No I don't want a pride sticker thank you, I just want my pint of milk

[AutisticLegoLover]

I was asked at my local Co-op earlier if I wanted a pride sticker with my pint of milk. No, I don't. I just want to shop without pride this that and the other. It was the alphabet soup flag version. The overly enthusiastic young man was quite taken aback by my I certainly do not response but I am so fed up of it being everywhere and what does it even mean anymore? I'm all for everyone having equal human rights. That's it.
I've had so many emails from M&S, Waitrose, Co-op, and others all about supporting pride month. Vinted now flashes a rainbow heart before it turns red when I favourite items.
The young man in question above is far too over familiar and needs to tone it đown a bit from scarily wishing my teenager a pleasant existence to just normal pleasant customer service. I could have asked him what the sticker was all about and got into a discussion with him but that's not his job and I don't want to get banned 😁
The heat makes me cranky but I've seriously had enough of this now. Will it ever stop or will more and more be added to that rather full flag of many colours until the original meaning is completely lost? Will we ever be able to shop without identity politics coming into it?

Rose Montoya quoted in that article visited the Whitehouse and filmed themselves pouting and posing, then pulled down the front of their dress and jiggled their breasts.

Gosh, can't imagine why people have had enough of the TQ+

https://twitter.com/RitaPanahi/status/1668440849095741440?t=6dD6EmOsSofWJqz5Qq1tGg&s=19

Take the sticker and put it high up on their glass door - if enough do it they'll stop handing them out.

So much about this LGBetc - Just as well all the blind/deaf/disabled/schizophrenic/drug addict/mentally ill/ ...... you get the point...... have such easy happy lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And this is a complete conflation of 2 unrelated statements -

The people behind the boycotts are in the minority: research from the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Glaad shows that 75% of straight people feel comfortable seeing LGBTQ+ representation in media.

Not being comfortable with Dylan Mulvany advertising a sports bra or Geoffrey Marsh advertising tampons and boycotting brands over their offensive marketing campaigns is very different to how comfortable you are with LGBTQ+ represention in media. And again the forced teaming of the 2 halves of those letters is the problem here.

100 percent. Also many lgb people don't support Pride (my friends included) as it no longer represents them.
Big companies are completely reading the room & don't want their products boycotted because their companies stance doesn't represented customers values... Bud Lite, Nike (Dylan Mulvaney used in ads) Innocent drinks & smoothies (championing the Mermaids charity) have suffered severe boycotts in recent weeks.

I suspect if more detailed analysis were to be completed, there would be an interesting correlation between the reduction of corporate interest in Pride, and the increase in public fatigue of the alphabet.

have any women got their tits out at the WH like that? what happened?

have now read the Guardian article. It's... interesting.

The people behind the boycotts are in the minority: research from the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Glaad shows that 75% of straight people feel comfortable seeing LGBTQ+ representation in media. That fact has not stopped Pride 2023 from turning into a marketing minefield. Experts have noted a quieter Pride on the corporate front, in no small part due to the Bud Light and Target case studies.

as PP said - there is a difference between seeing LGB(TQ+) representation in the media. That is fine. And i get why advertising often seems to be over-representing minorities (when even my DH notices that there are nearly no middle aged white men on TV advertising any more, we are really into new territory, he barely registers ads).

But when it's Budweiser misreading their target market? The target for Bud Light is surely women and people who want to reduce their alcohol intake who want to drink a "beer". (it is Bud Light here) So why do you look at the internet and see someone who is being complained about right left and centre by women and think "yep". And then be confused about a boycott?

I also get why Nike might want to introduce a range of sportswear for trans people - they exist to market products that you didn't know anyone wanted or needed. So why have a range of "women's wear" where you could have instead used a few models of both sexes and then a trans man/woman or two and launch "inclusive sportswear"? that way people who are into that will be happy, and others will continue to buy their overpriced wo/menswear. It's not rocket science.

I do suspect that it is marketing graduates who have gone through college/uni cancelling everyone who doesn't agree with their ideology, and still believe the rest of the world is with them. Whereas most of the rest of the world literally don't have pride/trans issues on their radar until Bud Light or Nike pisses them off.

