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Pinkwashing, also known as rainbow-washing, [1] is the strategy of deploying messages that are superficially sympathetic towards the LGBTQ community for ends having little or nothing to do with LGBTQ equality or inclusion, [2] including LGBT marketing. [3]
In April 2010, Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT) in the Bay Area, used the phrase pinkwashing as a twist on greenwashing , a practice where companies claim to be eco-friendly in order to make profit. Dunya Alwan was at a talk with Ali Abunimah, editor of Electronic Intifada in 2010, when he said "We won't put up with Israel whitewashing or greenwashing" and she thought "or pinkwashing!" [4]
In 2011, Sarah Schulman used the term pinkwashing in a widely read The New York Times editorial arguing that Israel used the tactic in its public relations. Schulman saw pinkwashing as a manifestation of homonationalism, [5] [6] the processes by which some powers selectively agree with the claims of sexual minorities and exploit them to justify racism, xenophobia (rejection of foreign people), and aporophobia (rejection of the poor); [7] [8] [9] in short, the intersection between gay identities and nationalist ideology. [10] Homonationalism shaped the concept of pinkwashing and the two terms are often used together as tools to explain the actions of countries. Jasbir Puar writes in a later article, Rethinking Homonationalism, that the two terms are not parallel but rather pinkwashing is able to exist because homonationalism exists. [11]
By 2020, "pinkwashing" had become a popular term used by anti-occupation groups to describe the Israeli authorities' attitude towards LGBTQ Palestinians. That same year, Al-Qaws published "Beyond Propaganda: Pinkwashing as Colonial Violence," a paper detailing how the Israeli state and its supporters use the language of gay and trans rights to divert international attention away from the oppression of Palestinians. [12]
In 2012, Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was accused of pinkwashing, after an email titled "LGBT Refugees from Iran" was sent to thousands of Canadians. The message contained additional recent comments by John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs, about Canada's stand against the persecution and marginalization of gays and lesbian women around the world. A group of activists claimed that it "is a poor attempt at 'pinkwashing' the Conservative government's obvious desire to encourage war with Iran". [13]
A coalition organized by several popular grassroots movements in Europe, including the English Defence League (EDL), mounted counter-jihad demonstrations in conjunction with LGBT Pride Week celebrations in Helsinki and Stockholm in July and August 2012. [14] [15] However, these movements inspired a counter demonstration by an LGBT rights group called "Queers against Pinkwashing", which claimed that the counter-jihad march against Muslims was a clear example of pinkwashing and projected a fake support image for sexual minorities. [15] In an interview for Radio Sweden, Lisa Bjurwald, a Swedish journalist and expert on European right-wing ideology, criticized the EDL for allying with the wrong people, as "Queers against Pinkwashing" are in fact against singling out Islam as if it were the source of all the relevant problems because such attempts do not benefit the LGBTQ community. [15]
The Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang and Filip Dewinter shifted their stance on gay issues in the 2010s and began using pro-gay rhetoric to criticize Muslims and immigrants. According to Eric Louis Russell, Dewinter exploits homophobic violence in a similar way that pornography commodifies women's bodies; he argues "that this type of commodification of potential or real violence directed toward members of a society for political ends is a real, albeit subjacent and deeply insidious form of homophobia". [16]
Marine Le Pen, president of the French far-right political party National Front, was gaining support from LGBT communities in the presidential election, despite the fact that Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father and the founder of the party, once condemned homosexuality as "a biological and social anomaly". [17] After the Orlando nightclub shooting, Marine Le Pen declared "how much homosexuality is attacked in countries that live under the Islamist jackboot". [17] Facing these threats and receiving "sympathy" from Le Pen, some LGBT voters started to advocate for the far-right party, with one supporter stating that "they'll be the first victims of these barbarians, and only Marine is proposing radical solutions". [17]
According to Professor of Gender and Women's Studies Eithne Luibhéid, Ireland used its 2015 same-sex marriage referendum "to pinkwash its migration regimes, thereby naturalizing harsh policies that reproduce gendered, sexual, racial, economic, and geopolitical inequalities". [18]
The Israeli government's marketing strategy includes "Israel Beyond the Conflict", an attempt to promote aspects of Israeli life outside the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. According to Israeli gay rights activist Hagai El-Ad, "In no other arena has that been used in a more cynical way than in the context of LGBT rights." [19] According to Palestinian anthropologist Sa'ed Atshan,
[Israeli] pinkwashing relies on a logic based on four pillars:
- naming queer Israeli agency and eliding Israeli homophobia;
- naming Palestinian homophobia and eliding queer Palestinian agency;
- juxtaposing these contrasting queer experiences in Israeli and Palestinian societies as a civilizational discourse aimed at highlighting the superior humanity of the former and the subhumanity of the latter, who deserve to be dominated; and
- representing Israel as a gay haven for Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals in order to attract tourism and other forms of solidarity and support. [20]
