#gendercool

Nine (bfdi) is gendercool!

flag id: a flag with 6 stripes, which are red-orange, yellow-orange, light yellow, light seafoam green, bright indigo, and dark cool purple. end id.

banner id: a 1600x200 teal banner with the words ‘please read my dni before interacting. those on my / dni may still use my terms, so do not recoin them.’ in large white text in the center. the text takes up two lines, split at the slash. end id.

a gendercool flag for anon!

tags: @radiomogai, @liom-archive, @macchiane, @genderstarbucks

tags cont: @maggore, @dragonpride17

Gendercool!

when you’re not a boy or a girl and you’re not entirely sure what your gender is but man, you are cool

Parker Molloy at The Present Age Substack:

However, with June just around the corner, I have a message for the brands worldwide that will be changing their social media profile pictures into rainbows and attempting to capitalize on the corporate cash grab that Pride month has become.

Make your decisions now. Whatever they are, make them and stick to them.

In the past year or so, there’s been a pretty obnoxious trend among brands to do something they’ve been doing for years (trying to get LGBTQ people’s money with rainbow-themed merch), getting coordinated blowback from the right, and then walking back the thing they did in the first place.

Last year, this happened with State Farm Insurance. The company partnered with a group called GenderCool to distribute books written by trans and gender-nonconforming young adults to school and local libraries. Sure, neat. But then there was the coordinated backlash, and in a 24-hour span, State Farm ended up putting out a statement apologizing for its involvement, severing ties with the group, and saying that the company believes that issues involving trans people should be taught at home, not in schools

State Farm would have been much better off had it not been involved with that program in the first place. And by that, I mean that LGBTQ people (and specifically, trans people) would have been better off had State Farm not been involved with that program. I don’t really care about State Farm’s public relations issues. By making some (very small) gesture at being pro-trans (literally just acknowledging that trans people exist) and then walking it back, it had a net negative effect on trans people.

Congrats, State Farm. You’ve made life worse for trans people!

Then there was the backlash to National Hockey League Pride Night events earlier this year. A number of teams, in an effort to try to expand their fanbase among LGBTQ people (again, this is all always about capitalism, not actually about support for LGBTQ rights), announced that they’d wear special “Pride” jerseys during warm-ups before one of their games, later signing and auctioning those jerseys off to charity.

Some players, emboldened by rising anti-LGBTQ sentiment, decided they weren’t going to participate (including players who had previously participated in these events). A number of these teams then scrapped plans for Pride Night events entirely. Some cited players’ religious beliefs. Some Russian players cited new Russian laws that target LGBTQ people and LGBTQ “propaganda.” Whatever the reason, the whole thing turned into a mess.

And just last week, in the world of baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers panicked when they were hit with coordinated right-wing backlash over the inclusion of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an LGBTQ advocacy organization that’s been around since 1979. Bill Donohue, who runs a tiny group called the Catholic League (for real, it’s really just him and something like a half dozen people), along with Florida Senator Marco Rubio, put pressure on the Dodgers, who quickly caved, putting out a statement that read, in part, “Given the strong feelings of people who have been offended by the sisters’ inclusion in our evening, and in an effort not to distract from the great benefits we have seen over the years of Pride Night, we are deciding to remove them from this year’s group of honorees.”

Additionally, the past two months have featured an unrelenting stream of attacks from the right on any company that works with a trans person in any public-facing capacity. All the outrage over Bud Light doing a sponsored post with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney (this was literally just Bud Light trying to advertise directly to Mulvaney’s own audience) was based simply on the fact that she’s trans. She didn’t say or do anything particularly controversial. The outrage was over the fact that out of the many, many, many partnerships Bud Light has, one involved a trans person.

[...]

If brands actually cared about these issues and weren’t just getting involved to try to make money off of LGBTQ people, they’d see this, go, “No, this is something we believe in, and we recognize that your outrage is contrived and hateful.” But they won’t say that because, of course, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, this is about capitalism. Brands should be honest about this stuff, but I understand why they can’t and instead pretend to have some deep commitment to LGBTQ equality when they’d just as soon have us all purged from society if it helped their bottom lines.

Mia Gingerich at MMFA: 

State Farm is the latest corporation to fall prey to a right-wing hatemongering machine increasingly focused on targeting businesses and their support for LGBTQ inclusion -- becoming a “working model” of how the right can force companies to be silent on, or even oppose, LGBTQ rights.

