All of which leaves us with a vague sense of despair and a desire to never again eat garlic bread again. Of course, in an ironic turn of events, the garlic bread became an object of outrage itself. Any commenter who questions the gender binary is promptly slapped with a hail of f-bombs and ad-hominems.īoaz would argue that’s exactly the joke: Online outrage culture has blown up so much, he says, that it needed garlic-breading to make evident just how extreme it had grown. They’re calling names typing in all caps launching into lengthy diatribes that misquote the scientific literature. Just look at any of the more than 2,000 comments that have been left on the macro: People on both sides - particularly the anti-trans side, who seem responsible for virtually all of the comments - are going absolutely berserk. The image was accompanied by the captions June 25 Pride and Proudly support love in recognition of LGBT Pride Month in the United States. And we’d also dispute his claim that the nature of sex and gender is a matter of “opinion.”īut we will say that, insofar as the meme was originally intended to mock the state of online dialogue, it definitely worked. On June 25th, 2012, a picture of an Oreo cookie with six layers of frosting in the colors of the rainbow flag was posted on Kraft Nabisco’s Facebook page. He maintains, as far as we can tell, your average high schooler’s understanding of sex and gender (which is to say, not much) and he’s pretty critical of “social justice warriors.” We’re certainly not celebrating his garlic bread meme, which - whatever its original intentions - has been widely interpreted and shared as a nasty criticism of trans people. Certainly Boaz is no beacon of LGBT acceptance. Maybe that’s a distinction that doesn’t mean much to you. (If that baffles you, I recommend a quick refresher on what, exactly, gender identity is.) Similarly, a trans person or ally who encountered the garlic bread version - and who was not familiar with exactly what the garlic bread meme traditionally means - would be totally justified in feeling, as one commenter put it, that the creator was “a transphobic (expletive)” whose ignorance “is destroying the very fabric of society.” The list goes on and all of these companies have declared their support for Pride. These memes are intended to perpetuate a discriminatory narrative about trans people, and there are a whole lot of reasons why a trans person or ally who saw them might find that narrative deeply offensive. Comcast, UPS, and AT&T have each donated over 2 million to anti-gay politicians, according to Forbes. Usually it reads something along the lines of “if I had a dollar for every gender, I’d have two dollars,” or “if I had a book for every gender there was, I’d have have Donald Trump’s “Think Like a Champion” and “The Art of the Deal.” Boaz says he was specifically inspired by a less-than-tasteful iteration that reads “If I had an atomic bomb for every gender there was” next to a map of the 1945 bomb strikes in Japan. In the case of this latest and very infamous garlic bread meme, the original source was an explicitly transphobic image macro that makes regular appearances in places like 4chan and r/The_Donald, Reddit’s dedicated Trump fan club. When straight people are bashed just for being straight, fired from a job for just being straight, evicted. Alternatively, meme artists will slam corporations for shilling useless rainbow merchandise while refusing to help the LGBTQ community with any money or structural support.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Gay pride wasn’t born out of the need to celebrate being gay, but our right to exist.
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Memes will sometimes mock corporations for changing their logo to rainbow for Pride Month while ignoring LGBTQ rights the rest of the year. Anti-corporate pride memesĪnti-corporate memes typically target corporations who exploit Pride Month for their personal gain and profit, a phenomenon known as rainbow capitalism or gay capitalism.Ĭritics and meme artists often accuse corporations of demonstrating superficial support for the queer and trans community. Here are the best Pride memes from 2019 in both categories.
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If I were to classify Pride memes scientifically, I'd say that they tend to fall into one of two categories: anti-corporate Pride memes, which mock corporations for their participation in Pride Month, or extremely niche pro-gay Pride memes, which are far more affirming and serve the LGBTQ community directly. SEE ALSO: Memes of Meryl Streep's 'Big Little Lies' scream are so good you'll scream Thankfully, this year's Pride Month brought us particularly good, dark, sarcastic, and sometimes even empowering meme content.