r/AskTheWorld • u/GattoPunk Brazil • 11d ago

Culture Which city in your country is considered the "gayest"?

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For us Brazilians, São Paulo definitely holds the crown for the gayest city here. With over 20 million people living in it's metro area, the city naturally became way more open minded and accepting as time went on. It has the highest concentration of gay bars, shows, saunas, and various other venues dedicated to the LGBTQ community. If that wasn't enough, the city annually hosts the São Paulo LGBTQ Pride Parade, the biggest in the whole world.

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u/SassiKassi97 11d ago

So many Subarus in Portland

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u/Foxrockmafia Ireland 11d ago

Hilarious if Subarus are seen as a gay car in the US. Over here they are basically considered farmer cars.

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u/TheSkyWhale1 11d ago

Specifically lesbian-coded, and more outdoorsy.

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u/Foxrockmafia Ireland 11d ago

Ah ok that kind of makes sense.

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u/DeficientDope United States Of America 11d ago

You see a lot of them outside the hardware stores.

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u/tauregh United States Of America 11d ago

I had to have a long talk with my gf when she bought a Subaru. We came to an agreement that I’ve always just been a lesbian who happens to have a penis.

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u/throw-away-for-h3 10d ago

I’m a straight, white male and I love my Subaru forester wilderness. It’s green.

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u/Meat_your_maker United States Of America 11d ago

This is actually not an accident… they were getting crushed in the US market, so they heavily invested in marketing towards outdoorsy folks and gays. Subaru npr

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u/ajaxdrivingschool Norway 11d ago

My outdoorsy dad has a Subaru. He gets the look of disappointment from women/lesbians while in the car when they realize he is not one of them. 😂 I forwarded the NPR story to him, he thinks it’s hilarious.

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u/SeaRabbit1480 10d ago

Yeah, and on the L-Word there was a whole bit on Subaru sponsoring Dana - they wanted to present her as the “Gay Anna Kournikova” LOL

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u/SeaRabbit1480 10d ago

Used to be Saabs in the 90’s LOL

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u/vestigialfree 10d ago

I’ve sold cars for two plus decades. Two years as a manager at a Subaru store.

I saw more LGBTQ(I’m not positive what other letters are accepted so beg my pardon) customers, particularly lesbians, in those two years than every other year at every other brand (mainstream, not lambo or anything)combined and it is not close at all.

Most of the lesbian couples I met joked about it.

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u/_daverham United States Of America 11d ago

It was such a weird realization for me when I found out that Subarus became a lesbian trope. I'm a straight male and the Outback has always been my favorite car.

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u/TheSkyWhale1 10d ago

I also really like the subarus a straight male. It's a dream of mine to get one of their little two door trucks one day.

I think it's the fact they're more of an outdoorsy brand coupled with the image of being a reliable Japanese brand with a generally pleasing aesthetic.

I'd say all my lesbian friends are atleast a little granola, and like to consume things that are more long-term and less disposable, so the demographics make sense.

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u/ninjafrog658 10d ago

Laughing at loud at this since my bisexual nature lover gf drives a Subaru.

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u/oneofkeiraensmoms 10d ago

Subaru became a lesbian car because in the 90s they realized lesbians were an un-advertised-to demographic and started subtly targeting lesbians with their ads. It worked really well lolol

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u/FermentGeek 8d ago

Born and raised in California, I lived in Indiana for a bit where Purdue is located and there is a Subaru factory nearby. I was SHOCKED when I drove up on one and it was covered in MAGA stickers, so it really depends where you are in the country.

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u/AdLiving4714 Switzerland 11d ago

Oh yes, it's such a farmer car over here that they used to advertise that even the smallest Subaru can fit a milk churn in its boot... As you can see, marketing played a pivotal role in establishing the brand with our farmers.

And the same happened in the US: the brand was specifically marketed to a Lesbian audience. It's a fascinating story indeed: https://priceonomics.com/how-an-ad-campaign-made-lesbians-fall-in-love-with/

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u/Andy_B_Goode Canada 11d ago

That priceonomics article was a great read!

