This Pride Month, we’re proud to stand with the LGBTQIA+ community. We believe everyone has a part to play in doing The Work of eradicating injustice and homophobia for good. And we thought our part could be coloring in our social media logo for a month.
Some fight for equality on the legislative front; some raise funds for hard-working charities; some mentor homeless LGBT youth. Our weapon of choice is an AI drawing of a rainbow.
From July through May, we’d probably say we identify as a heterosexual, cisgender financial institution slash legal person. But when June comes around, we don our digital rainbow background and become a Big Gay Bank of Gays (BGBG).
We are thrilled to make this brief, flimsy gesture that angers some and accomplishes little to commemorate and celebrate those who fought and gave their lives for LGBTQIA+ rights. Without their sacrifice, there would be no corresponding and totally unexpected 5 percent gross uptick in profits during this sudden gay interlude. We’re even more thrilled about that.
For us, Pride Month is all about raising awareness and taking positive action, like opening our social media account and clicking “Add Temporary Profile Picture.” But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be about turning a little profit too. You know, in the short term.
The Pride flag is a powerful symbol of love and freedom. On our social media, it also signals how virtuous we are as a corporation (in all of our non-Middle East locations). As a bonus, this bare-minimum bandwagon hopping actually takes care of our mandatory Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion training too. If there’s one thing we stand for, it’s diversity. But we stand efficiently—two exotic polychrome birds, one big ol’ gay stone.
Not stones like stoning stones. God, no, we didn’t mean that. We don’t endorse animal cruelty either.
Let’s go with a different metaphor. We’re flying the flag for Pride; we’re raising a banner. Except we decided against flying a literal flag or banner because we already have the logo thing. For now. It’s just like a flag but cheaper in every conceivable way.
Just look at all those pretty colored pixels. Almost like thousands of flags, but with much less effort. It might be for 720 hours only, but we’re making enough song and dance about it, internally and externally, to last all year long. Repeatedly (and proudly) pointing out our little collection of multicolored dots on a screen to our staff serves the dual purpose of demonstrating our superficial commitment to equality, and making our gay, bi, trans, queer, inter, and ace employees feel super conspicuous and uncomfortable.
When it comes to righting injustice, we all have our parts to play. Our part is this tokenistic little doodle before we go back in the closet for the next eleven months. Yours could be taking on the Supreme Court, but who’s to say any one part is more important than another? We are all doing The Work, which ironically was barely any work at all.
You’re so welcome, gay community—it was literally the least we could do.