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Pinkwashing, also known asrainbow-washing,[1] is the strategy of deploying messages that are superficially sympathetic towards theLGBTQ community for ends having little or nothing to do with LGBTQ equality or inclusion,[2] includingLGBTQ marketing.[3]
In April 2010,Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT) in theSan Francisco Bay Area, used the phrasepinkwashing as a twist ongreenwashing, a practice where companies claim to be eco-friendly in order to make profit. Dunya Alwan was at a talk with Ali Abunimah, editor ofElectronic Intifada in 2010, when he said "We won't put up with Israel whitewashing or greenwashing" and she thought "or pinkwashing!"[4]
In 2011,Sarah Schulman used the termpinkwashing in a widely readThe New York Times editorial arguing that Israel used the tactic in its public relations. Schulman saw pinkwashing as a manifestation ofhomonationalism,[5][6] the processes by which some powers selectively agree with the claims ofsexual minorities and exploit them to justifyracism,xenophobia (rejection of foreign people), andaporophobia (rejection of the poor);[7][8][9] in short, the intersection between gay identities and nationalist ideology.[10] Homonationalism shaped the concept of pinkwashing and the two terms are often used together as tools to explain the actions of countries.Jasbir Puar writes in a later article,Rethinking Homonationalism, that the two terms are not parallel but rather pinkwashing is able to exist because homonationalism exists.[11]
By 2020, "pinkwashing" had become a popular term used by anti-occupation groups to describe the Israeli authorities' attitude towards LGBTQ Palestinians. That same year, Al-Qaws published "Beyond Propaganda: Pinkwashing as Colonial Violence," a paper detailing how the Israeli state and its supporters use the language of gay and trans rights to divert international attention away from the oppression of Palestinians.[12]
In 2012,Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was accused of pinkwashing, after an email titled "LGBT Refugees from Iran" was sent to thousands of Canadians. The message contained additional recent comments byJohn Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs, about Canada's stand against the persecution and marginalization of gays and lesbian women around the world. A group of activists claimed that it "is a poor attempt at 'pinkwashing' the Conservative government's obvious desire to encourage war with Iran".[13]
The Flemish nationalist partyVlaams Belang andFilip Dewinter shifted their stance on gay issues in the 2010s and began using pro-gay rhetoric to criticize Muslims and immigrants. According to Eric Louis Russell, Dewinter exploits homophobic violence in a similar way that pornography commodifies women's bodies; he argues "that this type of commodification of potential or real violence directed toward members of a society for political ends is a real, albeitsubjacent and deeply insidious form of homophobia".[14]
Marine Le Pen, president of the Frenchfar-right political partyNational Front, was gaining support from LGBTQ communities in the presidential election, despite the fact thatJean-Marie Le Pen, her father and the founder of the party, once condemned homosexuality as "a biological and social anomaly".[15] After theOrlando nightclub shooting, Marine Le Pen declared "how much homosexuality is attacked in countries that live under the Islamist jackboot".[15] Facing these threats and receiving "sympathy" from Le Pen, some LGBTQ voters started to advocate for the far-right party, with one supporter stating that "they'll be the first victims of these barbarians, and only Marine is proposing radical solutions".[15]
According to Israeli gay rights activistHagai El-Ad, "In no other arena has that been used in a more cynical way than in the context of LGBT rights."[16] According to Palestinian anthropologistSa'ed Atshan, [Israeli] pinkwashing relies on a logic based on four pillars:
- naming queer Israeli agency and eliding Israeli homophobia;
- naming Palestinian homophobia and eliding queer Palestinian agency;
- juxtaposing these contrasting queer experiences in Israeli and Palestinian societies as a civilizational discourse aimed at highlighting the superior humanity of the former and the subhumanity of the latter, who deserve to be dominated; and
- representing Israel as a gay haven for Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals in order to attract tourism and other forms of solidarity and support.[17]
Opponents of the term pinkwashing in relation to Israel argue that Israeli society has seenmeaningful progress on LGBTQ rights that are better than those in neighbouring countries.[18] Others highlight the phenomenon of some gay Palestinians who live illegally in Israel;[19] Israel has historically been against granting asylum to such individuals,[20] but has changed this in recent years, with legal protections being established for LGBTQ Palestinians fleeing violence.[21][22] Pro-Israel writers also argue that the term is not always applied to other countries that use similar strategies.[23]Ido Aharoni, former head of theBrand Israel project, responded to such criticism, saying: "We are not trying to hide the conflict, but broaden the conversation."[24] Shaul Ganon of the Israeli-based LGBTQ rights groupAguda, assessed the dispute this way: "Each side is trying to gain some points. The truth is the only one who gets screwed by this is thePalestinian gays."[25] According to Atshan, "the critiques leveled against [anti-pinkwashing activists] are often not well founded or ethically deployed. It is particularly disconcerting when supporters of Israel instead cast Israeli state sources of victimization as saviors of queer Palestinians."[26] He also argues that anti-pinkwashing can go too far when activists prioritize the struggle againstIsraeli occupation and only bring up LGBTQ issues in order to criticize Israel.[27]