I couldn't get mad about this.

It was just the offer of a sticker. No attack. No requests. No demands to take one.

Nobody is stopping you from going about your day.

I'm not homophobic, never have been.

I'm not even transphobic - it barely touches my life, tbh (in that i know 2 trans women, one of whom suspects I'm very GC - I'm not - and doesn't contact me any more - but i never see a trans person out "in the wild" as it were)

I am TRA phobic though. (and MRA phobic which kind of taps into that)

Now THAT I could get behind. 100%

There is a neurodiversity week in the UK already- in March- my employer does quite a lot internally around it.
There is also a neurodiversity month (April) but not sure that is in the UK, maybe only USA.
Perhaps those who are neurodiverse or have neurodiverse children could ask shops and councils to be more visible with this in the same way they are/ have been about Pride if they think it's useful?
I don't see why the two things are mutually exclusive.

Unsure how anyone can truly believe that there's no homophobia ect....

A lot of the people that throw out "homophobic", "transphobic", just can't tolerate a different opinion to their own, or understand that anyone could have a (reasonable) different perspective.

Which itself, you could say, is a sorry way to live.

There is plenty of racism in the world.

However, I hope we don't get an "anti racism" month that would be taken over by the far left calling for "reparations", discriminating against white people, and "defunding the police".

Because I doubt that helps the situation.

I have zero sympathy for people who think that it's acceptable to call gay men bigots, for not wanting to have sex with transmen. For telling lesbian women that they need to unlearn their genital preferences because they don't want to have sex with transwomen.

There's definitely homophobia in the air when you're telling a man that his preference for penis rather than vagina is discriminatory, or vice versa. However that seems to get largely swept under the radar, because it doesn't suit the narrative of the right-on SJW crew.

Good lord. It's a sticker.

I was actually responding to a post earlier in the thread as the discussion had widened from the original OP. But you do you.

I've got to say that the universal corporate Pride-washing is weird, yes.

Some people like to have sex with members of their own sex. Fine, whatever. Nothing to do with me.

I'm not sure why we should celebrate it. I'm not trying to be obtuse there, I genuinely do not know why. Homosexuality is a neutral thing like heterosexuality. Who gives a monkeys.

If we spent a month celebrating breastfeeding, and putting engorged nipple designs on things, or on childbirth, and putting placantas on things, it'd make more sense. Or, I dunno, a month celebrating firefighters. Or brain surgeons. Because these are difficult things to do that contribute to the formation of new life, or enable life to continue.

But a whole month celebrating the fact that people have different sexual preferences? I honestly don't get it.

I suppose I should add that from a marketing point I understand it. In terms of selling rainbow merch. Because gay people tend to have more disposable income than straight people, especially into their 30s and beyond.

Please don't misuse the weird trigger like this, it's offensive to those of us that have mental health issues.

It doesn't mean 'get a bit cross/ upset'.

Really boils my piss when people casually minimise mental health issues, especially as an insult.

It's a bit disingenuous to say 'it's only a sticker, calm down'.

Clearly its not the sticker, but the message that the sticker carries that is the issue for the OP and others.

I guess the argument is, if shops are going to dole out political stickers, why stop at pride? Why not ' vote Labour' or 'down with Brexit'.

Or perhaps that would be inappropriate for a shop?

I would’ve loved a pride sticker a few years ago but the TRAs have ruined it. I feel quite triggered by it all now. To me it represents the oppression, bullying and erasure of women.

Please don't misuse the word trigger like this, it's offensive to those of us that have mental health issues. It doesn't mean 'get a bit cross/ upset'.

No, it means to set something off. It's always meant that. It is also colloquially used to mean 'to provoke a strong emotional reaction in someone'. You don't get to colonise words and ban people from using them in a perfectly valid way which has been used for ages.

You what? I don't even know where to start....

How is words to be used in their intended way 'colonising'? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

No one is being banned. It was a request for consideration to be shown, which people are free to ignore (as you have).

Whatever your views on the word, It's still not a good look to use mental health issues as an insult.

But you do you.