The issue of corporate co-optation of social justice movements
Jasmine Chow, Associate Editor
Photo source: Harold Feng/Getty Images
IT IS difficult to forget the importance of the month of June in Toronto. For LGBTQ+ Torontonians and their allies, June marks Pride Month—a time of celebration for queer liberation and recognition. Every June, thousands of Torontonians flock to the streets to march and celebrate Toronto Pride.
However, for many corporations, the month of June marks a time of performative activism and a co-optation of social justice movements to increase profits. Companies with branches in Toronto’s gay village put up pride flags and rainbow stickers in their windows. Some make appearances at Toronto Pride for social media purposes, marching alongside rainbow-recoloured versions of their logos. But at the end of June, it seems that this vocal support for the queer community becomes silent. Corporate “allyship” ceases to exist, if it had ever even existed at all.
This is the issue of corporate pinkwashing: the strategy of releasing marketing materials that only superficially support queer communities. Rather than supporting marginalized communities at a grassroots level, corporations prefer to simply keep up the appearance of allyship to market themselves to queer and allied youth. Beyond this performative activism, on the stage of social justice, corporations are often all talk and no action. This demonstrates a clear case of appropriation and co-optation of social justice movements in the name of capitalism and consumerism.
Corporations at Toronto Pride
Although pinkwashing has always been a problem, recent political and world events have sent shockwaves through Canada.
Despite Google being a prominent sponsor of Pride Toronto in previous years, Google unexpectedly declined to renew their sponsorship in 2025. This comes hot on the heels of controversy amidst Google eliminating DEI hiring procedures and removing Pride, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and other key cultural events from Google Calendar, in a move widely attributed to US President Donald Trump’s order to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs for American companies.
“This is a wake-up call for us,” said Kojo Modeste, executive director for Pride Toronto, in a quote to the Toronto Star. “The individuals that we thought were supporters of the work that we’re doing clearly are influenced by external affairs, like politicians, etc.”
“Every dollar that we lose is having a significant impact on the festival… this is taking money away from [the] community,” Modeste said.
Home Depot also withdrew their support for the Pride Toronto this year, leaving organizers scrambling to find alternate suppliers for necessities such as garbage bags, bins, zip ties, and wood. Nissan, Adidas, and Clorox were also reported to have pulled their funding for the event.
Companies pulling their funding for Pride Toronto and similar attempts to celebrate inclusion and diversity highlight how fickle corporate allyship really is. Google marching alongside queer Torontonians lasted only as long as it benefited them. Adidas’ 2025 Pride Month collection exists more so to profit off of LGBTQ+ consumers than it is to support local queer communities.
Toronto Metropolitan University associate professor Alison Kemper criticized the actions of such corporations in a piece for TorontoMet Today. “It’s clear that there’s no reason to anthropomorphize corporations and attribute queer-positive attitudes to them,” said Kemper. “Corporate participation in Pride events is the result of a calculation. And when the variables in that calculation shift, so does their participation.”
The question remains: what degree of allyship is really possible when dependent on favorable optics and aesthetics?
A Brief History of Pinkwashing
It is impossible to discuss pinkwashing without acknowledging its roots in criticizing Israeli propaganda. Though first used to describe companies profiting off of people with breast cancer, “pinkwashing” as a term gained popularity in a Palestinian context when activists used it to describe Israeli public relations efforts, or Brand Israel. The term uses the colour pink in reference to its association with gay rights, drawing up images of Nazis labelling gay prisoners in concentration camps with pink triangles.
Brand Israel has been criticized for decades by academics over their marketing to the white gay community in attempts to rehabilitate its global image. Professor Sarah Schulman’s famous 2011 New York Times piece on Israeli pinkwashing discussed campaigns to market Israel as “an international gay vacation destination” while describing the Middle East as “a region where… gays are hanged.” Schulman went on to explain how such depictions are harmful stereotypes that ignore the existence of queer and allied Muslim and Middle Eastern peoples; further, they exploit queer communities in the West for their money while politicians in Israel remain openly homophobic.
