Listen to this episode and read more about it at theallusionist.org/rainbow-washing
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, hide from language before language starts going on about owl theory again.
This episode is about washing, not the kind that makes things clean, the kind that just covers over the dirt.
But before that, glad tidings: the Allusionist live experience is back on the road, and coming to Australia in July! July 2022! That’s next month at time of recording! So if you’re in or near Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide or Sydney, pop on your most secure mask and come to see me and house band Martin Austwick perform a new show called Your Name Here. It’s all about eponyms, full of facts and fun, and with some probably regrettable musical numbers. And there’s a special Allusionist pencil included with every ticket. Also some shows in Aotearoa New Zealand are looking likely in August. So keep an eye on theallusionist.org/events because ticket links will be up there very soon. Or possibly already. But definitely very soon. Given that the shows are very soon.
This episode contains some swears.
On with the show.
HZ: For the first couple of hundred years of its existence, the word ‘whitewash’ had a fairly simple time as a cheap paint daubed on walls and trees. But at some point in the 18th century it gained this whole extra life as a metaphor, to mean covering up sordid, dubious or downright evil things. And once you've got a good metaphor going, why not grab half of it and use it in new metaphors to speed along the process of people getting to grips with those. For example, one coined in 1986, 'greenwashing', when companies try to make themselves look like they're not melting the world by committing to some tokenistically environmental scheme that lets them continue treating the world like their own personal fondue set. Then there’s redwashing: political organisations and companies feigning a social conscience for their own reputational or economic benefit; that can also be known as bluewashing. Purplewashing, meanwhile, same effect but using feminism. Whitewashing again: casting white actors to play characters who are canonically people of colour. Pinkwashing, probably coined in 2002 by Breast Cancer Action who define it as "A company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products containing chemicals that are linked to the disease." Just a few years later, 'pinkwashing' had another meaning too.
SARAH SCHULMAN: I'm Sarah Schulman. I'm a writer in New York City.
HZ: When did you first come across the term pinkwashing?
SARAH SCHULMAN: It comes from from Arab people and people involved with Palestine. I first heard it from Ali Abunimah, who is a Palestinian leader, who is the publisher of Electronic Intifada. They were talking about Israel pretending that they are this ecological marvel and they were greenwashing, and he said, "Oh my God, they're whitewashing, they're greenwashing, now they're pinkwashing."
HZ: Sarah Schulman didn't coin this sense of 'pinkwashing' but she did introduce it to a whole new audience when she used it in 2011 in a piece she wrote in the New York Times. This is how she used ‘pinkwashing’ in it:
SARAH SCHULMAN: It's when the Israeli state uses the fact that gay people have some kind of visibility in places like Tel Aviv to claim that that means that they are a progressive state, and that therefore, any kind of opposition to the occupation or brutality against Palestinians or the suppression of Palestinians is unjust, because they are clearly progressive because they have some gay rights. That's their argument. So basically they are equating certain kinds of gay visibility with modernity itself. And that is no longer the case. There would have been a time when that would have been true, but that is no longer true.
So pink washing is a lie, right? It's a marketing device. But it's not just the West that is subjected to pinkwashing, Palestinians themselves are subjected to pinkwashing. So a Palestinian queer person might be exposed to pinkwashing ideas and believe somehow that they can't have a life as a queer person in a Palestinian context. But actually there is a Palestinian queer movement and there is a community that is evolving. They have really had very deep conversations about how Israeli pinkwashing affects Palestinian people, and affects Palestinian gay people and queer people, and alienates them from their own communities, and makes them feel like Israel could be their saviour while they're being occupied. So they've really been talking about the psychological consequences upon them of those propaganda campaigns.
HZ: From this political sense, pinkwashing evolved a bit more, to mean companies commodifying gayness and gay rights while not helping out.
SARAH SCHULMAN: That would be a watered down meaning - that would actually be pinkwashing the actual meaning of pinkwashing.
HZ: A paler pink.
SARAH SCHULMAN: Right. if people want to use it, let's try to also remind people that the original example has to do with Israeli occupation.
HZ: Now in our current era, corporate pinkwashing has evolved towards rainbow-washing. Not because a company has figured out how to redwash, pinkwash, purplewash, bluewash and greenwash all at once - although maybe some have - but because they're putting rainbows on products for Pride month to signal how friendly they are to the full array of sexualities and gender identities! And even more friendly to making money.
