Pinkwashing. This compound word finds its roots in “whitewash.” The adjective “pink” is associated with the pink triangle and the rainbow flag, while the verb “washing” signifies the cover-up of unpleasant or revolting facts about an organisation, brand, or settler-state, sweeping inconvenient truths under the pride flag rug, rainbow lanyards, and carabiners in the hope that they will be forgotten by the queer community.
Pinkwashing is when major corporations “wash” their building surfaces with the kiss marks of “pink” lipstick and lip gloss, glossing over their unfair labour practices and employment discrimination against lesbians, gays, and queers in flannels or denim jackets. Pinkwashing is when colonial settler-states “wash” their stolen land with the hot “pink” of rainbow crossings on Davie Street or Oxford Street, covering up their record of criminal behaviour and transgender genocide against Two-Spirit, Sistergirl, and Brotherboy communities in occupied Coast Salish territories or sovereign Gadigal country.
QUEERS, QUEERS, QUEERS, FOR GAZA, GLOBALISE THE INTIFADA: Origin
Pinkwashing. The term originated in 2010 with Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), a queer collective on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land in what’s now called San Francisco Bay Area. It was popularised by Palestinian-American journalist and editor of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, who in 2013 gave a lecture titled “Pinkwash, Greenwash, Hogwash: How Israel uses sex and marketing to distract from apartheid.”
Pinkwashing is when the Zionist regime whitewashes its racially segregated road network in the West Bank, blockade of the Gaza Strip, ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, and Al-Aqsa killings in the Old City with a rainbow flag with the cynical words, “In The Name of Love.” Pinkwashing is when the Zionist entity whitewashes the 1948 Lydda Death March, the 1953 Qibya massacre, the 1967 Ras Sedr massacre, the 1976 Tel al-Zaatar massacre, the 1982 Sabra and Shatila genocide, the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, and the 2006 Qana airstrike with the pride flags of WorldPride Jerusalem 2006, and the contemptuous words, “Love Without Border.”
SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT CLEAR, REFUGEES ARE WELCOME HERE: Qantas
A corporate sponsor, Qantas is welcomed by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras to our pride festival.
In 2017, Qantas displayed its Mardi Gras sponsorship on one of its airliners, painting it in rainbow colours. At the same time, as it was “washing” an aircraft with “pink” stripes, Qantas was and still is deporting asylum seekers on the same aircrafts. Paul Keating’s Labor government may have sold off the national airline in 1992, but Qantas is still the state airline because the Australian government uses its pilots, crew, and airline personnel to do its dirty labour.
Revoltingly, this dirty work supports 76 years of Tamil oppression in Sri Lanka. Allied to Sri Lanka’s state security forces, the Australian government gave drones to Sri Lankan military personnel to perpetuate the Tamil genocide. These aerial surveillance drones were previously used for Operation Sovereign Borders, in which Australia pushes migrant vessels back to Indonesia or tortures refugees in offshore detention centres. Currently, they are used to help prevent Eelam Tamils from fleeing Sri Lanka.
Shamefully, Qantas helps prevent Eelam Tamils from fleeing Sri Lanka, too, collaborating with the Australian government to deport Tamil families from safety, despite their risks of torture. Australia is a regime of anti-refugee torture that helps Sri Lankan forces perpetrate the Tamil genocide, sponsored by Qantas.
Former CEO of Qantas Alan Joyce may be personally gay with sex workers on Grindr, but he is not politically queer because his airline advocates the oppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The flag carrier of Australia may carry the rainbow flag, but it also carries the Australian flag because Qantas supports genocide from Gadigal land and Naarm to Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka.
BOTTOMS AND TOPS, WE ALL HATE COPS: NSW Police Force
To police the Sydney Mardi Gras, the NSW Police forces themselves into our proud protest.
In February, the NSW Police was permitted to march in plainclothes in Mardi Gras, removing their uniform from the parade. At the same time, as they were “washing” the thin blue line with “rainbow” flags, NSW Police officers were and still are committed to brutalising Indigenous communities and perpetuating Aboriginal deaths in custody. The NSW Police is a colonial army because the Australian government uses its firearms, vehicles, and horses to commit the genocide of Indigenous peoples.
An example of this settler genocide is the murder of Aboriginal trans woman Veronica Baxter. In 2009, the NSW Police abducted Veronica from her home in Redfern, detained her in an all-male maximum security prison, denied her contact with family and access to health care, and let her die. Three days after they had policed our pride, Veronica was forcibly disappeared by the NSW Police, and murdered five days after the pig cops had used sniffer dogs to perpetrate the War on Drugs in Mardi Gras, arresting comparable numbers to the first protest in 1978.
The first pride was a revolt, an intifada in which 78ers rose up, rebelling against police violence and enforcement of anti-homosexuality laws. Continuing police attacks on gays, women and Black people, the NSW Police still bands together with the Australian government to torture and kill Indigenous peoples by incarceration, many years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Partners in crime with the illegitimate occupation, the NSW Police may have a gay officer with a gun aimed at Sydney couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, but all cops are queerphobic killers because no bastard will wash their service weapon of the blood of LGBTQ+ and Indigenous communities.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FUCK THE ALP: Australian Labor Party
Party crashing our celebration of queer history, the Australian Labor Party invites itself to Mardi Gras.
The “good cops” to their “bad cops” such as Labor MP Greg Donnelly, Labor marched in plainclothes in Mardi Gras like their police, stupid white bastard Chris Minns opting to wear jeans and a shirt over hot pink shorts. At the same time as they were draining Palestinians of blood, and “washing” their red shirts with “Rainbow” Labor, the Labor Party applied nail polish on one hand and got the other hand dirty delaying the Equality Bill.
It may name itself the Labor Party, but it wages class war against workers because it denies the equality of sex workers and trans people. An injury to one is an injury to all, and Labor hurts the working class because it harms sex workers whose labour is not protected from discrimination in areas of social life such as housing and banking under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977. The Labor Party harms trans workers, too, who are forced by law to pay surgery costs out of their own pockets to amend their identity documents, which condemns them to queerphobic prejudice in employment and education.
The Australian Labor Party may have a gay Foreign Minister in a department of homophobic affairs, “Australia’s Worst Lesbian” who voted against same-sex marriage and is killing lesbians in Gaza, but it is a hate crime perpetrator because Labor perpetuates transphobic violence against workers with red umbrellas and transgender flags.
Pink Washing, White Supremacy
Pinkwashing is when the NSW Police GLLOs (Gay and Lesbian or LGBTQ+ Liaison Officers) police our proud protest, having murdered Indigenous women in custody and violently brutalised 78ers in the Darlinghurst Police Station, what’s now called Qtopia. Pinkwashing is when Qantas washes its aircraft in rainbow paint, having forcibly deported asylum seekers back to torture. Pinkwashing is when the Australian Labor Party dampens the fun of our queer celebrations, having held our equal rights hostage and refused to pass our Equality Bill in full.
Pinkwashing. The adjective “pink” ought to be associated with the pink mist from Zionist snipers shooting Palestinians in the 2018–2019 Great March of Return, while the verb “washing” signifies the ethnic cleansing campaigned for by White Australia, which attempts to create a White ethnostate devoid of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Eelam Tamil refugees, and Asian migrant sex workers. Pinkwashing is a homosexual white nationalism, when we are assimilated into the racial capitalism of corporations, and integrated with the imperialism of the settler-state. It is people of colour-exclusionary gay radicalism, when we take in the colonisers to appropriate our rainbow flag, and the Nazis to re-reclaim our pink triangle.
