The Patriot Post® · Support for the Gender Cult and DEI Agendas Declines
“The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families.” —John Adams (1778)
My last column in June noted that what Demos and their leftist miscreants label “pride month” ended, but the gender confusion they promote endures.
But did you notice the most recent “celebrations” of gender disorientation pathology were more subdued than those in previous years, especially all the corporate promotion?
As it turns out, they’re more teachable than we estimated.
Last year, the tide turned on some woke corporate marketing campaigns pandering to the gender confused, particularly the so-called “transgender” crowd. Retailer Target and Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light beer brand suffered substantial losses as a result of their ill-advised campaigns, and other companies have gotten the message.
Consequently, a growing list major corporations and organizations are dialing back their virtue-signal pandering. One noted marketing promoter, Matt Skallerud, whose business is helping big brands reach the LGBT demographic, said he was normally “pretty busy working on Pride projects” in June, but admits, “I have not been — and I think it’s across the board.” He adds: “Nobody in the media, marketing and advertising world wants to admit how heavy and hard this has been. Ever since Target and Bud Light had their fiascos last year, a tremendous number of brands have decided it would be much better to sit on the sidelines and let this sort itself out.”
In the wake of those high-profile marketing fiascos last year, as well as other corporate bottom-line indicators, commentator Matt Walsh outlined the strategy to undermine the corporate pandering: “The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands. If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they’ll pay a price. It won’t be worth whatever they think they’ll gain.”
And the strategy of proliferating social media slogans like “Go woke, go broke,” aimed at big brands, has gotten their attention.
Mega-brand analyst Neil Saunders offered this observation about the “pride” hole some corporations now find themselves in: “If you promote Pride, some people will be unhappy with it. If you don’t promote Pride, some people will be unhappy about that. It’s not a battle you can win completely, which is why some retailers and brands are taking a middle-of-the-road approach and keeping it moderate. They are doing some promotion, but they are restricting it to things that they think are palatable and acceptable for most people. Retailers and brands will be more cautious about how they promote issues and causes.”
You know the old maxim: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Some corporations and organizations are finally figuring that out, but extracting themselves will be difficult.
One recent case study of a company that has boldly reversed course from the woke path it had headed down is a Tennessee-based national chain, Tractor Supply Company, a $28.8 billion rural retailer with 50,000 employees. In a reversal of its ill-advised “pride” pandering, the company issued a formal statement at the end of June, disavowing that pandering.
Company communicators noted, “Going forward, we will ensure our activities and giving tie directly to our business,” and they listed a few things they will not continue to do. For example, they will “no longer submit data to the Human Rights Campaign,” a.k.a. the Homosexual Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s largest homosexual advocacy groups. Tractor Supply declared the company would instead “focus on rural America priorities … and stop sponsoring nonbusiness activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns.”
Among those taking note was Donald Trump, who responded: “This is a huge win and proof that major brands are recognizing that going woke is bad for business. Credit to Tractor Supply for changing course and doing the right thing.”
Notably, John Deere got the memo and is now aggressively distancing itself from collusion with these leftist agendas.
Of course, few brands that have gotten themselves into that LGBTQ+ ad nauseam hole are going to declare they are cutting back because of the aforementioned backlash. But there is plenty of evidence they are.
One reason for the slide in support is that the ugliness of the gender agenda facade is being exposed for what it really is — especially the Demos’ promotion of their deviant degenderization agenda.
So absurd have the politics of gender identity become that leftists are now asserting men can get pregnant.
You know, these are the same leftist Demo cadres who were preaching “follow the science” to enforce compliance with their draconian ChiCom Virus pandemic rules.
For example, the Supreme Court will hear legal challenges regarding what Demos and their Leftmedia parrots complain are bans on “gender-affirming care” for children. You know those Demos, always doing it for the children … except, of course, black children, and those whose lives are extinguished before birth.
More accurately, however, so-called “gender-affirming” care for children is code for “gender mutilation” of children, and its Demo/LGBT advocates are in deep on that one.
