Battle of the Brands: Photo Essay on Stonewall's Rebrand, their Advertising History and Oppositional Response Artworks in a Contemporary Political Context
Warring with words and clashing with colours, LGBT organisations fight with feminists with typography and tone.
It’s rare for a rebrand of a company to leave me speechless, but Stonewall’s new look left me temporarily lost for words. “You can’t be serious? Is this for real?” I asked my friend after staring at her phone for a silent moment of stupefaction, she had just had her own astounded moment of contemplation. She then passed her phone to me to share in the internet’s astonishment at what Stonewall had done. On the phone screen was a tweet1 comparing Stonewall’s new logo to that of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the latter had just left the Stonewall Diversity Champions Programme2 and their separation created a tremor in Stonewall's foundations of legitimacy. The two images were basically identical, the colours almost indistinguishable, teal backgrounds with an “=” sign in white. I looked around the café in which we sat and wondered if this audacious and petulant warring of the 3rd sector and Government bodies was all in my imagination or if this was indeed real life. Of course it is real life, this scandalous digital sitcom plays out on Twitter as some real-time immersive tragi-comedy with audience participation and devastatingly tangible consequences.
Surrounded by skittish people staring at each other over their masks while trying to figure out the dance of socially distanced queuing etiquette, I wondered if they knew what was going on in what has been my niche interest for many years; this wrestling for power in the digital realm over ‘equalities guidance’ that had devolved into Tweets of “U OK hun?”3, and skirmishes with memes as ammunition.
The “Gender Wars” which feminists have been fighting with the third sector charities (who have quite terrifying control of all UK institutions) is gradually spilling over into the wider consciousness. Notably the recent discussion of “Stonewall Law” and their misrepresentation of Equalities law in guidance. In a report4 by Barrister Akua Reindorf of Cloisters Chambers about the “no-platforming” of Professor Jo Phoenix and Professor Rosa Freedman at Essex University, she states that:
“It is worth noting that the examples of harassment in the University’s Supporting Trans and Non Binary Staff policy might lend credence to the idea that these newspaper letters could amount to or lead to unlawful harassment. This policy is founded on an erroneous understanding of the law (see §§225–226 above). The policy is reviewed annually by Stonewall, and its incorrect summary of the law does not appear to have been picked up by them. In my view the policy states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is.
To that extent the policy is misleading.”
Misleading seems to be Stonewall’s forté and I feel that is exemplified by their new look. What I and many others saw as a passive-aggressive and Machiavellian attempt to take some of the EHRC’s credibility by proxy through visual imitation. It looked like a graphic designer’s metaphorical middle finger to an organisation that had just cut them off.
The image of the equals sign on teal was from a paused section of their logo animation where an “equals” (=) symbol elongates and is struck through by an arrow. This animation terminates in Stonewall’s name appearing vertically with the last two letters laying horizontally making the equals sign bisected by the arrow, I feel it has a slight thematic similarity to Hillary Clinton’s campaign logo. I presume arrows indicate stiving progress and “=” meaning equality. The symbol in the final frames of the animation is the one featured on Stonewall’s new banners. Although inverted colours on the websites, the EHRC and Stonewall logos are still extremely similar. The browser tab logo appears slightly nautical, amusingly like the Maritime signal flag “Juliet” (naval meaning: "I am on fire and have dangerous cargo on board: keep well clear of me.") Admittedly, I thought both doppelganger designs were actually for the rail ticket companies called Trainline or National Rail, the blending of cyan and green being a staple of app design of the ’20s from Wordpress to Deliveroo.
On further investigation of their website redecoration, I realise what they were going for, and I welcomed what they had done. They have given up any guise of being the punky and brash (to the point of aggressive) sloganeering gay rights organisation. Now they are no longer pretending to be anything other than a trans focused company.
Their website is a more corporate styled and mature take on the Transgender Pride flag designed by transgender activist Monica Helmes in 1999. Their site is now Farrow and Ball ‘esque hues and shades of teal (somewhere between Vardo No.288 and Hague Blue No.30, browser/ screen dependant) and pink ( Nancy's Blushes No.278, sometimes hotter). The darker palette is slightly less obnoxious than the infantile, sexist and regressive “baby blue and baby pink” of the transgender pride flag but it doesn’t reach the aspiring middle-class maturity of the audience for extremely expensive paint.
