Auckland Pride Parade and the Hypocrisy of Big Corporate

For some, Pride festivals represent fabulous reckless abandonment, celebration, quiet joy and rapturous excitement. Some feel nervously optimistic – cautious about their heightened visibility but delighted to be able to partake in cultural expressions that represent their identity. Others feel frightened, scared, fearful for their safety and infuriated by disingenuous corporate colonisation of our struggles.

And many of us feel all of this in one big whirlpool feelings. That’s me.

First, I’ve got to congratulate the organisers of Auckland Pride for listening to the community after last year’s festival and implementing changes like making sure there were a number of free and accessible events. Although I don’t agree with organisations like Corrections and NZ Police being allowed to march in the parade, I respect the planning and coordination that goes into pulling off an event like this.

Away from the official festival programme I have been thinking. A lot. What does Pride mean to me? Why does the month of February feel so exciting, and yet so traumatising? There were two special moments in these last few weeks where I felt truly alive, safe, valued and at home. I was honoured to be a panelist at Auckland Museum’s discussion series on the explicit inclusion of trans and non-binary identities. And got to see the FAFSWAG perform in a way that made my head hurt, come alive and heal.

Another special moment was watching our Prime Minister march in the Pride Parade. It wasn’t so much the fact it was Jacinda Ardern marching, heck she has been in every Pride Parade I’ve been to, but the fact that she marched AS the Prime Minister. Only two previous PM’s have attended—Shipley and Clark. When asked by TVNZ reporter Matt McClean along the parade route if we are experiencing a turning tide at the moment towards rainbow communities our PM responded: “I think we have for some time but it has always been incremental. But we can't be complacent when there are kids in New Zealand who are LGBTQI who have high levels of mental health issues and self harm. That tells us that we still have work to do”. PREACH!

I’ve also had some moments of intense frustration as the wider world interacts with our community throughout the festival.

Visibility is a strange thing. Not seeing ourselves represented generally in pop culture is tough, but getting visibility at the cost of homophobic, biphobic, transphobic and intersex violence sucks. When our major news retailers get excited about our colourful photos that generate clicks for their website over the festival, do we dare read the comment sections? Telling our stories and being seen may help someone who is struggling to become who they really are, finally seeing a sense of what is possible, as the New Zealand Herald gets passed around the family breakfast table. But it comes at a cost. Many in our community are prepared to risk this price but they are often the ones in our community with the most safety, privilege and access to support.

Festivals cost money. Sadly our pink dollars don’t grow in magical pink pot plants on our perfectly preened patios. Sponsorship, grants and a lot of hard work make festivals like Pride happen. I get that and I accept that. But seeing so many decorative rainbows in places that have been, or are, unsafe for us as a queer and gender diverse people gives me intense feelings. Cop cars, supermarkets, our military, the Department of Corrections, insurance companies and banks. Places and institutions where we don’t fit.

Let me tell you a story about one such organisation, a bank, who profited greatly from positive rainbow kudos throughout the festival, but are still to implement diversity training on the shop floor.

Earlier this month I opened a new account with one of the big banks that was in the Pride Parade. During the festival ANZ released a video featuring a a trans guy explaining how great it was that his employer—the bank—let him wear the uniform that matched his gender identity as he transitioned and that the bank is Rainbow Tick endorsed.

I arrive at the bank with the required identity documents needed to verify my identity. The bank’s software couldn’t verify the gender marker on my New Zealand passport. In Aotearoa we have three legal categories of identification on our passports: M, F or X. I’m someone with an X gender marker on my passport. The bank would only let me choose M or F. Selecting one of these two categories would be committing identity fraud. See my dilemma? On a personal level, this was humiliating and embarrassing.

Based on the bank's Rainbow Tick endorsement and social media promotions throughout February I was sure the teller would have been trained in an easy solution. Instead the response was one of shock and titillation. “Oh my God! I’ve never seen this before.. I don’t know what to do. You are my first one of those… we’ve never been told about this”. While an embarrassed teller in the booth next door exclaimed “Wow! That’s so cool! Mad respect!”

Neither of these reactions were fun or pleasant. And neither of these reactions fixed the situation.

I made a decision to go to this bank based on the explicit marketing that named themselves as a trans-friendly bank. My experience was far from this. If corporations are going to try and target our pink dollar through sponsorship, advertising and endorsements they have to step up their service provision to our communities. [An ANZ spokesperson responded to Aych via Twitter to say: "I'm truly sorry about what happened at one of our branches, this is what we need to hear so we can take those further steps forward… we need to keep educating our team around the diversity of our customers as well as their colleagues."]

Imagine if corporates who support—and benefit from—the pride festival published a manifesto each year detailing the steps they had taken to support our community in the last 12 months. That’s the kind of pride battle I would love to see, between big brands marching down Ponsonby Road.

Pride for me symbolises both places of deep love, and places where the computer literally says “NO”. We still have work to do.