MITRA KABOLI: My name is Mitra Kaboli and I'm the producer and host of a brand new podcast called Welcome to Provincetown. It's coming out June 15th and I'd love for you to listen.
I would define rainbow washing as the corporate phenomenon of putting rainbow flags on everything during the month of June, which is Pride month. And like corporate pride collections, corporations sponsoring pride events, things like that as a way to put a good face forward as like, "you know, we're open, we're accepting" and, more than anything, to sell products.
HZ: Some of the companies have been sponsoring Pride since the 1980s and 90s, and I wouldn’t necessarily call that rainbow washing, because although they stood to make money out of gay people buying their products, the company wasn’t benefiting from it reputationally in a more broad sense, at that time.
MITRA KABOLI: Yes. A lot of the companies that have kind of been including gay people in their advertisements, things like that, from the 1980s, 1990s, things like that: there was a lot of backlash at the time, but now it's really not controversial so much anymore. Putting a rainbow flag on something during Pride month was a safe bet. But really the kind of like rainbow wash, the thing we see now with the Pride collections, and everything has rainbows in it, and you go to the mall and everything is like "Pride, Pride, Pride, Pride, Pride, Pride!" every store you walk into: I wonder if it makes these companies any money, honestly. But it does make them, in some ways, to some people, look better, I suppose.
HZ: Yeah, I guess if it lost them money, they wouldn't be... it's not necessarily for profit, but it's for like, "OK I put a rainbow on a thing. Can I go now? Do I also have to make the company a queer-friendly workplace? Do I have to put queer people in top level positions?"
MITRA KABOLI: "Do I have to support queer legislation? Or actively divest from anti-trans legislation, anti-gay legislation?" Which a lot of companies, like they put their rainbow flag on stuff during the month of June, and then, behind the scenes, who knows where their money's actually going.
HZ: Some companies will state that they are donating a percentage or amount of the sales of these products and to which organisations.
MITRA KABOLI: That's kind of like a tax break. If you're donating to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States, that's a tax break. Like you can write that off. I feel like they do stand to profit in a lot of ways, like it's not really out of the goodness of anyone's heart. Also, what organization is this going to? Who are they helping? Companies that have Pride collections, it's like, okay, how much of this money is going to what organization? And the thing about Pride, or just like LGBTQ rights: what does that even mean? There are myriad issues that affect the queer community. It's not just one. There's so many different things.
HZ: Another necessary question to ask is where else does the company's money go? Are they donating some of their rainbow product money to queer organisations but then also money to anti-queer organisations?
MITRA KABOLI: It's kind of like what happened with breast cancer awareness. After putting that pink shit on everything, where did this money go? Did we cure cancer? Absolutely not. Like we're not curing hate. And in fact, even though there's more rainbows on shit than ever before, it kind of feels like a lot of rights, especially now, the situation is getting worse. There just seems to be a mood in the air of hate, I walk around New York city with my partner and I'm just like, "is today the day I'm going to get hate crimed?" Which is not a thought I'd ever really had before. But there's just, especially with a lot of the anti-trans legislation, it's just like not feeling great out here to actually be a queer person that lives in the world. Despite the fact that all of H and M is covered in rainbows right now, that actually isn't much of a comfort to me.
HZ: I wonder whether a lot of them are doing it just because there'll be a lot of people tweeting about it going, "Isn't this ridiculous, a rainbow petrol pump" or something.
MITRA KABOLI: That’s a good point. Yeah. Because it's Pride month, they're trying to get like write-ups and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, why? You know what would be nice for your queer employees? Giving them a fucking raise. All of your employees, actually, every single one. That would be nice. Don't waste my time and make me shill for you in some article so your company looks good. No thank you. Wasting my time.
HZ: Some of the rainbow products that have caught people’s attention in recent years: rainbow mouthwash.
MITRA KABOLI: I want my Listerine to work. I don't care if it's gay. That actually doesn't make a difference to me.
HZ: McDonalds fries.
MITRA KABOLI: Classic. Classic gay fries. I actually prefer my French fries gay. I don't know about you. They taste better that way.