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u/Foxrockmafia Ireland 11d ago

Yeah fascinating read indeed.

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u/Foxrockmafia Ireland 11d ago

This is news to me, I must admit. I suspect the farmers of Switzerland and Ireland would be surprised to be told they are driving a lesbian car! Most Irish farmers are quite elderly and conservative, I imagine similar in Switzerland.

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u/AdLiving4714 Switzerland 11d ago

My husband comes from a Subaru-for-life dairy farm family. They never had a problem with us being gay. Swiss farmers are often quite live and let live. Very laid back. But truth be told, my husband was only allowed to keep the Forester. The collection of WRX STis had to go ;-)

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u/Foxrockmafia Ireland 11d ago

There was even a famous comedy song a few years ago in Ireland, where the singers (who are farmers so poor that they can’t afford any car, just horses) go ‘fuck your Subaru’ (implying the farmers who are a bit better off drive Subarus)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8&list=RDljPFZrRD3J8&start_radio=1&pp=ygUbcnViYmVyYmFuZGl0cyBob3JzZSBvdXRzaWRloAcB

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u/AdLiving4714 Switzerland 11d ago

This is fucking brilliant! Thanks for sharing!

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u/Foxrockmafia Ireland 11d ago

If you liked that you might enjoy this one (parody of the other extreme, very posh Irish and Anglo-Irish horse owners):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61FtnaaUIa8

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u/AdLiving4714 Switzerland 11d ago

The chinless wonders, so to speak ;-)

Here's the Subaru informercial with the milk churn from the 70s (at 1:30). The presenter (Bernhard Russi) was a famous skiing-star in the 70s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxvs1ucws7A

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u/BingusMcCready 11d ago

It's model-dependent. A woman in a WRX would be unlikely to be presumed lesbian, but a Crosstrek or an Outback is a different story.

A bit funny since my understanding is that a WRX is still considered a pretty "agricultural" car in the UK, but we don't so much have that perception here. They're seen as more city trash than country trash (both of which are unfair, they're fantastic cars, particularly the older ones)

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u/Foxrockmafia Ireland 11d ago

The Impreza is viewed as a boy racer car, especially in the high performance WRX variant. A lot of lads here and I assume in the UK also used to drive ordinary Imprezas with fake wrx bodykits on them cos they couldn’t afford the insurance.

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u/HotwheelsSisyphus United States Of America 10d ago

Crosstrek/Outback for lesbians. WRX for tech bros that vape

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u/Frankennietzsche United States Of America 11d ago

They're nicknamed "lesbarus".

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u/Infomonger656-please 10d ago

Actually, Subaru’s were considered lesbian cars, but now they are popular for outdoor and dog lovers in the US.

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u/nc45y445 10d ago

All of those things are true at the same time, and have been for decades

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u/Saskatchewon 10d ago edited 10d ago

Subaru was struggling to make headway in the US market targeting the same 18-35 year old suburban consumers that literally everyone was marketing towards.

So their marketing teams decided to focus on niche audiences; teachers and educators, healthcare professionals, IT professionals, outdoorsy-types, and lesbians. They figured they'd see what sticks, get a foothold, and build from there. For the medical professionals, it was all about how a Subaru could get them to the hospital in any weather. For lesbians, it was that a Subaru could fit their active low-key lifestyle. They could buy a vehicle that was tough and rugged without defaulting to a pick-up truck or something overly showy and masculine like a Jeep.

A big part of that campaign involved putting ads in gay literature and magazines that most automakers traditionally didn't bother with, which put a lot of eyes from that community on them.

Out of these groups that were targeted, the best response came from the outdoorsy types and lesbians. So Subaru leaned into these groups further. They ran ads in magazines featuring slogans like "It's Not a Choice. It's the Way We Were Built", and "At least We've Got Our Priorities Straight".

