Pride Month is an important opportunity to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. But sometimes it can also feel like a rainbow-washed marketing opportunity for brands that abruptly ends on July 1. Here at JUNE, we know that inclusion shouldn’t begin and end with Pride Month.
Using More Inclusive Language
Let’s be honest: we haven’t always gotten it right. When we first launched JUNE, we used gendered terms like “feminine care” and referred to our customers as “women.”
Thanks to some gentle guidance from our community, we quickly learned that this language could feel isolating to people we wanted to include. Not every woman has a period and not every person with a period is a woman. To suggest otherwise, even with the best intentions, is harmful to our gender-diverse friends.
After learning from our mistakes, we created a sweeping policy to be inclusive across all of our messaging. Now, we refer to our customers not by gender but by a term that binds everyone who uses a June Cup: menstruator.
Committing to Visibility for Gender Diverse People
Like most of our customers, most of our models have been cis women. But we think that representation, like affordable menstrual care, should be a given. That’s why we make an effort to hire models from different gender identities. This not only helps our LGBTQ+ friends feel represented, but also affirms JUNE’s values with our entire community.
There Is No Alternative To Inclusion
The only alternative to being inclusive is to not be inclusive: an alternative that is unacceptable to us. By making these changes, we hope to create a world where we can challenge our assumptions, learn from each other, and support each other freely. We might not always get it right, but we know this to be true: being part of an equitable and compassionate community enriches all of us.
Shop Smarter Menstrual Care from June here.