Every year as June month arrives, social media is flooded with customized advertising campaigns addressed to the Queer community. The penetration of the market deep into ordinary life has established a space for commoditized forms of Queer existence, oriented around commercial “inclusivity.” Jean Baudrillard deciphers the idea of needs in a consumer society. Consumer society does not buy what they need, but what code (advertisement) delivers about what should be bought. This object is a signifier (it is a sign value), and consumption of this object is an expression of luxury, prestige, authority, etc. [i] Understanding consumerism as a modus operandi, all identities (Queer) are subject to an economic force which demands that anything is a potential subject for consumption. Commodification refers to how more and more objects and experiences in the human world are turned into products for profit [ii].

The consolidation of this possible sexual politics has tended to benefit some more than others. In a culture of media, the Queer community’s susceptibility and craving for signs of appearance, style, prestige, and social standing have resulted in the apathy and ignorance of actual problems like poverty, AIDS, HRT and Gender-Confirming surgeries, safe housing, social injustices etc. These adverts that target an exclusively privileged class of Queer people is due to the rise of significant de-politicization of the lesbian and gay milieu, falling short of the ambitious goal of sexual emancipation [iii]. It feels good when there is public acceptance. The sense of hurt associated with stigma is lifted. This is, however, isolated and questionable with regards to the deeply entrenched patterns of political, legal, religious and cultural oppression. Deep prejudices remain and further invisibilizes the struggles of Queer People of Color, Queer women, and Queer people living with disabilities, transgender and non-binary people that are eclipsed from such marketing policies.

This essay challenges the limits of Queer representation trapped in a consumerism culture. It analyses the new degree of trans-homosexual visibility around the world. I address this line of inquiry by demonstrating how Pride Month and Pride Parades have co-opted in the market discourse.  

The uprising of the Stonewall Riots, 52 years back, catapulted the movements for LGBTQ+ liberation into public consciousness. It was a riot in which fierce Queers attempted to injure police officers and set them on fire while fighting for life in the streets of New York [iv]. It was a confrontation against authority that expressed the “language of the unheard.” Within minutes protesters lit fires in the trash cans, threw bottles and bricks towards the police, painted graffiti on the wall and even destroyed parking meters. They were tired of the routine harassment of the police, of their bosses who sexually exploited them in the dark corners of the streets, and the white bourgeois neighbourhoods that never took their opinion seriously; instead criminalized their social identity. After the Stonewall Riots continued, it gave rise to the Gay Liberation Front with a radical vision that not only fought homophobia but targeted the capitalist-imperialist system along with its enforced gender and sexual norms.

The roots of Pride and the Stonewall riots have always been part of unresolved tension. It was a long battle for identity and ownership, determined to destroy the domination of cis heteronormativity (the idea that cisgender, heterosexuality is the norm reinforced through societal norms and the media) and abolish traditional gender roles [v]. The Gay Liberation Movement combined demands for the right to privacy, against state surveillance and the right to bring sex into the public sphere. Gay liberation politics often insisted, at least in some rudimentary way, that sexual freedom required a broader social transformation to eliminate the gender system and other forms of inequality (Seidman, 1994) [vi].

In recent times, Pride parades are often dominated by big business sponsors and vote-seeking politicians. This celebration is synchronized with the state agents like bureaucrats and the police who brag about LGBTQ+ inclusiveness in the media but have not apologized or compensated for their decades of oppression. For example, on 20^th July 2020, Sanjeet Mondal, a gay man from Kolkata, was verbally and physically assaulted by the Civic Police Volunteer Force [vii]. On 6^th February 2021,Tunisian Security Forces have arbitrarily arrested, assaulted, and raped LGBTQI activists as a consequence of organizing a protest against the criminalization of homosexuality [viii]. These successful rainbow-brand campaigns profit from prolonged gender and sexual-marginalized social relations.

Marketing policies backed by the state created an appealing Queer representation devoid of any social stigmas. The privileged, affluent Queers were willing to throw their fellow Trans/Non-binary people under the bus for scraps of minor acceptance from a society deeply hostile to non-normative Queer identities. This intensified the existing polarizations within the Queer community. Certain gay bars and restaurants, commercial publications, dress styles, and personal grooming could be accessed only by the elite lesbians and gays. Even in these market spaces, the Queer professional, entrepreneurial and managerial classes act as the spokesman for our communities [ix]. The corporations that turn their logos into “rainbow colour” in Pride month support treacherous political agendas responsible for systematic oppression. For example, AT&T donated $2,755,000 to 193 anti-gay politicians; Pfizer donated $959,263 to 52 anti-gay politicians [x]. Cisgender, heterosexual men dominate such workplaces, and the stark power differences can put any Queer person in a state of anxiety. Most of them are perceived as being “too gay” or “too butch” if they don’t conform to the workplace gendered codes [xi].

In this context of commodification, especially during the Pride month, a person becomes visible as a Queer if they happily settle for equal rights within the capitalist state, aspiring for a “straight family” life (monogamy and nuclear family). Through subjective and historical perspectives, Queer experiences are repackaged because of promoting “assimilationist” gay politics [xii]. This exposes the exploitation of the vulnerable Trans/Non-Binary community that are still murdered by cultural and state-sanctioned violence. Our demand was LGBTQ+ liberation, not conformation/assimilation. The vision was clear: a new sexual democracy, the fight to abolish gender, patriarchy, capitalism, neuronormativity, race, state, and imagine an alternative society without domination and oppression. These were revolutionary ideas, and they remain the same. In the immortal words of Trans revolutionaries like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera: “No Pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” [xiii]

[[i]] Baudrillard, Jean.  (1970). The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, Sage: New York

[[ii]] Marx, Karl.  (1887). Capital: A critique of political economy (Volume 14^th edition), Penguin: New York

[[iii]] Sears, Alan.  (2005). Anti-Capitalism: What’s Left of Lesbian and Gay Liberation? Science & Society.

69 (1): WS92–WS112

[[iv]]  https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/thomas-giovanni-queer-liberation-and-anarchist-communism, accessed on 18^th June 2021.

[[v]]  https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/thomas-giovanni-queer-liberation-and-anarchist-communism, accessed on 18^th June 2021.

[[vi]] Seidman, Steven.  (1994). Symposium: Queer Theory/Sociology: A Dialogue. Sociological Theory.

12 (2): WS166-WS177

[[vii]] https://thewire.in/lgbtqia/police-violence-against-lgtbqia-people-in-kolkata-highlights-need-for-sensitisation, accessed on 20^th June 2021

[[viii]]  https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/23/tunisia-police-arrest-use-violence-against-lgbti-activists, accessed on 20^th June 2021

 [[ix]] Kinsman, Gary.  (1996). The Regulation of Desire: Homo and Hetero Sexualities. Black Rose: Canada

[[x]]  https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2019/06/24/dont-let-that-rainbow-logo-fool-you-these-corporations-donated-millions-to-anti-gay-politicians/?sh=480b963414a6, accessed on 20^th June 2021

[[xi]]  https://engenderacademia.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/vernon-finished.pdf, accessed on 4^th June 2021

[[xii]]  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/25/party-and-protest-lgbtq-radical-history-gay-liberation-stonewall-pride, accessed on 20^th June 2021

[[xiii]]  https://liberationschool.org/our-armies-are-rising-sylvia-rivera-and-marsha-p-johnson/, accessed on 20^th June 2021

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Anamitra Bora (Assamese Queer Non-Binary) is an MA student pursuing Sociology in Cotton University, Guwahati.