A message to DPD

[LivelyFinch]

Just deliver my parcel, I don't need every icon on your App festooned with a trans/rainbow flag. Just do what you are paid to do and don't shuff your political crap down my throat.

Rant over.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

But for DOES impact me in MANY ways.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Im fed up of rainbow flags everywhere, honestly I find it all so exhausting. Being a woman is just hard enough. I find the world so exhausting these days.

I was just in B & Q and was informed loudly over the tannoy that they have contributed over £300k to LGBTQIA+ charities. Where is all this money going?

Unfortunately I suspect to groups going into schools...

There was a thread here some time ago that told of a woman who had displayed an original rainbow flag at her office desk for Pride. She was told to remove or replace it with a progress flag because the original one was upsetting and transphobic.
I'd be interested to know how many organisations still display the original rainbow Vs the 'inclusive' progress version. I suspect the original flag will eventually disappear.

Yes. If it's putting people off, it's not working.

See: Bud Light for an object lesson.

If there is no impact, what is the use?

In 2019

https://www.thepinknews.com/2019/08/26/anti-trans-protestors-march-in-front-of-manchester-pride-parade-leaving-trans-women-worried-about-safety/

Anti-trans protestors ‘led’ the Manchester Pride parade after they hijacked the front of the march, leaving some trans women fearing for their safety.
The group of between 10 and 14 protestors – mostly lesbians – gatecrashed the front of the march on Saturday, August 24, carrying banners reading “lesbians don’t have penises” and “gender ideology harms lesbians”.
The protest was organised by anti-trans body GetTheLOut, the same group that hijacked the front of Pride in London’s parade in 2018.
Tara Hewitt, a trans woman and co-founder of Trans Equality Legal Initiative, told PinkNews that she was left concerned for her safety after she went to watch the Manchester Pride parade for the first time with her partner, who is also a transgender woman.

An organiser from GetTheLOut, who does not want to be named, told PinkNews that, alongside lesbians, the group was made up of “lesbian-allies, detransitioners and cotton ceiling rape survivors, with the support and participation of ReSistersUnited, Object ! and MakeMoreNoise”.

She said that the group “marched together in the face of the constant hostility, violent anti-lesbianism and rape threat of the GBT movement, to raise awareness about the transitioning, the raping, the appropriation and the erasure of lesbians”.

The organiser continued: “The GBT movement, feminists and lesbian allies should be horrified about the exponential transitioning of lesbians and the enforcement of heterosexuality on us through grooming, rape and sexual violence.

“The lives of real lesbians are on the line and our issues are urgent and real.”

She added: “We will not be silenced and we will keep fighting for lesbian’s rights, visibility and liberation.”

(Can anyone spot the typo in the 3rd to last paragraph? It's a curious one, and if it was done deliberately by Pink News, they really were taking the piss)

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/man-evicted-manchester-pride-protest-21438362?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target

And then 2 years later, a man kicked out of Pride for wearing a 'hateful' LGB alliance shirt.
For as long as Pride condemns and apologises for lesbians stating 'lesbians don't have penis' and others for wearing an LGB alliance shirt, I will consider them homophobic and proof that it's now all about the T and they don't give a flying f about lesbian's safety. All that matters is that the T feel safe

Exactly.

Incidentally, it's strange for DPD to do anything for Pride month. The backbone of their organisation is the drivers, surely? I've known a few through work, and they've all been regular straight blokes. For want of a better description. I doubt they've ever given Pride a moment's thought in their lives, unless parade road closures have a knock-on effect on their route. I'm willing to bet the vast majority of them don't give a shit about gay people, one way or the other. So how much does this really represent the company? What's the point?

Sure, I get that. The thing with companies like DPD is most users aren't actually the customer. So people would need to boycott all retailers that use it.