It reminds me of adolescence and particularly of the chipped gloss of school toilet walls. The reminiscent anxieties of the school lavatories furthered the “LGBTQ+” org’s theme of the troubled trans teen. On the banner are what appears to be (I can’t be certain) a trans-identifying pair of young adults, I see the two young people against that rose pink negative space and imagine how much I’d like them to leave the room so I can be “free to be” alone to pee without the reverb of the walls creating such an immersive auditory experience for their giggling audience.
Both the queer tonality of the colour scheme and the trans advocate’s obsession with lavatories (and hanging out in them) makes this association pop out to me but a few other thoughts accompany this. The colours make me think of health insurance companies and NHS hospitals, teal signage and pastel walls, the gloom of corridors when the motion-sensitive lights go out and the ward becomes dark. The site seems to be more about mental health struggles, illness, diagnosis and advocacy for hormonal therapies rather than the rebelliousness of the previous red.
Very apt considering Stonewall are targeting the same “transgender” insecure and depressed demographic as the also-teal branded brothers in arms and fellow LGBT Consortium member, the trans charity Mermaids.
Sea-green eyed Mermaids is also having a brand battle but with LGB Alliance, fighting for the pool of charitable cash. Mermaids has lodged an appeal against the Charity Commission's decision to grant LGB Alliance charity status and one of the main arguments in their filing consisting of their coveting of government and the public’s money: “Unless the Decision is quashed, Mermaids is likely to suffer financial loss, in that (a) it may find itself competing with LGB Alliance for Donations from the public and grant-making bodies, even though LGB Alliance should never have been registered as a charity;...”5
LGB Alliance and the “other side” have a penchant for the boldness of black and white which was in a similar vein to Stonewall’s previous aesthetics. The moody teal wave washes away Stonewall’s now retired iconic red and black best-known from the “Get Over It!”6 campaign debuted in 2007. Blazoned on busses and stacked typographic posters in the vein of Katherine Hamnett’s text-based slogan T-Shirts, it was a campaign that demanded attention and confronted people’s biases.
I found the Stonewall adverts memorable and I appreciated the design; bold and commanding red, white and black, utilised by many political movements thus subverting via emulation (whether consciously or not) the notable colour combination from the genocidal and evilly skilled graphic designer Hitler who’s Nazi flag will never be forgotten, to the reds and iconography of labour unions and Communist revolutionaries (the Stonewall star seems to be very similar to that found on Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s hat).
I may seem to have fallen foul of Godwin’s law but the trans activists are increasingly heavy-handedly attempting to position feminists as Nazis, I suspect they are quite intentionally moving away from communist or ‘Nazi-Chic’ so they can apply the totalitarian tones as a visual association between resistance to transgenderism as a form of ethnonationalism. Exemplified by a recent publication by trans activist Shon Fae titled “The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice”, where the author heavy-handedly implies that transgender people are the jews in a metaphoric title emulating the antisemitic phrase from the 19th century utilized by the Nazis: “Final Solution to the Jewish Question". The book cover is styled in a Nazi fashion as well, portraying the whole discussion and any resistance to forced outright submission to transgender ideology as quite literally a Nazi stance. This is riffing on an increasingly desperate and frankly embarrassing attempt to associate feminism and women’s rights advocacy with the ultimate ‘bad guys’ in modern history. It may also be an attempt to distract people from the military and especially Nazi proclivity for crossdressing7.
Another example of the institutional drive to associate feminism with Nazism & antisemitism being Stonewall head Nancy Kelley’s statement to the BBC8 that:
"With all beliefs including controversial beliefs there is a right to express those beliefs publicly and where they're harmful or damaging - whether it's anti-Semitic beliefs, gender critical beliefs, beliefs about disability - we have legal systems that are put in place for people who are harmed by that."