Opponents of the term pinkwashing in relation to Israel argue that Israeli society has seen meaningful progress on LGBT rights that are better than those in neighbouring countries. [21] Others highlight the phenomenon of some gay Palestinians who live illegally in Israel; [22] Israel has historically been against granting asylum to such individuals, [23] but has changed this in recent years, with legal protections being established for LGBT+ Palestinians fleeing violence. [24] [25] Pro-Israel writers also argue that the term is not always applied to other countries that use similar strategies. [26] Ido Aharoni, former head of the Brand Israel project, responded to such criticism, saying: "We are not trying to hide the conflict, but broaden the conversation." [27] Yair Qedar, a gay Israeli filmmaker and civil rights activist, has said that Israel has a praiseworthy LGBT+ rights record, and that failing to defend it "ultimately serves homophobia far more than dialogue and peace". He criticized Israeli LGBT+ groups for failing to oppose pinkwashing charges. [27] Shaul Ganon of the Israeli-based LGBT+ rights group Aguda, assessed the dispute this way: "Each side is trying to gain some points. The truth is the only one who gets screwed by this is the Palestinian gays." [28] According to Atshan, "the critiques leveled against [anti-pinkwashing activists] are often not well founded or ethically deployed. It is particularly disconcerting when supporters of Israel instead cast Israeli state sources of victimization as saviors of queer Palestinians." [29] He also argues that anti-pinkwashing can go too far when activists prioritize the struggle against Israeli occupation and only bring up LGBT issues in order to criticize Israel. [30]
After the 2011 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, an Israeli actor created a hoax video in which he pretended to have been turned away from the flotilla because he was gay. The video was promoted by the Israeli prime minister's office. [31]
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, has written that the Israeli government "insist[s] on advertising and exaggerating its recent record on LGBT rights ... to fend off international condemnation of its violations of the rights of the Palestinian people". [27] Culture studies academic Nada Elia calls pinkwashing "the twenty-first century manifestation of the Zionist colonialist narrative of bringing civilisation to an otherwise backwards land". [32]
During the Israel–Hamas war, queer Palestinians argued that Pride and the Pride flag had been co-opted by pro-Israeli group to justify and celebrate much of the resulting Gaza humanitarian crisis. [33] Many queer pro-Palestinian activists advocated against the war, disrupting some Pride parades during 2024. [34]
Pinkwashing in the United States, according to author Stephan Dahl from the University of Hull, is centered around pride merchandise created and sold by companies that do nothing for queer people. [35] This encourages a "big business-small community" relationship and seems beneficial when in reality there is nothing changing legally for queer people through this practice. [35]
A campaign to develop public support for the Keystone Pipeline, which would transport Canadian oil through the United States, has been accused of pinkwashing for its argument that the project deserves support based on a comparison of Canada's record on LGBT rights compared to that of other oil-producing nations. [36]
In Australia, concern has been raised about the commodification of gay rights by major corporations. [37]
LGBTQ Nation states that "many brands that engage in pinkwashing are guilty of using the LGBTQ community to boost their PR and incur capital from 'pink money', all while maintaining unjust labor practices, discriminatory hiring processes, and supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations". [38]
In June 2016, Organisation Intersex International Australia pointed to contradictory statements by Australian governments, suggesting that the dignity and rights of LGBT and intersex people are recognized while, at the same time, harmful practices on intersex children continue. [39]
In August 2016, Zwischengeschlecht described actions to promote equality or civil status legislation without action on banning "intersex genital mutilations" as a form of pinkwashing. [40] The organization has previously highlighted evasive government statements to UN Treaty Bodies that conflate intersex, transgender and LGBT issues, instead of addressing harmful practices on infants. [41]
Anti-pinkwashing or pinkwatching is the opposition to pinkwashing. Lynn Darwich and Hannen Maikay, in their article "The Road from Antipinkwashing Activism to the Decolonization of Palestine", allege that accusations of pinkwashing against Israel have led to an intersection of queer rights movements and Palestinian rights movements in Palestine and other countries, despite ongoing discrimination and abuse of LGBT individuals within Palestinian controlled territories. This is a strategy that has allowed the two activist groups to fight for one cause; however, it also places limits on both movements. Darwich and Maikay suggest that the anti-pinkwashing movement has to consider not only pinkwashing but also homonationalism, colonialism, and imperialism. [42] The Palestinian queer movement rejects pinkwashing. [43] [44]
According to Cyril Ghosh, the argument against pinkwashing portraying Western countries as bastions of LGBT freedom while demonizing countries that lack LGBT rights protection has merit, but can fall into "Radical Theory Creep" when multiple strands of critique are combined in a way that lacks analytic rigor. [45]
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against LGBT people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to reclaim the word as a neutral or positive self-description.
