I’m the first to admit that I find months dedicated to the classes I belong to, such as Pride month, performative and kind of cringe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against Pride gatherings or even the odd parade here or there, so long as capitalists do not sponsor them. They don’t really give a fuck about us; despite the wealth of research surrounding substance abuse issues among lesbian and gay people, Absolut Vodka was the first brand to advertise in our magazines.
Pride month means corporations can chuck a rainbow flag up during June, pretending they’re our allies for a pink pound or two, while CEOs complain about “dykes and faggots” behind closed doors. This is the problem with the concept of ethical capitalism. If the 1% put pronouns in their bio and ‘like’ the most politically “correct” (but empty) post on LinkedIn, then they get the golden ticket to cash in on the backs of the minorities they pay lip service to.
It’s time to remember that CEOs will do dog tricks for whoever makes them more money. Take a look at Trump’s takeover: while Biden’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs had their problems, the official White House website now calls them “radical…wasteful…illegal…immoral.” Google CEO Sundar Pichai wasted no time demonstrating how hollow and forced the corporation’s “supportive” gestures for gay people were during Biden’s reign, removing Pride month from Google calendar – as well as Women’s History Month, Black History Month, Indigenous Peoples Month and more – and binning hiring goals for diversity the moment they could.
Straight male capitalists are high-fiving and chest-bumping like frat boys around a beer-pong table right now. They don’t have to pretend to care anymore. Google has joined Meta (Mark Zuckerberg) and Amazon (Andy Jassy) in swiftly stripping back efforts towards diversity, marching to the beat of Trump’s promise that they won’t have to share their power with the disadvantaged while he’s in office. What was performative to begin with can always quickly be destroyed. CEOs conformed to diversity programs when they were afraid of being cancelled. Under Trump, they’ve organised a boy’s club that softens any potential financial blow.
The entire globe is affected by US politics. This isn’t just an American issue. Men from all over the world are idolising Musk and Trump, acting like feminism and gay rights are making the Straight Man redundant. Their homeostasis has adjusted to having more power than women, so sharing feels like an injustice. It’s not only young, white American men and boys being radicalised by right-wing “manfluencer” figures like suspected sex trafficker and rapist Andrew Tate. Men everywhere are consuming and voting for whoever is going to perpetuate male supremacy. In an Australian government survey, 21-year-old straight male Brenton said, “[Tate is] putting out so many opinions on things that haven’t been said in ages because of feminist movements and everything […] [H]e’s the only one speaking out about this sort of male stuff that’s not spoken about.”
Trump and his billionaire buddies are calling for a return of the straight, white Strong Man… as if they ever lost power. What makes it scary is that they’re in control of the most powerful country on Earth. As much as Musk and Trump pretend they’re victims of fake news from corrupt media and dodgy algorithms, if I ever go on Twitter (not calling it X) – which is rarely – then my “for you” page always has Musk and his pals’ latest tweets right at the top, even though I’ve never interacted with anyone like them in my life. Rich men are still very much in control of what we see.
Men are longing for a time when homosexuals were more secret and women more silent. Why? Heterosexuality is viewed as the default sexual orientation, along with its strict gender roles that naturalise male dominance. Homosexuality being normalised is a threat to heterosexual power. Trump is a shadow from the past, a reactionary warning that rich, white, straight men are not relinquishing power voluntarily.
It’s not just straight men on the right wing. While the far right yell “queer!” from car windows, our fake friends on the left prefer for us to reclaim it as an umbrella term, conceding that we are the deviant to their default. Both are doing the same strategic thing: denormalising us. We can’t “reclaim” what they think because it was never ours. Despite anti-critical thinkers arguing that “choosing” something already expected of your oppressed class is empowerment, joining in on our oppression does not make our lives any better.
Our freedom requires the billionaire boys’ club to lose power, authority and influence, including on the men in our lives. To be free, we must question established norms that exist to naturalise our subservience. Homosexual females aren’t a bug infesting heteropatriarchal normality but an essential feature of reality that proves nature’s extraordinary diversity.
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