Further in this theme of forced association was the astoundingly blatant tweet by Mermaids calling women “Feminazis”. Mermaids tweeted9 an article by the Institute of Race Relations10, an Open Society funded propaganda article of graceless attempts to prove that “Gender Critical” feminism and organisations such as LGB Alliance are bedfellows of anti-feminist Men’s Rights Activists and that their understanding that humans are either male or female is akin to racist applications of the ideas of biological differences. The article’s thumbnail had text saying “Feminism, biological fundamentalism and the attack on trans rights” over an image of Adolf Hitler in lipstick with the Swastika badge on his hat replaced with a Venus symbol and underneath this was a hashtag “#StopFemininazis”. It is well known that people don’t read articles, so Mermaids and the IRR were apparently fine with people thinking they were calling women “Feminazis” however, by clicking the article one would find their argument and stance even more convoluted and repugnant; not only are they for all intents and purposes calling women “Feminazis” via visual juxtaposition, they are arguing that “GC Feminism” and Gay Rights groups are the same as anti-gay, far-right organisations that call feminists “Feminazis”.
The article is such a mess it warrants its own response essay to highlight the cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy and DARVO of the piece. The article aimed to sew division between all protest groups and to imply that any common ground they have (that is critical of lack of safeguards about the family or sexism of new laws) shows they take on the “evils” of each other's movements.
They suggest the acknowledgement of biological differences between the sexes is the same as weaponising the concepts of biological race, ergo, totally to be avoided otherwise you are a fascist. The image of Hitler was from an anti-feminist bus advertisement campaign critical of domestic violence laws in Spain by the group HazteOir.org.
This brings me back to Stonewall and their busses, the vehicle with plenty of visual real-estate for confronting the public with promotions and propaganda.
Stonewall’s “Get Over It” bus-side campaign was a major funding boost when Stonewall fought for Equal marriage in 2013 and occurred in what I would consider the UK’s last brief heyday of combative bus advertising (confrontational techniques that syndicates which utilized them would probably deem as “mean or “hateful” now).
Such organisations as the Humanists, which in tandem with Richard Dawkins in 2008, ran their Atheist Bus11 campaign: “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” This was in response to a JesusSaid.org bus advert that was written about by Ariane Sherine12 who proposed a counter advertisement to the Christian’s insistence that Atheists would burn for eternity if they didn’t believe in God. It’s a shame now that such organisations want silence rather than the pugnacious public exchange of words.
Stonewall’s brass-necked campaign on red double-deckers demanded attention but was easy fodder for rework and parody, an own-goal according to some commentators. David Shariatmadari13 at the Guardian wrote “The gay rights charity's provocative sloganeering may have ended up doing more harm than good” and that the banning14 of the anti-gay response adverts "Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud. Get over it!" by Core Issues and Anglican Mainstream in 2012, “won [the Christians] a dollop of free publicity and can portray themselves as victims of persecution and censorship.”
Another notable rework is by the women’s rights activist and “Femalist” Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull of Standing for Women who retaliated to Stonewall’s “Some People Are Trans. Get Over It!” campaign with “Women Will Not Submit. Get Over It! - Boner Wall” in the form of T-shirts and posters15.
Kellie-Jay just missed the bus on bus campaigns as the tide had turned to general trepidation around activist commissions and awareness of her notoriety. In 2018 her advertising campaign to plaster omnibuses with “Woman: Adult Human Female” was accepted then denied and her £2,000 refunded by Exterion Media, the ad runners on Lothian Buses in Edinburgh16. However, she made a fantastic impact with her own clean-cut and extremely effective ad campaigns prior to this rejection of the emblematic billboard campaign centring the dictionary definition of women “Women: Adult Human Female”. The A.H.F campaign was spurred by attempts to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the inclusion of males in the definition of “woman” by LGBT lobbying group like Stonewall and within political parties.
Post-rejection, she went on to create the subversive masterstroke of the “I Love JK Rowling campaign” which went as far afield as Canada17. The public support of the author upset many rabid haters and ex-fans of JK Rowling (Rowling had the temerity18 to stand up to trans activists which spurred extreme denunciation from the Harry Potter fandom) and got Keen-Minshull’s artworks banned again, this time from Waverley Train Station19.
Stonewall has lost its panache; I had to rethink my opinions on the belligerent “Get Over It!” campaign when I was confronted by the trans-T-shirt which told me to get over the fact that I was being supplanted in law by males with extensive sexism and narcissism. Unfortunately, it further soured the legacy of the campaign for me, to the extent of extreme irritation so I purchased one of Keen-Minshull’s remix T’s instead. The Guardian was right; Stonewall, you did more harm than good to your own image.
