So too are the businesses that pay lip service to Pride from one side of their mouth while covertly supporting politicians behind anti-transgender legislation on the other. “Performative activism,” whereby companies mobilize the Pride flag for marketing purposes without necessarily making tangible changes in their own backyards, is on the rise.
I truly love Pride and the meaningful action that goes with it, but it can’t be denied that some brands are venturing into the territory of window dressing. With Pride Month drawn to a close, it’s my greatest hope that we can use its particular kind of open-minded energy to activate deeper change. Pride, with its rainbow symbolism, is a cornucopia of all that is free, true and uninhibited. In many ways, Pride Month and the celebrations we’ve just seen are the antidote to this hegemony. Follow this picture to its natural conclusion and Silicon Valley - the home of bold disruptors, the armada of innovation - is reduced to a narrow few. When everyone is busy filtering their core identity, sanding down the edges to fit the collective mold, it’s inevitable that minority voices will be pushed out. In some ways, then, the endemic “ brogrammer” culture in tech - the industry I call home - is no great surprise to me. With each new meeting or business deal, I was constantly preempting what parts of me were “OK”’ or what might put people off.
This game meant I spent years dialing down my “gayness,” even after I came out in my 20s, and the impulse was particularly acute at the early stage of my career.
But I remember thinking: “Oh! There are rules to how we live together in the world.” Right then and there, I started conforming to the parameter of the game that so many of us operate by: the game that gives us unwritten codes on what is acceptable and how to behave - at school, in work or in society at large. I was taken aback I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. Right up in my face, she admonished: “That’s the girls’ box - the boys’ stuff is over there.” I was 4 years old when I started playing what I’ve come to think of as “the game.” It was dressing-up time at school, and, as I ran over to a costume box, my teacher grabbed me by the shoulders. Phil Schraeder is CEO of GumGum, the global technology and media company specializing in contextual intelligence.