The Shades of Allyship: A Critique of Corporate Pink and Greenwashing

By Camilla H. Kapustina and Samantha Marinelli 

We are more than halfway through Pride month, a month that has been filled with joy, warmth, community, and allyship. The celebration of this month in the United States is an outcome of decades of tireless revolutionary and subversive activism, mutual aid, illicit love, and resistance, historically led by trans women of color and sex workers. Today, this grassroots effort is joined by a growing list of corporate sponsors, eager to contribute floats to our parades and hang multi-color flags in their windows.

Camilla H. Kapustina

For those of us in the US who crave the normalization of public queerness, and the safety and accessibility that we hope will accompany this normalization, it is tempting to be moved by the participation of these unlikely partners. Indeed, the overwhelming message of our for-profit sponsors is that they are strong allies in the battle for human rights and dignity for LGBTQ+ people around the globe. Somehow, we remain unconvinced.

The term “pinkwashing” can help us contextualize these sponsors’ behavior. The term refers to the exploitation of external-facing support for LGBTQ+ rights in order to disguise otherwise violent actions against marginalized communities. The term is largely credited to Sarah Schulman, who in 2011 wrote a New York Times article detailing the efforts of the Government of Israel to deploy an international marketing campaign branding the City of Tel Aviv as “an international gay vacation destination” as a distraction from decades of brutal violations of basic Palestinian human rights. 

Those of us in the climate space are familiar with this kind of performative allyship. Environmentalist Jay Westerveld first wrote about ‘greenwashing’ in 1986 as a critique of the hypocrisy of for-profit corporations seeking to expand their consumer markets by making out to be “caring environmental stewards,” while simultaneously increasing their engagement in “environmentally unsustainable practices.” 

Samantha Marinelli 

The two terms share a common underlying logic: that corporations, and states, need not practice a genuine commitment to queer liberation or environmental activism in order to reap the financial, regulatory, and political benefits of appearing to do so.  

Given their shared underlying logic, it is unsurprising that there are some significant overlaps between this June’s pinkwashing culprits and year-round greenwashing mainstays. 

This year, for example, Delta Airlines publicly sponsored municipal pride celebrations in Seattle, Boston, New York City, and Los Angeles and issued an ambitious climate plan. Yet, its CEO has consistently donated to a Republican party that has strengthened its efforts to enact anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country and actively countered national and subnational climate action. The company has also supported one of its subsidiaries, Monroe Energy, in its membership with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), a trade association that advocated against climate regulations and has proven so resistant to global climate action that both Shell and BP have resigned. 

Another recent pinkwashing controversy involved Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Budweiser. In early April, Anheuser-Busch, partnered with Dylan Mulvaney, a trans actress, to advertise Bud Light. For the LGBTQ+ community, this collaboration generated immense excitement. The company also saw early benefits to this partnership: the ad campaign increased stock prices to $67 a share, the highest they have been since 2021, and Anheuser-Busch was awarded a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign as a “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality.” The company has also positioned itself as an environmental leader by publicly committing to 100% renewable energy by 2025 and announcing a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy. 

However, Anheuser-Busch’s commitment to the “double bottom line” was short-lived. Following a threat of boycott from conservatives across the US, company stock prices fell to a low of around $53/share. The company rapidly backpedaled, dropping Mulvaney from their brand and putting two marketing executives on leave. In May, the Human Rights Campaign revoked the company’s  “Best Place to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality” designation and offered Anheuser-Busch an opportunity to respond. As of today, the company has failed to do so, sending a clear message that LGBTQ+ allyship can and will be dropped if not accompanied by short-term financial dividends. 

Closer to home, Fenway Park and the Boston Red Sox have been long standing supporters of Pride Night--an annual tradition dedicated to celebrating the support of LGBTQ+ fans. The franchise has even elected to fly the intersex pride flag, giving visibility to an often overlooked identity within the queer community. Most recently, the Red Sox released controversial pitcher Matt Dermody after a homophobic tweet resurfaced, demonstrating that their support does not run out come the end of June.

Armed with an understanding of the functions of pink and greenwashing, however, it is not surprising that a strong LGBTQ+ advocate could leave their consumers wanting in terms of climate ambition. While the Red Sox recently became the “first carbon neutral fan experience in baseball,” their environmental plans rely heavily on carbon credits, which are insufficient compared to substantive emissions reductions.

The apparent contradictions in these companies’ behaviors are demonstrative of the uneasy cohabitation between social and environmental stewardship with profit maximization. And these issue areas cannot be disentangled. As demonstrated in a previous student piece, LGBTQ+ people are positioned to be disproportionately harmed by the crisis. Addressing those risks requires action that is consistent with the pressing demands of a world where LGBTQ+ rights are anything but assured, and which cannot bear the burden of endless consumption, production, and waste. The corporations highlighted in this piece have shown that they are prepared to offer and retract support insofar as they generate profit. These examples are  representative of the reality that for-profit public corporations are unable to commit to issues that run counter to their shareholders’ short-term financial interests. To state it more bluntly, for-profit companies are unwilling to wholeheartedly commit to our survival. 

Camilla H. Kapustina and Samantha Marinelli both just graduated from The Fletcher School with a MALD degree.