By Arthur Cormerais
While American CEOs increasingly genuflect before Donald Trump, shedding the last pretence of pinkwashing, France’s corporate elite is taking a different stance. Business leaders Albin Serviant and Thierry Jadot have launched The Pigments Project, an LGBTQ+ ‘think-and-do tank’ that fuses neoliberal polish with a bold stand against rising homophobia, transphobia, and corporate complacency. But will it hold its ground?
Illustration by GAY45
Openly targeting social media companies who are dropping their engagements in favor of inclusivity, Albin Serviant and Thierry Jadot have shared their concerns with the rise of homophobia and transphobia, the degradation of mental health among Gen Z queers and the invisibilisation of queer people. In their manifesto, entitled “Defending the Universality of Rights in the Face of the Challenges of Our Time”, they explain the idea behind The Pigments Project, whose goal is to federate various ‘LGBT women and men, business leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, sportspeople, associative leaders, who are determined to embody vigilant and active leadership.’ They firmly declare that ‘inclusivity, diversity and moral values are keystones for human development and social progress, as well as for economical performance and innovation.’ Their launch party gathered many personalities, including Thomas Jolly, who gave a speech. Jolly was the artistic director of the Paris Olympic Games, which faced backlash from the far-right due performances including drag queens perceived as blasphemous.
The two co-founders may not be so well-known in the grand scheme, but are everywhere in the sphere of the ‘pink entrepreunariat’. Serviant especially, who relaunched the famous French gay magazine Têtu in 2018, which had been originally founded by Pascal Loubet and Didier Lestrade, the former being a pioneer member of ActUp France. Now incorporated in the I/O Media group, Têtu ranks thus among a group of lifestyle magazines, including The Good Life, which describes itself as ‘the most business of lifestyles magazines.’
If we might salute the probable honesty and sincerity of this “think-and-do-tank”, and the idea of having influential people in those spheres to promote diversity, however, we can also be critical of the liberal, individualistic approach of this manifesto. Both of the co-founders are close with French liberal politicians: Serviant founded the Londonese antenna of Macron’s political movement in 2017 and gathered funds, while Thierry Jadot is an active member of the liberal and right-leaning think tank Institut Montaigne, which is financed by companies such as Total Energy, and even supported Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign a few years ago. Sarkozy, the right-wing former French President, declared in 2014 that homosexual marriage in France ‘humiliated a lot of brave people’ and once proposed to abrogate gay marriage during a meeting, returning instead to different models of marriage according to the nature of the parents’ relationship.
Maybe, a few years ago, it would have been possible to see neoliberalism and liberal politicians as progressivist force, but the rise of far-right ideas and the complacency of a huge part of these politicians in the face of their rhetorics is not good enough for queer people. If cis-gendered gay white men sometimes benefit from (and take active part in) the far-right’s rise, one should not forget the intersectional story of the LGBTQ+ community, especially at a time of rising prominence for xenophobic politics and transphobic gay movements. See, for example, the Collectif Eros, a gay collective which promises to fight against immigration and woke ideology, which emerged recently. Rights, social security and recognition did not come from the righteous liberal scene, and thinking of inclusivity as a tool for a better economical shape of a company might not be the best argument to stand for our rights.
It would be hypocritical to not salute the initiative of the Pigments Project, especially when they already address transphobia and larger issues such as mental health. But one should keep in mind that queer rights were obtained through political and civic mobilisation, not by ceding investments to right-wing ideologies and movements. Investing in a neoliberal sphere in which many persons are shifting and leaving behind ideas of inclusivity because their profit is elsewhere might be tough, even pointless. And Serviant and Jadot were at some point close with liberal politicians, including an Emmanuel Macron who said last June that, ‘with the extreme left, it’s four times worse − there is no more laicity, they will go back on the immigration law and there are things that are completely grotesque like changing your gender at the town hall.’ Liberals are giving into the far-right and queer people cannot just let them.
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