In an effort to build a space for queer people like myself, every Sunday (or when I’m feeling spicy) I’ll be posting interviews, opinion pieces, listicles, reviews, and more focused on the LGBT community from a Latina perspective. Welcome to Queerly Not Straight! Enjoy and leave a comment below if you have a suggestion for what I should cover next.
P.S. I, Lyra Hale, do not give any site permission to copy or repost my work in any form. If you are reading this on any site besides Fangirlish, it has been stolen.
Previously I’ve enjoyed the Pride content that Target has had. It was refreshing, funny, and introduced me to new indie artists. What more could you ask for, right? But it also felt really nice to see a company welcome the LGBTQ+ community in a way that didn’t feel as performative or like rainbow capitalism. I knew that I shouldn’t have given Target the benefit of the doubt. After conservative bigots transformed into domestic terrorists came after them, Target folded and subsequently abandoned the indie queer creators that made Pride collection what it is.
For those not in the know, Target decided to move some of its Pride collections all the way to the back. You know, to hide it from people and not influence the poor children. Because it’s always about “the children.” But we’ll get back to that. And then there are other items within the Pride collection that Target is completely removing. All of this happened after bigots started taking videos inside Target complaining about how offensive the items were and how they were going to boycott. Some even went as far as destroying collections and throwing threats around, transforming into domestic terrorists.
Now, I get it. People have to make money. After all, they’re a business. But I thought they had morals. For a sparkling second, I thought that Target actually cared for its customers. But they don’t. Their allyship ends as soon as they get pushed back by bigoted moms who take videos inside Target moaning about how this is going to affect their little babies. Sorry not sorry Karen, you can’t make someone gay or part of the LGBTQ community. You’re born that way. And I pray to God or whatever deity is out there, that you give them some grace if your kids ever end up being part of our community.
But back to Target.
Allyship doesn’t end when things get hard. When someone pushes back against you standing up for a community to be able to live and thrive, that is exactly the moment that you need to stand strong and tall like a tree and say no. You will not move. You will not falter. And those bigoted conservative domestic assholes can go to hell if they don’t like it. This isn’t a new concept either. I’m talking about allyship. Throughout history, there have been communities that have been ostracized. And the way that those communities have moved forward, has been through their own courageous actions and those outside of the communities that joined them in this fight.
But I guess Target didn’t understand that and thought that the LGBTQ+ community wouldn’t notice. Oh, but we noticed. We noticed that you threw us away like nothing when bigots who want to erase us and have no problem making it so we have no basic rights as human beings, started crying about “think of the children” and “we’re never going to shop here again.” Instead of going, “Ok, don’t shop here then. We’ll make due. We’re standing for the rights of living human beings in a world that wants to crush them for just being themselves.” you folded like a house of cards and tried to placate the homophobes and have your cake too.
In a turn of events, I’m so grateful that Target showed its hand. It was a firm reminder that big businesses don’t care about the LGBTQ community. It’s all about the bottom line and how much money they can make. And after everything that happened with Dylan Mulvaney and the Budweiser campaign, I think other companies are going to panic at the mere thought of them losing some money. So they will placate bigots and domestic terrorists. Again, bigots that deny our way of life and wouldn’t mind us being reported and sent to jail for being who we are. Basically, when push comes to shove for big business, they’re not going to have our backs.
That’s why it’s super important to make sure that you shop from small LGBTQ+ businesses. Those businesses don’t give a shit about what conservative bigots think. They are here to make sure that we continue thriving as a community and that the homophobes choke on their stupidity. So fuck Target. They can go to hell and stay there. And we’ll start shifting as much as we can to more local and small businesses. Because we’re literally fighting for our lives and the right to live said lives. Target can keep their Karen’s and Kevin’s. Because again, we’re fighting for the right to breathe and they’re fighting for the right to cut us off the knee because “think of the children” and “because I said so.”
Queerly Not Straight posts every Sunday with opinion pieces, listicals, reviews, and more focused on the LGBT community (and occasionally about the Latinx community since I am Latinx.)