After the 2011Gaza Freedom Flotilla, an Israeli actor created a hoax video in which he pretended to have been turned away from the flotilla because he was gay. The video was promoted by the Israeli prime minister's office.[28]
Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history atColumbia University, has written that the Israeli government "insist[s] on advertising and exaggerating its recent record on LGBT rights ... to fend off international condemnation of its violations of the rights of the Palestinian people".[24] Culture studies academic Nada Elia calls pinkwashing "the twenty-first century manifestation of the Zionist colonialist narrative of bringing civilization to an otherwise backwards land".[29]
During theGaza war, queer Palestinians argued that Pride and the Pride flag had been co-opted by a pro-Israeli group to justify and celebrate much of the resultingGaza humanitarian crisis.[30] Manyqueer pro-Palestinian activists advocated against the war, disrupting somePride parades during 2024.[31]
Scholars such as Jasbir Puar situate pinkwashing within the broader framework of homonationalism, arguing that states selectively deploy LGBTQ+ rights to portray themselves as progressive while legitimizing racialized, colonial, or militarized violence.[32] Critical journalists have documented how Israel incorporates LGBTQ+ visibility into public diplomacy, such as through Pride-themed tourism campaigns, government-sponsored social media, and international cultural events to promote an image of tolerance that obscures the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories.[33][34] During global events like Eurovision 2019 and Tel Aviv Pride, Israeli ministries highlighted LGBTQ+ inclusion as a symbol of modernity, even as human rights groups reported intensified surveillance, mobility restrictions, and violence affecting Palestinians.[35]
Queer Palestinian organizations such as alQaws and Adalah have challenged these narratives, emphasizing that LGBTQ+ Palestinians experience Israeli homophobia alongside structural forms of state violence, displacement, and occupation. These groups have also criticized pinkwashing campaigns for erasing queer Palestinian political agency, particularly during the 2023–2024 Gaza war, when Pride symbols were used by pro-Israel groups to justify or normalize the humanitarian crisis.[36] Scholars note that such examples illustrate how pinkwashing functions not only as a public relations strategy but also as a geopolitical practice that shapes global understandings of queerness, nationalism, and colonial power.[37]
The Maltese government's internationally lauded pro-LGBTQ stance has been criticized as a form of pinkwashing - a deliberate strategy to divert attention from ongoing human rights violations and systemic failures in other areas of governance. These include the assassination of journalistDaphne Caruana Galizia, suppression offree speech,widespread corruption andhighly restrictive abortion laws.[38][39][40] Malta has continuously ranked first on theILGA-Europe Rainbow Index since 2015, coinciding with a time when perceptions of corruption worsened.[41]
During the lead-up to his2013 election,Joseph Muscat gave an interview in which he stated that same-sex marriage was "unnatural" and that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. However, at the height of the March 2016Panama Papers scandal - which revealed that Muscat's chief of staff,Keith Schembri, and senior ministerKonrad Mizzi had set up a complex web of secret offshore companies, Muscat suddenly changed his stance, claiming that he was "in favor of same-sex marriage" and that "it’s time to debate the issue". When parliament voted in favor ofsame-sex marriage in July 2017, the government projected a rainbow flag ontoCastille, with the words "We made history" displayed across the building - an image the government has since showcased online during every major scandal. Meanwhile, an investigation by The Shift News into Labour's secret online hate groups - which had more than 60,000 members and were managed by government and Labour officials - uncovered thousands of violently homophobic and transphobic comments. These included derogatory terms like "pufti" (poofters) and offensive descriptions of gay and trans individuals as "disgusting," as well as insults aimed at government critics and opposition politicians.[42]
Nepal's government, supported by some activists, media, and lobby groups, has effectively marketed the country as a "beacon of LGBT rights". However, critics argue this campaign is more focused on financial and reputational gains than on advancing genuine LGBTQ rights. There has been little progress in critical areas such as anti-discrimination laws, hate crime protections and same-sex marriage rights. This focus on international image continues to overshadow the government's failure to address pressing domestic issues including, severe air pollution, widespread illiteracy, caste discrimination, corruption, unemployment, child exploitation, child marriage, violence against women,witch hunts andanimal cruelty.[43][44][45][46][47][48]
