The CEO and cofounder of queer apparel brand Nasty Pig is urging the LGBTQ+ community to fight back.
via: Out
Nasty Pig is a clothing, underwear, and accessories company founded in 1994 by Out100 honorees Frederick Kearney and David Lauterstein that says it is the "very first gay culture brand in history." The company sells jockstraps, leather harnesses, rubber sheets, clothes, jewelry, and more.
Now, the company's CEO, Lauterstein, has released a new statement calling for the queer community to come together and "do things that make you feel so fucking gay."
Lauterstein has been traveling the country in support of his new book Sodomy Gods, and said in a statement posted to Instagram that after all the love and support he got from the Nasty Pig community, he's been looking for a way to "meet the moment we are in now," referencing the current political climate.
"From challenges to gay marriage making their way through the courts to the installation of an HIV denialist at the head of the HHS to relentless attacks against trans people, I feel like we are going backwards fast," he said. "It's all so dizzying and demoralizing that it can leave you feeling paralyzed, unsure of how to react, if you even want to react at all."
Lauterstein says he wants people to reject the numbness.
"Do something – anything – that makes you feel powerful. Do things that make you feel so fucking gay and strong that rainbows come shooting out of your asshole," he said.
Lauterstein said that that can look like boycotting companies that take away LGBTQ+ rights, donating, or marching for causesor, maybe, "putting on a conspicuous crop top and going to brunch, or closing the curtains and blasting 'Abracadabra' as you learn the choreo in a Nasty Pig jock strap. Maybe you just need to get in a sling and connect intimately with like minded people, finding strength in numbers and hummers and strangers and lovers."
"There is nothing illegal about being you," the statement continues. "Gather up your intellect and your emotions and your spirituality and your sexuality and combine them all into one powerful light that will outshine all the fucking darkness of the day. You're so fucking gay that superpower cannot be taken away from you by anyone ever. EVER!"
Lauterstein's statement comes after a series of political and social attacks on the LGBTQ+ community by the Trump administration, including an executive order banning trans women from women's sports, a crackdown on poppers, the elimination of words and terms like "diversity," "LGBTQ," "they/them," "trans," and "sexuality" from government documents and websites, and trying to ban gender-affirming care for people under age 19.
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