Cultural Fiefdoms, Capital, and Corporate Pride

A Disney fan site mixed promoting transgender cupcakes with a view of the multinational corporation as a white knight for LGBTQ+ rights. What can we make of capitalism’s increasingly prominent place in the culture wars?

by Evan Urquhart

A fan site dedicated to Walt Disney World sure did create some content today, content chock-full of equal parts transgender cupcakes and defiance towards Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws. The site, Inside the Magic, isn’t owned directly by the Disney corporation but it really, really reads as if it does. One paragraph of a post by writer Adam James for the site attracted our attention, seeming a near-perfect distillation of the incongruous mix of politics and brand management that has been woven through so many of the top stories relating to trans issues and the larger movement for LGBTQ+ rights in the lead up to Pride month this June.

Here’s the paragraph, in all its cake:

screenshot from Inside the Magic

A description of the oppressive laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community in Florida mentioned largely in the context of their impact on the atmosphere at Disney World? Food and merchandise touted alongside the concept that the multinational corporate entity is fighting for LGBTQ+ rights? Is this for real? What on Earth is going on?

While this is a particularly stark example, this weird stew made up of brands and Pride and human rights feels omnipresent in news coverage of trans and LGBTQ+ issues right now. Coverage of right-wing extremist violence has centered the corporate messaging of both Bud Light and Target, rather than the risk such violence poses to employees, customers, or the LGBTQ+ community ourselves. Whether one brand or the next is standing up or backing down in the face of extremism and threats has featured prominently in private discussions and social media debates alike. The stock price of Bud Light is widely portrayed in right wing and even mainstream media as a meaningful referrendum on whether trans people deserve human rights.

Disney’s brand strategy in this corporate proxy culture warring has been to represent itself as standing firm for LGBTQ+ rights, which is nice enough if we accept the terms that corporations get to choose sides and do battle on our community’s behalf. But if we don’t accept those terms, then everything about Disney’s battle with Florida Governor and failed presidential-run-announcer Ron DeSantis is weird and concerning, both the attempt by DeSantis to punish a corporation for issuing statements in defense of LGBTQ+ rights and the disturbing and dishonest history of Disney’s legal hegemony over part of Florida that is the focal point of the dispute.

Disney isn’t good. They definitely should never have been granted the power to govern territory, which is the legal side of their battle with the Gov. The LGBTQ+ community should not put ourselves in the position of backing a feudalistic arrangement between Disney and Florida that grants them all the powers of a town, with none of the democracy, even if they made statements in our defense.

DeSantis isn’t good. He definitely shouldn’t be granted the power to negate the US constitution and subject Florida to theocratic rule, and he probably shouldn’t arbitrarily use the law to go after companies for making pro-LGBTQ+ press releases either. But one of these is a much bigger deal, and it is not clear to me that the American journalistic establishment knows which one that is. As I write this adult trans people in Florida are having their medical care withdrawn under cruel policies designed to suppress the rights trans adults to access transition and force detransition on as many people as they can. The Washington Post reported that book bans, including the one backed by DeSantis’ in Florida, have empowered just 11 fascists to dictate what countless school children across the country can and cannot read, with content featuring LGBTQ+ people being the most restricted of all.

The rights of the LGBTQ+ community being treated as if they were a sub-project and brand-enhancement venture of a multinational corporation isn’t good at all. We should not accede to this. To do so implies placing our basic freedoms in the hands of Mickey Mouse.