A coalition organized by several popular grassroots movements in Europe, including theEnglish Defence League (EDL), mountedcounter-jihad demonstrations in conjunction with LGBTQ Pride Week celebrations in Helsinki and Stockholm in July and August 2012.[49][50] However, these movements inspired a counter demonstration by an LGBTQ rights group called "Queers against Pinkwashing", which claimed that the counter-jihad march againstMuslims was a clear example of pinkwashing and projected a fake support image for sexual minorities.[50] In an interview for Radio Sweden,Lisa Bjurwald, a Swedish journalist and expert on Europeanright-wing ideology, criticized the EDL for allying with the wrong people, as "Queers against Pinkwashing" are in fact against singling out Islam as if it were the source of all the relevant problems because such attempts do not benefit the LGBTQ community.[50]
Pinkwashing in the United States, according to author Stephan Dahl from theUniversity of Hull, is centered around pride merchandise created and sold by companies that do nothing for queer people.[51] This encourages a "big business-small community" relationship and seems beneficial when in reality there is nothing changing legally for queer people through this practice.[51]
A campaign to develop public support for theKeystone Pipeline, which would transport Canadian oil through the United States, has been accused of pinkwashing for its argument that the project deserves support based on a comparison of Canada's record on LGBTQ rights compared to that of other oil-producing nations.[52]
In Australia, concern has been raised about the commodification of gay rights by major corporations.[53]
LGBTQ Nation states that "many brands that engage in pinkwashing are guilty of using the LGBTQ community to boost their PR and incur capital from 'pink money', all while maintaining unjust labor practices, discriminatory hiring processes, and supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations".[54].
Some scholars and activists have further described forms of “digital pinkwashing”, in which social media platforms and technology companies foreground LGBTQ-friendly branding while maintaining data and content-moderation practices that disproportionately harm queer and trans people, especially those who are racialized, Indigenous, or from the Global South. Safiya Umoja Noble’s analysis of search engines argues that commercial algorithms reproduce racism and sexism by ranking information about Black women and girls in ways that reinforce stereotypes and structural inequalities, even as the same companies participate in Pride campaigns and diversity marketing.[55] Feminist media scholars such as Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kate M. Miltner have similarly shown how networked misogyny circulates on the same commercial platforms that host corporate “empowerment” messaging and hashtag-based branding.[56] Critics contend that these dynamics allow corporations to present themselves as LGBTQ-inclusive while sidestepping deeper questions about surveillance capitalism, unequal access to digital infrastructures, and the marginalization of communities whose labour and data sustain these platforms.
Other scholars argue that pinkwashing also functions within broader geopolitical contexts, where LGBTQ rights are used to promote national identity, justify foreign policy, or normalize state power.[57] Academic literature on homonationalism, a concept developed by theorist Jasbir Puar, suggests that certain nations deploy LGBTQ-inclusive policies or imagery to present themselves as modern, progressive, or democratic while simultaneously enacting surveillance, militarization, or occupation against racialized or colonized populations.[58]
In June 2016,Organisation Intersex International Australia pointed to contradictory statements by Australian governments, suggesting that the dignity and rights of LGBTQ and intersex people are recognized while, at the same time, harmful practices on intersex children continue.[59]
In August 2016,Zwischengeschlecht described actions to promote equality or civil status legislation without action on banning "intersex genital mutilations" as a form of pinkwashing.[60] The organization has previously highlighted evasive government statements to UN Treaty Bodies that conflate intersex, transgender and LGBTQ issues, instead of addressing harmful practices on infants.[61]
Anti-pinkwashing or pinkwatching is the opposition to pinkwashing. Lynn Darwich and Hannen Maikay, in their article "The Road from Antipinkwashing Activism to the Decolonization of Palestine", allege that accusations of pinkwashing against Israel have led to an intersection of queer rights movements and Palestinian rights movements in Palestine and other countries, despite ongoing discrimination and abuse of LGBTQ individuals within Palestinian controlled territories. This is a strategy that has allowed the two activist groups to fight for one cause; however, it also places limits on both movements. Darwich and Maikay suggest that the anti-pinkwashing movement has to consider not only pinkwashing but also homonationalism, colonialism, and imperialism.[62] The Palestinian queer movement rejects pinkwashing.[63][64]
According to Cyril Ghosh, the argument against pinkwashing portraying Western countries as bastions of LGBTQ freedom while demonizing countries that lack LGBTQ rights protection has merit, but can fall into "Radical Theory Creep" when multiple strands of critique are combined in a way that lacks analytic rigor.[65]
