Grassroots Boycotts Against Woke Corporations Are Working

Is all of this performative rainbow nonsense really worth it?

(This op-ed originally ran at Newsweek on May 30th.)

The sacrosanct month of Pride begins later this week. If you're a reasonable business executive sitting in a C-suite at a major American corporation, you've got to be asking yourself: is all of this performative rainbow nonsense really worth it?

First Bud Light, now Target—corporations that have tried in recent weeks to push transgender ideology on their customers have faced enormous backlash. As woke activists demand increasingly more radical genuflections, is there any way for these businesses to thread the needle?

The boycotts are starting to take a real toll. Since introducing its line of "tuck-friendly" swimsuits, Target has lost billions of dollars in market cap. Bud Light's inexplicable choice to partner with Dylan Mulvaney, the biological male whose massive social media presence is devoted to claiming "girlhood," was such a disaster for the company that it is now struggling to give beer away for free.

Target’s stock price has been in total freefall since the boycott began two weeks ago.

For years, woke corporations have been at the forefront of every new innovation in the LGBTQIA2S+ space, plastering their stores with the latest iterations of the increasingly busy pride flag. But until now, they suffered few or no consequences in the marketplace. Many of these companies even waded into the political process and threatened to economically destroy states that had passed legislation deemed too "extreme" by the alphabet mafia.

Before today, conservatives weren't able to muster much of a response. It wasn't just one company, it was all of them—or so it seemed. What were those on the Right supposed to do? Boycott everything?

But now the balance has shifted. A few high-profile controversies, and their economic consequences, have suddenly forced every major company to start rethinking their strategies. As it turns out, normal people don't like the idea of transgender ideology being pushed on their kids while they're out shopping. And they're willing to put their money where their mouths are.

Target's corporate bigwigs in Minneapolis seem taken aback. At first, the company decided it was only going to modify the transgender pride displays at a few stores in the deep South. In the minds of out-of-touch elites, the only people who could possibly oppose childhood gender mutilations would be a few retrograde Bible-thumpers. Surely, they thought, normal people would continue to support the cause. But they were wrong, and the financial pain continues for the now-struggling big box retailer.

Poll after poll shows that practically the only people in support of this gender ideology are the richest, most educated, and powerful elites. If you have an MBA from Harvard, or publish think pieces for a living, all this adolescent sex-change stuff probably seems normal. If you're a suburban mom, or a domestic light beer drinker, well, probably not so much.

Nevertheless, sympathetic media cast any resistance to the transgender agenda as an alarming new movement. "How major brands were forced into the conservative plan to target LGBTQ people," lamented one headline last week. These outlets lack self-awareness—they are literally incapable of seeing how radical they, and the rest of elite culture, have become.

Most Americans aren't fooled by the spin. They can see what's happening right in front of them: Target is shoving queer-branded products designed by Satan-curious designers in children's faces. A whole genre of gender-bending stripteases for children just started popping up out of nowhere. An entire political movement has cropped up whose main goal is, without exaggeration, to chemically castrate children. The people who oppose this aren't attacking anybody—no, they're on defense.

But while it warms the heart to see these companies' stock prices crash and burn, we shouldn't fool ourselves into imagining that the corporate commitment to grooming kids will stop any time soon. The people who run these companies are ideologues, and they care far more about the approval of their fellow zealots than they do about their bottom line. The Dodgers aren't hosting anti-Christian drag-queen pole-dancers because they think it will make them money. They're doing it because they think it will win them moral plaudits from the elites whose blessing they crave.

Normal people are fed up with this kind of thing, and it was only a matter of time before somebody emerged who could speak to them politically. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, now a presidential candidate, has begun to do this by making his ongoing fight against Disney a major part of his campaign.

Other Republican candidates should follow suit because the opportunities are endless. Our law is littered with special favors, carve-outs, and giveaways for woke corporations. All of these should be on the chopping block in any Republican administration. The justification for these sweetheart deals has been that whatever is good for these companies usually redounds to the benefit of the average American. Whether that promise has actually worked out is debatable, but the argument is certainly harder to make now that these companies are actively promoting an agenda of child mutilation.

It will be fascinating to see what ultimately comes of all of this. By now it's clear that the vast majority of Americans are sick and tired of woke corporations targeting their children, and they're eager to do something about it. GOP politicians should be willing to use the power the people have provided them to do the same.

Jon Schweppe is the policy director at American Principles Project. Follow him on Twitter @JonSchweppe.