[simondotau]

If I were a trans person, I would be insulted by large corporations draping themselves in such superficial, low effort, utterly incongruous lip service to my cause, using past and present prejudice against me as a marketing opportunity to sell more web browsers. Corporations love to passively attach themselves to causes like this. Social responsibility has become the responsibility of the marketing department, plus whatever minimum corporate change is sufficient to sell the sizzle.

This story has played out countless times, whether it's world hunger in the 1980s, third-wave feminism in the 1990s, global warming in the 2000s, or generic environmentalism (i.e. "greenwashing") in the 2010s. If they wanted to, corporations can be a force for good. The treadmill of causes du jour gives them a convenient excuse to not try.

For the sake of the trans community I'd like to think that this time they're being sincere. This time it's authentic. But I find it hard to believe. Maybe I'm too cynical.

[hitekker]

Observing from the outside, the lip service is successful because it offers the illusion of righteousness to the weak-minded and stupid. The extremely online crowd love feeling being a part of a "cause" and not thinking about what the "cause" actually means. Until they're left out in the cold when the corporation shifts to another newsworthy cause to trumpet.

Some of the rabble go quiet, the rest double-down. They try to convince themselves and everyone else they weren't fooled. They want to believe they're still a voice in a worthy social cause, and not a pawn in a game that they don't even know how to play.

[hnbad]

The question isn't whether a company genuinely supports trans people or just does it for the money. The question is whether they support trans people or oppose them. They're a company. They're driven by profitability and ROI first.

It doesn't matter that they're not sincere. It doesn't matter that they're not authentic. It matters that they help normalize pro-trans messaging, rather than normalizing anti-trans messaging, or doing nothing. Yes, it'd be nice to live in a world where you get to choose between the company that sincerely supports trans people and the company that merely does so for optics but still fires those sincerely opposing them, but that's not the one we live in.

To be honest, I think most of the trans community would be perfectly happy to have companies simply not actively funnel money into politicians who want them to stop existing. Alas.

[simondotau]

There’s a lot I could take issue with about what you’ve said, not least of which being the absolutist “with us or against us” mentality which toxifies US politics. If you want to have a single issue dictate every one of the hundreds of choices you make every day, have at it, but I’m not going to pick a web browser based on which one pays the most lip service to one particular social issue.

But really, I just can’t get past the idea of “it doesn’t matter if they’re not sincere” when in the same paragraph you spell out exactly why that’s an absurd thing to say.

[dogleash]

> The question is whether they support trans people or oppose them

But they're neither. They’re indifferent with some opportunist exploitation sprinkled on top.

[simondotau]

And indifferent is the right attitude. It is wrong for corporations to be treated as a channel of political power. This is a point we should be consistent on, we shouldn’t make an exception for when it seems convenient to us… because we certainly don’t like it when it’s used against us.