are in tension. I believe this case highlights the need for nuance in conversations around sex and gender, and underscores the risks of uncritically adopting ideological positions in corporate policy.

As a customer, I am disappointed that [Company Name] appears to take a one-sided stance on these complex and contested issues. I believe that brands have a responsibility to foster inclusive values without promoting positions that may compromise child safeguarding or dismiss reasonable concerns about legal and biological realities.

I share this feedback in the hope that your team will consider a more careful and nuanced approach to the causes you support publicly. I’m not motivated by hostility, but by concern for safeguarding, child development, and the need for open, respectful public discourse.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]

It’s so lovely that your local hospital has enough money to meet local people’s needs and still have enough left to paint a pointless political slogan on the wall ❤️

I can't stand the new Progress Pride flag. It looks like some sort of monstrous Pac-Man chomping its way through the classic rainbow flag. You almost can't believe they didn't design it as an intentional piece of satire

Because Pride Month is no longer about combatting homophobia. It's not about reminding people gay people exist among them.

Something like Dementia Awareness Month can still do this. Many people won't realise how widespread dementia is, because they don't personally encounter it. They won't understand the struggles sufferers and their families face.

But everyone knows gay people exist. We see them every day. Even if you lived in some remote village without any out gay people, you would be exposed through the media. The "we're here" part of Pride no longer applies. These days, the gay community only has to organise in this way to express their opposition to TQ ideology. Think of the annual LGB Alliance conferences, or the Not All Gays / Not In Our Name conference that was just held in Dublin. Those are in the old spirit of Pride. People standing up to be counted and to say "no, you don't understand us, let us show you who we really are".

Your average corporate-sponsored Pride parade is not doing that. It's basically a big party. They're not talking about the actual issues faced by LGB people in the modern day. It's all firing zingers at a bogeyman of their collective imagination, while insisting that trans are the most oppressed group ever to have existed. LGB must perform allyship to trans, and we're all supposed to agree that "trans rights" are in peril and they're facing the same oppression gay people historically did. But when you look at it more closely, you see it's not the same at all.

Pride has been completely co-opted by an ideology many gay people don't agree with, and many straight allies are sick of. It's simplistic to say only homophobes question the modern incarnation of Pride.