Stonewall’s rebrand won’t shake off the dismal reputation they have created. With the news that Equalities Minister Liz Truss20 has been pushing for Government Agencies to leave Stonewall’s “Diversity Champions Scheme” the restyling juxtaposed with bad press gave Keen-Minshull the opportunity to celebrate their weakening chokehold on the UK. She made a Youtube video21 text animation matching the stylistic overhaul with the phrase “It’s just a matter of time- StonewAll Done” (“all done” in white text) with scenes of dominoes toppling accompanied with sound effects of falling trees. Sound effects in the theme many have run with including with the hashtag #Stonefall which appears in a thumbnail in a Graham Linehan youtube video22 titled “The Mess We're In Ep. #57: The curious incident of the lawyers who wouldn't argue”.
Furthermore, various other commentators and activists have jumped at the opportunity to lampoon Stonewall’s new logos with many noticing the similarity between fire exit signs and the new arrow iconography. The writers at the website “Sex Matters”23 created an illustration of an emergency exit sign in the style of Stonewall’s petrol-blue logo with the accompanying hashtag “#LeaveStonewall”, thus encouraging companies to hastily follow the EHRC’s lead and divest themselves from the Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme. Sex Matters states, “We call on you to leave the Diversity Champions Scheme, thus reaffirming your commitment to creating a workplace where all your employees are respected and valued.”
Stonewall’s legacy is increasingly one of damaging social cohesion and many want to leave the organisation and religate its influence to history. Many people might have noticed that staff and the revolving door of trustees have been fleeing the company potentially in expectation of the inevitable public response to their bullying and the sullying of Stonewall Equality LTD’s trusted status.
Stonewall has moved on from its fight for Gay Marriage and have apparently have ditched women altogether. The lesbians left and took style with them it seems. Now they have a logo that looks plagiarised and the shirts are all modelled by men, even the lesbian T-Shirt (“gender-neutral” = males and boxy tailoring). The designs remind me of the turquoise signage up the side of the Holiday Inn Express in Dundee.
Stonewall gave up on homosexuals and pursued third sector cash and their site now looks like a modernised asylum styled by Paper Chase. The non-threatening (to the uninitiated) palette announcing their swap from revolutionaries to a bureaucratic full-time guidance provider centring trans-evangelism.
Beginning as an obstinate protest and now emulating a Tesco Essentials teal toothbrush, Stonewall’s brand has transformed from imposing British style to the budget swatches of banal hospital-grade toiletries, seemingly in an attempt to mimetically blend in as a recurrent subscription for institutional policy housekeeping basics.
Stonewall is certainly showing its true colours.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this piece, please share it online as I am very well banned from Twitter etc. If you enjoyed my writing and would like to say “thanks”, or if you have any questions, just comment or email me at:
blackbirddocumentaries@gmail.com
Or if you want to “buy me a coffee” you can here:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/BryndisB
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BlackbirdDocs
PayPal: paypal.me/BlackbirdDocs
Check out my Youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxDscK1Sr9y1J028AQY-VOQ/videos
Other writing at:
https://uncommongroundmedia.com/author/bblackbird/
https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/05/bryndis-blackadder-they-are-marketing-these-subscription-prescriptions-to-women-who-just-dont-want-to-see-themselves-or-be-seen-as-women/
I hope to write more soon, thanks for checking out my work.