Black Laundry is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) organization that uses direct action to oppose Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and advocate for social justice. The group made its first public appearance in 2001 after the second Intifada, where 250 members marched in the Tel Aviv Pride Day parade with the message 'No Pride in Occupation.'
Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) is a gay San Francisco Bay Area political action group supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel; and opposing Pinkwashing of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. It was founded in early 2001 by a member of LAGAI-Queer Insurrection.
The Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1997 that runs an LGBTQ community center offering educational and social events and a health center that provides physical and mental care. Since 2002, JOH has also organized an annual Jerusalem Pride march.
Homosexuality in the Palestinian territories is considered a taboo subject; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) people experience persecution and violence. There is a significant legal divide between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the former having more progressive laws and the latter having more conservative laws. Shortly after the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank in 1950, same-sex acts were decriminalized across the territory with the adoption of the Jordanian Penal Code of 1951. In the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and under Hamas' rule, however, no such initiative was implemented.
Jasbir K. Puar is an American professor at Rutgers University. Her most recent book is The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017). Puar is the author of award-winning Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007). She has written on South Asian diasporic cultural production in the United States, United Kingdom and Trinidad, LGBT tourism, terrorism studies, surveillance studies, biopolitics and necropolitics, disability and debilitation, theories of intersectionality, affect, and assemblage; animal studies and posthumanism, homonationalism, pinkwashing, and the Palestinian territories.
Darnell L. Moore is an American writer and activist whose work is informed by anti-racist, feminist, queer of color, and anti-colonial thought and advocacy. Darnell's essays, social commentary, poetry, and interviews have appeared in various national and international media venues, including the Feminist Wire, Ebony magazine, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, and The Advocate.
LGBT migration is the movement of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people around the world or within one country. LGBT individuals choose to migrate so as to escape discrimination, bad treatment and negative attitudes due to their sexuality, including homophobia and transphobia. These people are inclined to be marginalized and face socio-economic challenges in their home countries. Globally and domestically, many LGBT people attempt to leave discriminatory regions in search of more tolerant ones.
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBTQ topics:
Rainbow capitalism is the involvement of capitalism, corporate capitalism, and consumerism in appropriating and profiting from the LGBT movement. It developed in the 20th and 21st centuries as the LGBT community became more accepted in society and developed sufficient purchasing power, known as pink money. Early rainbow capitalism was limited to gay bars and gay bathhouses, though it expanded to most industries by the early-21st century.
Homonationalism is the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and LGBT people or their rights.
Necropolitics is a sociopolitical theory of the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die. The deployment of necropolitics creates what Achille Mbembe calls deathworlds, or "new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to living conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead." Mbembe, author of On the Postcolony, was the first scholar to explore the term in depth in his 2003 article, and later, his 2019 book of the same name. Mbembe identifies racism as a prime driver of necropolitics, stating that racialized people's lives are systemically cheapened and habituated to loss.
A Wider Bridge is a United States–based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which mobilizes the LGBTQ community to fight antisemitism and support Israel and its LGBTQ community. AWB connects the LGBT communities in the U.S. and Israel and advocating for LGBT rights in Israel. The organization has activists across North America and around the world. It sponsors a campaign Queers Against Antisemitism which is described as "a movement of queer activists who pledge to fight antisemitism as it spreads around the globe."
Al Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, often referred to as alQaws, is a Palestinian civil society organization founded in grassroots activism, aiming to be at the forefront of Palestinian cultural and social change. The organization works to build LGBTQ+ communities and promote new ideas about the role of gender and sexual diversity in political activism, civil society institutions, media, and everyday life. The organization also describes itself as "queer-feminist" and "anti-colonial" in regards to the Israeli-occupied territories.
Scholarship on nationalism and gender explores the processes by which gender affects and is impacted by the development of nationalism. Sometimes referred to as "gendered nationalism," gender and nationalism describes the phenomena whereby conceptions of the state or nation, including notions of citizenship, sovereignty, or national identity contribute to or arise in relation to gender roles.
Liberal homophobia is the acceptance of homosexuality as long as it remains hidden. It is a type of homophobia in which, despite acceptance of sexual diversity, prejudices and stereotypes that marginalize or underestimate LGBTQ people are perpetuated.
Aswat - Palestinian Feminist Center for Gender and Sexual Freedoms, also known as Aswat, is an Israel-based feminist organization that advocates for lesbians and other LGBT women in the Palestinian community. The group started as an online platform in 2000, started having the regular meetings in 2001 and was joined Kayan-Feminist Organization in 2003 as an independent project, making it the first Palestinian organization for Queers and lesbians (LBTIQ). It was initially membership-based, but has since transitioned to a movement-based structure. It is based in Haifa, Israel.
Ghadir Shafie is a Palestinian activist and feminist. She is the co-director of Aswat, an organization of queer Palestinian women, which she joined in 2008.
