I have a bit of a crisis of conscience about this stuff. On one hand, especially with the oppression the LGTBQ+ community continues to face worldwide; any and all additional awareness and acceptance we can get is obviously so important.

On the other hand, it's obviously pandering, and a lot of these companies that fly the flag during Pride month have serious issues within their companies like fair treatment of employees, or whatever-have-you.

I'm actually more grateful, I think; for mandatory sensitivity training modules in most corporate businesses these days that essentially explain flat-out that homophobia and transphobia is not tolerated, and also help people who might genuinely not fully even know about things like proper usage of pronouns for trans people, for people who identify as gender neutral, etc.

My Dad is one of those homophobic/transphobic Christian nuts who thinks it's cool to use the name of God in order to belittle us, etc - he actually disowned me for a year when he found out I was transgender.

But - he had to undergo some sensitivity training through Microsoft, where he works - and eventually told me he had to work with transgender people at a couple points.

It helped him come around and decide to treat me like a person, too. So that kind of thing clearly helps, and I think it's awesome that companies are legitimately proactive on LGTBQ+ issues - not just during Pride month. :)

link to the related meme (I think it's actually pretty HN-suited): https://shorturl.at/aioqM