2️⃣059: We F*cking Dudes Out Here 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Hold up— that feels like how I should end the email, not how I should start it. Sorry about that, I missed a week, and now I'm completely off. Let's do this again:

Casually addresses the email never sent last week (2️⃣058: No Fun Whatsoever 😣) only to never speak on it again. Thank you to the two people who texted asking if an email had been sent. Everyone else: maybe care about me a bit more. Shit, idk. Tell your grandparents to subscribe and read. Well, perhaps not this. Actually, this one, it's one of the most important ones. Tell your grandparents and your low-key-homophobic Millennial friends to read this one.

Okay, let's start the show:

One of the things that I've never really been too sure about when it comes to Pride is all the corporate brands changing their logo to rainbow colors. It always felt empty, even to a straight white man like me. So you slapped the rainbow colors across the three oddly shaped squares you paid some designers $100k to create? Congrats, you've solved homophobia ❤️‍🩹

Back to the logos.

For as long as brands have been rainbow-washing their logos to show "solidarity" for the community, they haven't done much else. But times are changing.

And by that, I mean the logos are getting better 🎨

Check out a few of my favorite logos this year (2022):

Paramount killed it:

Mercedes didn't' sacrifice luxury to get a bit more colorful:

Microsoft started an initiative to provide more insight into the people who create their products and the lives they lead, and it's called Unlocked. They launched it this year, with the first edition being the Pride edition. The designs are fucking sick:

They have merch, designs for different software and products, events, pride activations in games, metaverse pride, and talks, all led by Microsoft employees who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. And that's awesome, something for the people by the people it was made for.

Not some random straight dude in a corner office deciding they need to "appeal to younger audiences." Between the initiatives, the designs, their overall mindset/approach to this, and their generous donations to non-profits, Microsoft is putting their money where their product is 🌈

Props to them.

And initiatives like these can make you feel like we've made some real progress (because we have). But I'm here to tell you that a lot of people still haven't jumped on the bus. And it's not because they're homophobic or anti-anything. They just weren't taught any better.

Do you think ideals and societal ways of thinking change overnight?

Dude, we still have people who went to school when there was segregation, and we still have people whose grandparents were probably at rallies in favor of segregation. Those things aren't going away just because we stopped talking about them or because you brought your non-binary friend to meet your grandparents, and PeePaw didn't suffer a heart attack.

I know we can't always change generations of people (sometimes we have to let them die, so hurry and die so we can move on and teach the kids to be better).

I believe one of the most important ways we change ourselves is by changing the language we use. Because language shapes the way we think and act, language is a reflection of our views, and it's a reflection of how we see other people and groups of people—especially marginalized communities.

Some people might think this is an exaggeration on my part, and that's because language has never been used as a weapon against them.

Case in point: Villano Antillano

Last week, Puerto Rican reggeatón artist Villano Antillano dropped one of the hottest songs I've heard recently. Straight bars. Take a second to listen to it before you go on:

Live look at my AirPods after listening to it the first time:

This girl can rap!

Maybe some of you already knew that. I've seen her mentioned on social media, but I never actually listened to her music (presses play on BROCKHAMPTON or BAD BUNNY for the 232345234th time this week).

And this song, made by a well-known producer, Bizarrap, has started to catapult her into the limelight for many people who didn't know she existed.

And that's a beautiful thing. She deserves it.

But it also highlights the long mountain we must still climb to reach universal acceptance.

I was talking to someone over the weekend, who was also very impressed with the song, and they said:

"I didn't even know he was a transvestite. Like, it doesn’t matter that he’s a transvestite. He's a really good artist. I can't wait to listen to his shit in the club. This is a party song!"

I hope you noticed the many things wrong there. Villano Antillano is a transgender artist, born a man, but she now identifies as a woman (I think some sites describe her as a "non-binary artist" but still use "she," and she uses "she" across her lyrics, so I'm going to refer to her as "she" and if anyone knows whether she wants to be a "they" or what just let me know and I'll adjust).

See?

It's that easy. If someone says they would rather be known as "she" or "he" or "they," just fucking call them that. You can call your friend Kyle "Iceman" because one time in 8th grade he made a buzzer-beater during the school lunch basketball tournament. And even though he was cut from the school's basketball team every year after that, you still remember him for that one shining moment. Then fucking call a person by whatever name and gender they've chosen to identify.

SIDE NOTE: Fellas, if you’re older than 25, stop bringing up high school sports. I promise you no one cares who wasn't there, and also, you're letting everyone know you peaked in high school. 

Using someone’s preferred pronouns is an easy way to show them a basic level of decency and respect. Just take a look at Billions, the popular Showtime series. One of the main characters identifies as non-binary, and the other characters have no issue referring to them as "they" in regular conversation. But when that character turns to an enemy, it's quickly "she" instead of "they." So don't act like it's impossible, don't act like it doesn't matter, and don't act like you don't know exactly what you're doing.

Moving on, can you drop the word transvestite already? Seriously, Bill Maher and Dave Chappelle called. They want their weak-ass jokes back.

SIDE NOTE: I've decided that 'You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain' is my top quote of the decade. Dave Chappelle walked away from the hottest TV show in the country and left (hundreds of) millions of dollars on the table because he didn't like that his jokes were being laughed at for the wrong reasons by a group of people he didn't feel should be laughing at them that way [white people laughing about black stuff]. He was immortalized and revered, only to come back and attack another group of marginalized people and transform into the very thing he wanted to stop others from becoming in the first place. It truly is a slippery slope. But in the opposite direction of what that one friend of yours who always annoyingly takes over the group chat means.

I don't even know what else to say. Stop using the word "transvestite."

Stop saying "that's weird" when you want to call something gay but you don't want to say "that's gay" because you're scared of saying "that's gay" because you claim the #WokePolice will get you but really, you realize it's wrong. No one's censoring your mouth. Say some dumb, ignorant, disrespectful shit and live with the consequences.

Times change. People change. We live, learn, and evolve.

And part of that is coming to terms with the fact that things we were taught "aren't wrong" before were actually pretty fucking wrong, and we didn't know better. Now we know better.

So do better.

It starts with respecting someone's pronoun choice. It starts with respecting someone's name choice (don't fucking dead name them). It starts with accepting that just because things are "different" from what we consider "normal" doesn't mean they are wrong.

Because, thankfully, things change. And maybe what we learned was actually pretty fucked up and we should recognize that.

And if you got a bit worked up about all of this (which I really don't foresee because I think everyone knows what they can expect from me)….pues, I guess:

PS

And we still have a long way to go…