HZ: Rainbow Doritos! Not just rainbows on the bag; the chips themselves were different colours!
MITRA KABOLI: Ah, yes, the chips were actually rainbows
HZ: Okay. That is somewhat impressive.
MITRA KABOLI: But also revolting, you know. I love the Doritos. I think that's so funny. I just like, I can't even. I have nothing to say except that it's hilarious.
HZ: Bud Light beer in rainbow bottles and cans.
MITRA KABOLI: I can imagine myself, if I was in the corner store buying beer, and it was between the Pride collection and not, maybe for fun I would buy the Pride collection. Just for fun. But who knows?
HZ: Whichever has cuter packaging.
MITRA KABOLI: Yeah. I mean, me personally, I don't love rainbows on anything, and I try and avoid them at all costs.
HZ: Even the ones in the sky, the naturally-occurring?
MITRA KABOLI: Those are the only ones I fuck with, period.
HZ: Bud Light has partnered with GLAAD since the 1990s, but during 2021 Pride the Stonewall Inn refused to sell it, even though it is usually one of their top-selling drinks, and they staged a pour-out protest, because Budweiser's parent company Anheuser-Busch had donated $35,350 to 29 anti-LGBTQ+ legislators over the previous few years. So that’s an example of what we were saying earlier about where else is a company's money going. There are some quite bleak rainbow washes out there:
MITRA KABOLI: Something that I saw circulating this week that I truly cannot tell if this is a joke, but I did see the US Marines tweeted something and it was like a helmet with rainbow bullets on it. I don't even know what to say to that.
HZ: The CIA of course managed to make it weird, posting an ominous greyscale photo of their headquarters with a Pride rainbow pathway to the entrance, and the word PRIDE hanging heavy in the sky with the letter ‘I’ made from a Progress Pride flag.
Back to the funny products though, ok?
HZ: The British supermarket M&S made an LGBT sandwich, which is lettuce, guacamole bacon, and tomato.
MITRA KABOLI: That sounds good, actually. I would eat that.
HZ: They stopped at that point of the initialisms; they didn't go into the -QIA, which is supposed to be what, queso? What foodstuffs begin with an I?
MITRA KABOLI: Ummmm...
HZ: It gets difficult. I can see why they stopped.
MITRA KABOLI: ‘I’...
HZ: For the 'A' - they've got guacamole, so they used up the avocado already. Maybe apple? It's starting to get disgusting the further along the initialism you get.
MITRA KABOLI: There has to be a law where you must continue to make the sandwich, and as the acronym grows with letters, you must find something to put in there.
HZ: For two spirit, two sausages?
MITRA KABOLI: Two sausages. Q? Quince.
HZ: Quince. Oh, that's a classy option, Mitra.
MITRA KABOLI: I’m a classy lady.
HZ: I'm still struggling with the ‘I’.
MITRA KABOLI: I'm trying to think of 'I', and I'm coming up short. There has to be a cheese starts with an I. Italian sausage? Italian bread, Italian something…
HZ: Ice cream? Not a good addition. Iceberg lettuce, they've already got lettuce because of the L.
MITRA KABOLI: They can make it work. They've just got to their heads to it.
HZ: If they're really wanting to be supportive, they're going to have make it work.
MITRA KABOLI: if they really want to put their money where their mouth is, they're going to make this sandwich work.
HZ: If they really want to change this world, they're going to make a very wide sandwich and a very wide bit of packaging.
HZ: M&S's LGBT sandwich was a limited edition product in 2019; sadly I can't see any signs of the Lettuce, Guacamole, Bacon, Tomato, Quince, Italian Sausage and Apple sandwich being sold this year. But there's still time!
HZ: Is it worse when they don't do it? Is it better to have some visibility, no matter how trivialized or flippant, than none?
MITRA KABOLI: I know what you're saying. This is kind of like the rub a little bit, where it's like: Pride initially was political. And now it's kind of morphed into capital in this weird way. It's kind of like an awareness campaign. And in some ways I do think, particularly maybe for straight people or people inclined to hate, that that kind of visibility probably is helpful in swaying some sort of public opinion. But I don't think it's getting at the root of problems or issues. I'm not really sure. I do think about it, like, is it better that we have rainbows on shit for a month so people can remember that the person next to you might be gay? Or is it just useless? I wonder who is buying the merch? I'm imagining a landfill or something somewhere that's just full of the discards.