This comes on the heels of a ruling from a Demo U.S. district judge, Robert Hinkle, who asserted: “Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate. The ban is unconstitutional.” Just when exactly is so-called “transgender” chemical alteration and physical mutilation of children “medically appropriate”? (The question is rhetorical.)
Astoundingly, Biden approves of child mutilation. His official pride month proclamation objects to states like Florida protecting children from gender mutilation: “These bills and laws attack our most basic values and freedoms as Americans: the right to be yourself, the right to make your own medical decisions, and the right to raise your own children.”
Delusional parents making decisions to cut body parts off their minor children does not constitute an attack on “our most basic values and freedoms as Americans.” That mutilation is the real attack.
There is a lot of deep pathological imprinting, pain, and denial associated with the gender cult. Much of that gender-dysphoric pathology is related to narcissism and is most often the result of broken families — particularly failed fatherhood. Another major causal factor in gender disorientation pathology is homosexual predation on children, a prolific problem widely associated with child-grooming by homosexual adults — deranged behavior that leftists aggressively seek to normalize.
That notwithstanding, the leftist heterophobic cadres of binary gender deniers would like to celebrate their pathological degeneracy every day of the year, essentially a cover for the denial of their dysphoria. By extension, that public degeneracy grooms children for sexual exploitation, creating in the process, the next generation of gender disorientation.
Corporations know that a substantial plurality of women of all ages and Gen Y/Z consumers, who constitute a significant part of their consumer markets, tend to support the trendy Rainbow Mafia agendas, so digging out is going to be difficult.
As for the corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) nonsense?
Tractor Supply also noted in its formal statement that it would eliminate “DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals while still ensuring a respectful environment.” But that realignment goes far beyond one company.
As is the case with corporate gender cult support, it turns out that DEI is also in decline, with companies and organizations scaling back their DEI advocacy, DEI recruiting, and DEI corporate profile language.
These initiatives emerged in the last decade, spurred on in part by a spurious study by McKinsey & Company, one of the nation’s largest consulting firms. That study asserted “a link between profits and executive racial and gender diversity,” thus “proving” DEI was good for corporate bottom lines.
Of course, no corporation wants to risk being labeled “racist” for not adopting the DEI orthodoxy.
However, according to The Wall Street Journal, that bottom-line benefit has fizzled.
The Journal notes the DEI consequences in one prominent example, BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager: “McKinsey’s research figures first in BlackRock’s references for supporting a board diversity target of 30% in its proxy voting guidelines. It featured prominently among studies used by a Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner in 2020 to explain why she supported corporate disclosure of diversity metrics. Nasdaq cited it as evidence when the exchange applied to the SEC for a rule requiring companies it lists to have minimum diversity on boards, or explain why they don’t. It has been cited by dozens of campaign groups pushing for rules to support consideration of social issues by pension funds and others, too.”
But BlackRock is now suffering the consequences and is moving away from its woke investment strategies.
Other major corporations are also divesting their DEI assets. According to The Washington Post, “As DEI gets more divisive, companies are ditching their teams.” That includes Zoom, Snap, Tesla, DoorDash, Lyft, Home Depot, and Wayfair, which have cut their DEI teams by 50% or more. BIG Tech oligarchs including Meta and Google have cut there DEI programs.
Microsoft is the latest of the tech companies to cut back its DEI staff, saying in a corporate statement, “DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020,” meaning in 2020 DEI virtue signaling was deemed “business critical and smart.”
Of course, there are still many big corporate virtue-signalers, who are touting their DEI achievements, but a broad realignment of DEI affiliations is apparent.
Finally, it’s not just corporations. Some big universities are being forced to get on board, including those in the Texas University system, which have slashed their DEI staff. It is past time, given the exposure of Ivy League antisemitism pretending to be “tolerance and diversity,” that institutions of “higher education” wake up.
While these declines in corporate support for gender cult and DEI agendas are incremental in most cases, nobody would have anticipated this trend a few years ago.
It is good news for America!
Footnote: Beyond the corporate culture, there is evidence that support for gender disorientation is softening in some churches, most notably the Episcopal Church where leftist gender cult agendas have been promoted most aggressively.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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