May is gay pride month in most of the Western world and American companies are falling all over themselves to demonstrate how woke they are.
It may as well be “Bird Watchers Month” for all the attention most Americans are paying to it. But every Democratic voting bloc has to have its own month. It’s in the Constitution somewhere.
What happens when they run out of months to recognize an important interest group will be amusing to watch.
But gay Pride month poses a sticky dilemma for American and Western multi-national corporations. Doing business all over the world, they run into problems with celebrating gays in countries that are kinda dubious about the whole gay thing. In fact, in some countries where gays are jailed, beaten, chemically castrated, or even executed, these woke corporations that plaster their web pages with messages of support for the LGBTQ community, are as silent as mosque mice.
Proctor and Gamble is a good example.
t’s June and the biggest corporations on the planet want you to know that they are celebrating gay Pride — unless you live somewhere like Saudi Arabia in which case they couldn’t care less. On their main Twitter page, Procter & Gamble have put a Pride flag in their banner and in their pinned Tweet they proudly proclaim: ‘We strive to be a champion of #LGBTQVisibility year-round, using our voice to drive acceptance, inclusion and a love for humanity.’
I guess there are no gay people in Saudi Arabia to champion, which must be why P&G’s Saudi Twitter handle has not a single rainbow flag in sight and a pinned tweet simply wishing people a blessed Ramadan.
But that is the beauty of corporate wokewashing. It allows companies like YouTube to continue to make billions of dollars from users in progressive western democracies while also respecting cultural sensitivities in places like Saudi where gays can expect to be whipped, chemically castrated and killed.
“Wokewashing” a company’s support for gay pride so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the cutthroats in Saudi Arabia is a standard operating procedure for all good little woke corporations that never get around to admitting and apologizing for their utter, bald-faced hypocrisy.
On their Twitter handle Microsoft tweeted out a #PRIDE gif with a rainbow Windows logo. But on their @microsoftgulf handle, it’s less windows and more closets. There’s not a single mention of Pride month. Corporations these days really are on the right side of history.
Yes, they’re cowards. They threaten to boycott states like North Carolina for denying men and boys access to girls’ bathrooms while Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other radical fundamentalist Muslim countries execute gays and transgender people.
Why don’t they speak up in places where it’s risky to do so? Because wokeness means never having to say you’re sorry.
Wokewashing “allows companies like YouTube to continue to make billions of dollars from users in progressive western democracies while also respecting cultural sensitivities in places like Saudi where gays can expect to be whipped, chemically castrated and killed.”
What’s even more amazing is that the gay community accepts this as a matter of course. They don’t want to rock the boat any more than gays in Saudi Arabia. The difference being, gays only look like hypocrites here, whereas in Saudi Arabia they could lose everything.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at this double standard. It exists in people with no capacity for introspection or self-examination. It doesn’t bother them because they are totally unaware of their cluelessness.
Long live the social justice warriors — in some countries anyway!
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