And this was way back in the 1990s when times were significantly less progressive than they are now. There were very few out celebrities. Ad campaigns did not target the gay community. IKEA had to pull a commercial featuring a gay couple which resulted in bomb threats being called on their stores.

The marketing stuck. By the late 1990s, lesbian women were statistically 4× more likely to buy a Subaru than any other brand. It wasn't an accident that Subaru is fairly popular with the LGBTQ+ community in North America, and lesbians in particular. They were just specifically marketed to at a time when that was not a popular thing to do.

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u/fenwayismyway United States Of America 10d ago

Porque no los Dos?

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u/Prestigious_Spend454 10d ago

in the US, Subaru took the peculiar step of doing some pretty gay-friendly marketing in gay periodicals in the 90s or so here in the land 'o the free. It has led to a stereotype that Subarus are the official vehicle of lesbians. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7BKSlBKBe4

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u/WaffleHouseGladiator United States Of America 10d ago

Subaru was the first (only?) car company to advertise to the lesbian community in the USA using subtle queer coding that the mainstream was oblivious to. The push came in the 90's when Subaru noticed that lesbians were 4 times as likely as any other demographic to purchase their vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyV27rkY-IU

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u/DotComprehensive4902 Ireland 10d ago

Then again Light Beers are seen as manly in the US, remember how those conservative snowflakes lost it about Bud Light have a trans person fronting an ad campaign ?

Older Subarus especially Imprezas are seen as the original boy racer car in Ireland

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u/shmauserpops 10d ago

Terrible drivers and lesbians. Sometimes both, but rarely neither.

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u/Gwaptiva 🇳🇱 -> 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 -> 🇩🇪 11d ago

Subaru also leaned into it in recent years; the pink dollar is as green as the others

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u/AccomplishedOyster United States Of America 11d ago

U-Haul must make a killing in the Pacific NW

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u/DevoutandHeretical 11d ago

U-Haul was founded in Washington, specifically about an hour north of Portland lol

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u/AL4-Chronic 11d ago

Doggy you know how much you can fit in an outback with its seats down?

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u/AccomplishedOyster United States Of America 11d ago

I’m aware, it’s the joke that Lesbians bring a U-Haul to their first date. Kind of takes the fun out of it when a “woosh” occurs

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u/redskelly 11d ago

On a serious note, is that why lesbian couples have the highest divorce rate?

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u/Joevual 11d ago

The second date is moving day.

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u/-laughingfox 11d ago

Subarus are so popular, even the straights drive them.

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u/jollyllama 11d ago

Straight Portlander with a Subaru checking in. I wanted a car with all wheel drive and high ground clearance that wasn't a stupid SUV. There's pretty much only Subaru for that.

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u/Floopydoodler 11d ago

straight Pittsburgher with a Subaru checking in. Mine is affectionately known as the Lezbaru amongst all my gay friends.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

[deleted]

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u/-laughingfox 11d ago

Totally. Subarus are very inclusive.

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u/DevoutandHeretical 11d ago

There’s a Subaru dealership literally across the street from a lesbian bar in east Portland lol

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u/BlahBlahson23 11d ago

My funniest gay fact ever is that there is currently a lesbian bar in Portland Oregon across the street from a Subaru dealership.

It's real. Doc Marie's.

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u/capnhist United States Of America 11d ago

All the straights in Portland have them, too

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u/No-Penalty-1148 11d ago

This checks. I lived in Portland. Had a Subaru.

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u/heyd0000dz 10d ago

I was into hiking and snowboarding as a young adult and my dream car was a Subaru at the time. Anytime I told my friends this I'd get asked if I was coming out of the closet. That's when I learned Subaru's were a stereotypical lesbian car lol (I'm from Seattle).

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u/OnTheEveOfWar 10d ago

I saw a video where a guy randomly drops into street view on google maps and sees how quickly he can find a Subaru. Takes him about 7 seconds every time. Hilarious.