Simon Edge pointing out the logo similarity
https://twitter.com
/simonjedge/status/1396794588485099521
(https://archive.ph/wip/Aqi6i)
https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/05/equality-and-human-rights-commission-quits-stonewalls-diversity-champions-scheme/
(https://archive.ph/wip/74JTF
https://twitter.com
/stonewalluk/status/1396374101988569091
https://archive.ph/ZhtTc
Akua Reindorf
https://www.cloisters.com/reindorf-review-on-no-platforming/
“14.2 Unless the Decision is quashed, mermaids is likely to suffer financial loss, in that (a) it may find itself competing with LGB Alliance for Donations from the public and grant-making bodies, even though LGB Alliance should never have been registered as a charity; and (b) it finds itself continuing to face attempts by LGB Alliance to undermine its funding, including its ability to fundraise(see paragraphs 7-9 above), which are likely to be facilitated by the Decision. “
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12q_P2aIvcf00_8T9QXq2ZR3M8znESd1-/view
https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/mermaids-appeals-lgb-alliance-charity-status/ (https://archive.ph/Ih0ix)
“Some People are Gay. Get Over It!” Get over it Bus 2007 Source Stonewall Website (https://www.stonewall.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/2007-some-people-are-gay-get-over-it-campaign-breaks-new-ground)
https://nationalpost.com/news/cross-dressing-nazis-a-german-artist-found-so-many-photos-of-them-he-published-a-book-about-it
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57281448
(https://archive.ph/lwba7)
Mermaids Tweet:
https://archive.ph/HiIQW
Feminism, biological fundamentalism and the attack on trans rights - Institute of Race Relations (irr.org.uk)
https://irr.org.uk/article/feminism-biological-fundamentalism-attack-on-trans-rights/
(https://archive.ph/oyVFp)
Atheist Bus Humanism Richard Dawkins
https://humanism.org.uk/campaigns/successful-campaigns/atheist-bus-campaign/
https://archive.ph/1FtyZ
Atheists – gimme five
Ariane Sherine
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jun/20/transport.religion
https://archive.ph/rGmXM
Anti-gay bus ads took their cue from Stonewall's misguided campaign
David Shariatmadari
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/13/anti-gay-christian-adverstising
https://archive.ph/MM4lh
The advert was banned on 12 April 2012, the day before the mayor addressed an election rally organised by gay rights charity Stonewall.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-28570436
https://archive.ph/wip/5G6Nx
Kellie Jay Parody
https://www.adulthumanfemale.store/stickers-pdfs
https://www.adulthumanfemale.store/apparel-1
https://archive.ph/wip/muzJ6
Kellie-Jay Bus Campaign
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/feminist-poster-banned-because-it-could-offend-trans-people-s2fkwc5sb
https://web.archive.org/web/20210228014806/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/feminist-poster-banned-because-it-could-offend-trans-people-s2fkwc5sb
https://globalnews.ca/news/7331718/vancouver-billboard-j-k-rowling-defaced/
(https://archive.ph/N6xnI)
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
(https://archive.ph/kmRdO)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jk-rowling-edinburgh-rail-station-advert-in-support-of-author-removed-m9ptsc872
(JK Rowling: Edinburgh rail station advert in support of author removed | Scotland | The Times (archive.ph)) (https://archive.ph/XOrv9)
https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/05/liz-truss-receives-huge-support-after-calling-for-government-departments-to-quit-stonewalls-diversity-champions-scheme-reports-jo-bartosch/
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-urges-official-withdrawal-from-stonewall-diversity-scheme-9df7pvsrn
https://youtu.be
/J592kaZ2VUY
https://youtu.be
/Bkrm7v2a70M
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/leave-stonewall/
(https://archive.ph/Ju2Td)
Battle of the Brands: Photo Essay on Stonewall's Rebrand, their Advertising History and Oppositional Response Artworks in a Contemporary Political Context
Very interesting and so thorough!
I agree with you on the “institutional” feel of the new Stonewall colour scheme. The teal reminds me of ancient gloss paint, peeling off the walls of corridors and stairwells leading to dingy “back-wards” of Psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s.
The stodgy, grubby pink is equally gruesome. All the charm of a derelict public toilet in an abandoned bus station.
Put together, the effect is oppressive and utterly depressing.
I hadn’t made the connection with the insipid pastels of the Trans Flag. I wonder if it was intentional and, if it was, whether it was explicit or all done with a nod and a wink?
As for the future, it is fascinating to see Mermaids argue that the LGB Alliance is a competitor for funding. I would love to see their workings out for that equation.
All the Trans Advocacy groups, including Mermaids, are surely already circling Stonewall to see what pickings they can grab? Is that where Mermaids sees the competition with the LGBA? That as the split between LGB and TQetc widens that funders will “pick a side” rather dole out evenhandedly?
Have you had any thoughts on Stonewall withdrawing support for the case being brought by Mermaids against the Charity Commission? It seems strange that they were in at the start then took a dive so quickly.
ps. The bad news. Substack does not create hyperlinks automatically. It is tedious but you have to manually insert each URL associated with the text.
Thank you for this! Their tactics are shocking