HZ: Rainbow landfill! I think when it's so product focused, there are people who are not queer, who will buy product and be like, "That means I'm an ally," but their behavior and their life philosophy will not align with that. It's easier to buy things than it is to behave in certain ways.
MITRA KABOLI: I think you're right. Something that I've been thinking about is when I look at a lot of Pride collections, I'm like, who is this for? I know there's some tacky gays out there who will buy anything that you put a rainbow on. No offense! But, in a lot of ways, I feel like it's for like straight people. Or maybe - I cannot speak for all gays. We are not a monolith. I'm just one gay here saying that I think there are better ways to help and uplift queer communities.
HZ: Or better places to put your money.
MITRA KABOLI: Yeah, like donating directly to organizations that you know are actually doing work, like organizations that that help directly with the most vulnerable of the queer population. And that's really where you should be putting your money, it's like the people who are at the most vulnerable.
HZ: And organizations that are working all year round.
MITRA KABOLI: All year round, not just the month of June. This is the thing I wonder: what could a corporation possibly do that could be helpful to real people. Corporations, corporate jobs, corporate stuff: that's not the revolution. That's nice that you said these words, but at the end of the day, like how do you treat your workers? What did they think about you? I really feel like as a corporation, the only thing you can do to help people is pay them more money and let your workers unionize. Truly that's it.
HZ: I think the reason why it's not the revolution is because they actively don't want the revolution. They're like, "I've done this. Can we just carry on now, as I was?"
MITRA KABOLI: Right. They're not actually interested in the revolution because the revolution is not helpful to them making money, you know? And at the end of the day, all of this - putting rainbow flags - it's about making money. It's just about money. It's part of the same problem where it's like, we can kind of put this face forward, but at the end of the day, we still have to reckon with our actions and how we treat people.
HZ: it's a lot easier just to buy some rainbow Doritos, Mitra.
MITRA KABOLI: Delicious. Salty treat.
HZ: I think a lot of people have concerns about performative allyship. I think where a lot of people go wrong is because they don't know what to do, and then either they don't do anything useful, or they do something that is not useful at all.
MITRA KABOLI: Yeah. Queer people are not a monolith, especially if you spend two seconds on the internet, you know, one person is going to be like, “Do this!” and someone else is going to be like, “Definitely don't do that.” There's no right answer. If we could just all stop performing and start living, that would be great.
HZ: Mitra Kaboli is the host of the new podcast Welcome To Provincetown, about all the characters in Provincetown one summer. Go to your podcatchers and subscribe!
Sarah Schulman is a writer of non-fiction books including Conflict is Not Abuse and Let the Record Show, and novels such as After Delores and Maggie Terry, a detective novel I just ripped through.
The Allusionist is an independent podcast that loves to collaborate with same - I’m pleased to say that the aforementioned live tour of Australia is being organised by Izzy Roberts-Orr of Broadwave, Broadwave is a collective that makes beautiful podcasts like Tender and A Fluorescent Feeling, so check those out in the podplaces and broadwavepods.com.
And if you want to support the making of this show then go to theallusionist.org/donate where if you sign up to patreonise the Allusionist you get behind the scenes intel, fortnightly livestreams with me and the dictionary, and 24/7 access to the Allusioverse Discord community where this week we’ve been having a discussion about some topics I would like to cover, such as how frequently someone can say your given name before it gets weird. Join us! theallusionist.org/donate.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
autotelic, adjective: (of an activity or creative work) having an end or purpose in itself.
Try using ‘autotelic’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Benjamin Riskin of roomtone.fm. Allusionist music is by Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com and the podcast Neutrino Watch. Our ad partner is Multitude. To sponsor an episode of the show, contact them at multitude.productions/ads.
Find me @allusionistshow on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and head to the show’s website for a playlist of the Pride-relevant episodes that I’ve made over the years, some of the very best episodes of the show at any time of year I think. Check out the changing use of the word ‘bisexual’, the secret gay language Polari, the linguistic evolution of ‘queer’, the choice of the word ‘pride’ for Pride, and many more. Also on the website you’ll find every episode of the show in audio and transcript form, plus the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words, and listings for live events. That is all at the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.