This is an ongoing issue to this day: Pride flags are hung by Israeli soldiers where Palestinian cities used to stand, and some online sentiment in queer communities includes arguments influenced by such LGBTQ-oriented Israeli propaganda. But such arguments fail to realize that this is a trivialization of Israeli settler-colonialism in Palestine to an issue of sexuality, when the issue is really one of human rights.
Toronto’s Pinkwashing, Greenwashing, Artwashing…
Beyond pinkwashing, activists and changemakers are calling out corporations and governments for co-opting other social justice movements.
“Greenwashing” is used to describe the appropriation of the environmental justice movement for profit or gain; similarly, “artwashing” is used to describe the exploitation of art and artists in the name of capitalism and gentrification. Like pinkwashing, the terms describe a systemic issue of “washing” one’s brand in the appearance of allyship—a wash that can quickly be revealed as a simple marketing tactic, built on the backs of grassroots activists. These tactics undermine credible efforts being made to reduce global warming and support local artists.
Greenwashing has become such an issue that it has been a large focus of the United Nations Climate Action program. Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the UN reported that many companies pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. But this is largely based on carbon offsetting and insetting—which are purchasing more carbon credits and focusing on implementing more eco-friendly solutions, respectively—rather than getting to the root of the issue and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This demonstrates a corporate prioritization of putting on an environmentally-conscious appearance while failing to take any real action.
The UN has published several frameworks and recommendations to hold such greenwashing corporations accountable for their pledges and increase their productivity towards climate action. They have also called for a ban on fossil fuel advertising.
Such calls to action have not gone unheard. Locally, Toronto city council made its first steps towards banning misleading fossil fuel advertising on city property in 2024, a move made following new federal anti-greenwashing laws were passed. Other cities in Canada are taking similar action.
The rise of artwashing in Toronto has also become problematic. While supporting local artists is critical to the cultural footprint of a community, artwashing acts as a distraction from gentrification, altering public perception.
In March, the Toronto-based advocacy group Friends of Chinatown penned an open letter condemning the commission of a mural to be painted on construction hoarding at a new controversial condo development. A lack of affordable housing in the area, compounded with worries that real estate companies could price current Chinatown residents out of the area, led to this public outcry.
Artwashing may even occur within queer communities. In June, Toronto LGBTQ+ advocacy group The 519 came under scrutiny for events leading up to their annual Green Space Festival in Barbara Hall Park. Before the festival, police arrived at the park and cleared an encampment in the area and arrested four people for resisting. This highlights a harmful intersection between pinkwashing and artwashing; by working with police to displace the queer, racialized, and underserved people gathered in Barbara Hall Park, The 519 ended up hurting the same people they pledged to protect.
Activist groups argued that this was a distortion of what Pride was meant to be: a celebration of acceptance, community, and fight for queer rights, rather than corporate involvement and glamorous parties.
Corporations, Not Allies
It’s worth asking whether corporations are truly allies to social justice movements, or whether they simply adopt the appearance of allyship for convenience. Corporate support for social justice movements can certainly be helpful in spreading awareness to the public, but such support is often fickle, temporary, or contradictory to a company’s operations. Allyship can easily be transiently adopted to take advantage of the good intentions of independent allies in our communities.
The passion that drives social justice movements for queer rights, climate action, and degentrification is the same passion that makes these movements so vulnerable to co-optation by capitalism. Supporting local and grassroots organizations whose activism serves our communities directly could make longer-lasting impacts than relying on corporate allyship.
What Can I Do?
Find local partners working to fight against all sorts of corporate or governmental washing to end the exploitation of activist movements.
What is the intention behind the ads imposed upon us? Is it genuine support or misleading marketing? Does it serve to distract the public from more pressing ethical issues?
Expand your support from charities and organizations to providing and participating in mutual aid and assist grassroots organizers to protect our underserved communities.
Consider: what could equity and acceptance look like in everyday spaces, when not tied to branding and performance?
