Please, shoot the messenger

We cannot advertise inclusivity, can we?

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

2001.

No Space Odyssey.

The original Odyssey — Homer’s poem — is being recited in a schoolroom. I’m twelve years old. My class has been moved to the hall of a high school building, due to renovation. At the break, everybody is talking about a guy who just came out as gay. He’s barely sixteen and he did it on national television. He got there as a fervent catholic. A gay fervent catholic; something primetime TV wouldn’t miss for the world in the early 2000s.

2020. Friday, December 4th. I’m on Instagram and I get a sponsored ad by Yoox. Yoox, as you may know, is an e-commerce platform based in Italy which is part of the luxury reseller Net-A-Porter. They’re advertising a capsule collection of genderless clothes they made in collaboration with an Italian singer named Mahmood. The whole initiative sponsors a campaign for bullying prevention.

Till here, everything seems fine.

However, the artist decided to allocate the proceeds to MOIGE, an Italian Parent’s Association renowned for its controversial campaigns. For example, MOIGE stood against Dawson’s Creek “because of a gay kiss” and it tried to banish anime with characters who changed their sex. One could say, they shield a bit of homophobia under the…