Target’s New Pride Shirt Has A Historic Queer Organization Seeing Red/Queerty

A new Pride season is right around the corner, which means a whole new line of fashionable queer merchandise from Target. Unfortunately, among the adorable rainbow jumpsuits and inclusive “they/them” pin sets, there is one piece that has a historic LGBTQ organization speaking out.

As part of a collaboration with queer clothing initiative The Phluid Project, Target released an online-exclusive black t-shirt featuring an inverted pink triangle with the phrase “SILENCE=DEATH” at the bottom. Sound familiar?

Historic AIDS advocacy foundation ACT UP took to Twitter to confirm that neither Target nor The Phluid Project had requested permission to use the iconic SILENCE=DEATH artwork. Worse still, they also confirmed that at present they are not receiving any product either.

We can answer you: No. The two @Target and @phluidproject did not get permission to use “SILENCE = DEATH” art. We have been fighting the commodification of AIDS for years and this is the latest edition. If you want to support our work, buy from us: https://t.co/MxdVFQEypz https://t.co/1b7s4kEx2m

— ACT UP NY (@actupny) May 6, 2022

ACT UP calls on supporters to buy directly from their site – which honestly seems to work in their favour! At the time of writing this article, their merchant site is completely unavailable due to high traffic volume.

It was working a few moments ago! We’re probably not used to high traffic on the site — be patient!

— ACT UP NY (@actupny) May 6, 2022

This whole situation seems like an unusual misstep for Target, a company that has donated millions of dollars to queer organizations like GLSEN, HRC, Out & Equal, and more. If nothing else, the release of its annual Pride collection in the face of constant boycott calls from dusty homophobes put them ahead of many of their retail contemporaries in our book.

Let’s all hope this situation is cleared up as soon as possible so we can start wasting an afternoon happily wandering their alleys without guilt again.

Weird has reached out to Target for comment and will update this story with any further responses.