Said differently: to me the dog-whistle seems to be “this annoying group that I don’t care about won’t leave me alone, they should shut up.”
I don’t think that’s outright malicious, necessarily.
From urban dictionary: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dog+whistle
> Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message.
If so, then that means they're trying to signal a hidden message. From what you've said, I'm assuming that you believe that they're trying to hide the fact that they don't like LGBT people or messages to them. I think that is malicious. I think the non-malicious perspective of what they wrote is that they like product logos being used for visual identification of the product.
It isn’t clear whatsoever. It would have been trivial to mention the other, far more common reasons why app icons change and make a fairly politically-neutral argument. However, they did not choose to do so.
In fact, they never even go so far as to say “and these political statements hinder my ability to recognize things visually.” But politics, well - they brought up the concept no less than 4 times in the brief post.
What they did was leave it open for you to read your own perspectives into it.
> And you might want to be careful about asserting that anyone who doesn't like having a pride flag pushed in their face is automatically homophobic/transphobic.
I have taken great pains to avoid this very assertion. What I did assert was this: “it’s likely related to Pride month, and the author considers LGBTQ identities political.”
If you believe that “considering LGBTQ identities to be political” is a synonym for “homophobia”, you are welcome to that connection. It’s not unreasonable.
But again: my point is that my existence is indeed political. Whether the author supports my community or not isn’t the point I’m making, at all.