On Monday, Consumers’ Research, a right-wing organization that runs ad campaigns targeting corporations it sees as too “woke,” launched an attack ad targeting State Farm, saying it obtained emails showing the company’s participation with the GenderCool Project, a youth-led advocacy organization, in a program that provides trans-inclusive books to schools and communities in Florida which choose to participate.

Consumers’ Research characterized State Farm’s efforts to provide age-appropriate literature, written by trans and nonbinary youth, as the company targeting “5-year-olds for conversations about sexual identity” and engaging in “textbook indoctrination.” The organization's leadership has been featured on Fox News, and its campaign mirrors other right-wing, anti-LGBTQ agitators like the “Libs of TikTok” account on Twitter.

Key figures in pushing anti-LGBTQ hysteria set sight on State Farm

After the right-wing organization’s Executive Director Will Hild posted the emails to Twitter on May 23, alongside an article from conservative outlet the Washington Examiner, online troll Chaya Raichik (the person behind the Twitter account Libs of TikTok), quote-tweeted his post.

Raichik has played a crucial role in directing attacks against LGBTQ people and their allies in right-wing media. She helped drive extremist lies that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children and has used her extensive Twitter following to direct hate against at least 222 schools, education organizations, or school system employees just this year.  

This week’s rhetoric against State Farm is a repeat of last week’s rhetoric on Calvin Klein, which Fox host Tucker Carlson criticized for featuring a trans man in an ad, or the week before when Target was the source of outrage over its Pride Month merchandise directed at trans and nonbinary people. Whether it is Fisher-Price or Oreo or Pixar, conservative media will latch onto any minor show of support companies extend to trans people, especially trans youth, to drive up anger with its viewership.

Within hours of Hild’s tweet, right-wing media sites were filled with articles citing the voluntary program as proof that companies were “pushing” “transgenderism” on “5-year-olds” and one spewing familiar extremist rhetoric calling the company a “groomer.”

[...]

Attacks on State Farm billed as “working model” by architect of anti-LGBTQ and critical race theory panic

This attack on State Farm would not be unique were it not for the company choosing to relent to the pressure.

Right-wing media seemingly find a new business to target every week. Most notably, Disney has suffered, alongside Florida’s taxpayers, for conservative’s fixation with targeting any hint of LGBTQ inclusion in the company’s programming or policy.  

State Farm’s quick willingness to walk back any support for trans youth did not go unnoticed by those directly responsible for concocting outrage against companies for inclusive policies, including Chris Rufo, a figure perhaps most at the center of driving the current racist, homophobic, and anti-trans outrage over school curriculum and company policy. His roles helping to manufacture anger over the false claim that schools are teaching critical race theory and driving the moral panic over Disney earned him significant coverage on Fox News.

State Farm drops support of LGBTQ kids books after conservative furor

State Farm drops support of LGBTQ kids books after conservative furor Hours after a report about the partnership prompted an online uproar from conservatives, State Farm announced that it was dropping its support of the GenderCool Project, aimed at helping raise awareness around what it means to be transgender, inclusive and nonbinary.

Allison Quinn at The Daily Beast: 

Insurance company State Farm has dropped its support for a program providing LGBTQ-theme children’s books to teachers and libraries after a right-wing uproar. “State Farm’s support of a philanthropic program, GenderCool, has been the subject of news and customer inquiries. This program that included books about gender identity was intended to promote inclusivity,” Victor Terry, State Farm’s chief diversity officer, wrote in an email to staff. “We will no longer support that program,” he said, adding that “conversations about gender and identity should happen at home with parents.” The decision came after a whistleblower report Monday about the company “targeting” children as young as 5 with books about gender identity sparked backlash on the right. The program, which would see agents and staffers distribute books to community centers, libraries, and teachers, aimed to “increase representation of LGBTQ+ books and support our communities in having challenging, important and empowering conversations with children age 5+,” the insurance company said of the project in a January 2022 email obtained by Consumer Research.

Children’s books written to support transgender and nonbinary youth

Children’s books written to support transgender and nonbinary youth Three new books are aiming to help educate children and adults about nonbinary and transgender youth. The GenderCool Project, a youth-led movement that works to replace misinformed opinions on transgender and nonbinary youth, has partnered with A Kids Book About to release three children’s books that aim to educate and inspire.