#and we have a PRIDE FLAG and a COMMUNITY?

[plasteredwalls]

Emphasis on sewn in your kitchen. As a sustainable sewer, we need to start sewing our own pride flags again. Most flags you buy are made from harmful and just downright stupidly low quality materials. Everyone jokes about ironing your pride flags but if you do you're probably gonna inhale plastic. Go to your local charity shop, get some second hand fabrics and make your pride flag however tf the big you want. Its a lot comfier to wear as a cape too. Personally I can't wait until I'm back home with my fabric hoard so I can dig out some good fabrics and maybe even put some trims on my aroace flag.

It also stops your money going to companies who may not have your best interest at heart. Almost (just check because I know salvation army has some controversies) all charity shops have your best interest at heart in a way. Most will support some kind of hospice, women's shelter or medical treatment aka the money goes right back into your community. Or look at Facebook marketplace, that money also goes straight back into your local area.

Sustainability leads to individuality so personally I think we need to do it more. No more neat and uniformed plastic flags. Unique flags that can be used as a blanket when not used for parades.

It's pride month so I'll allow myself to express one opinion on the internet :

There are no "exact color" of pride flags.

I see more and more sites and posts talking about the exact hex codes for the lesbian flag, or the right purple for the ace one, and how it should be more or less saturated and I just want to say: pride flags were meant to be sewn in your kitchen. To be spraypainted and to be recognised.

There are no "exact colors" of pride flags because you should do them with what you have ! Nobody should care if you use a crimson red instead of a cherry red or whatever ! Be free ! wave your colors ! The colors you have !

[asexual-amanita]

July is disability pride month!

Disability pride is about fighting for accessibility and disabled rights. It’s about awareness and acceptance! It’s about not being ashamed about our disabilities!

You can celebrate this month by learning more about different disabilities and conditions, as well as the history of disability rights. You can advocate in whatever way you can for equal rights and opportunities for disabled people, and advocate for accessibility where it is lacking. For non disabled people, this is a great time to listen to and uplift disabled voices, especially those who are particularly marginalized even in the disabled community (think BIPOC, high support needs, nonspeaking, or those with rare or stigmatized conditions).

Above is the disability pride flag!!!

The red stripe on the flag represents physical disabilities, the yellow represents neurodivergence and cognitive disabilities, the white is for invisibles and undiagnosed disabilities, the blue means psychiatric disabilities, and the green represents sensory disabilities! The grey background represents those we have lost due inaccessibility and ableism.

[canisalbus]

For your gay little dogs

.

[isobug]

Confusion pride flag

For when you have no idea what is going on, or how anything works. When you huh? When you wuh? huh?

This is a joking / silly flag based off of this post ( a stim video may autoplay if you click that link ) but you can use it however / in whatever way you want !!

Not sure if this was done before but I just wanted to do a fun warmup. If so you can just consider it an alt. flag.

This was posted from Bug's drafts. If there are any mistakes please let me know so we can correct them.

[changeling-droneco]

I would also say a part of it is also just a lack of depth, like a lot of the times you get this form of "the robot is asexual...so we will not have to go into anything about what it means to be an asexual because its a robot haha!"

Which, like, no. Someone give that robot an ace pride flag this instant and have them form a squish on someone. Make them collect fun little ceramic cakes because it makes them happy and feel connected. Give that robot an ace ring! Make that robot super sex positive even if they are ace and make them like to read weird human porn because they think its silly and imaginative.

Even if you have all robots be asexual in your setting have them still be part of the asexual community and express that asexual nature in different ways.

Even if its a cast of woman, man, robot, if you actual give the robot some of the actual culture of a nonbinary identity while it's still a bit iffy, it goes a long way into actually making it seem like they are not an identity because they are a robot, but completely separate parts of their identity while still being interconnected as all parts of their identity are.

Make it not just the foregone conclusion of just "it a robot, it nonbinary" with the implication that if this character wasn't a robot, they'd not be nonbinary.

Give a robot silly neopronouns right now and have them talk about how they found a fun list of pronouns on social media they wanted to try out or so help me.

We need to clear something up: nonbinary or agender aliens and robots aren’t problematic. Neither are ace or aro ones. These are normal traits that you’d expect of robots and would not be surprising in aliens.

I’m bringing this up because I’ve seen some really weird criticisms lately that take the stance that if you make a robot that has no gender or sexuality, that’s somehow… bad? That a single sex alien race, or a trisexed alien race, or a hermaphroditic alien race, is somehow inherently insulting to trans people? And this take is fucking baffling to me! These are exactly the traits you would expect in robots and aliens! (This applies to robots that seem to act autistic, too; many common autism traits also happen to be traits that you might expect in artificial intelligences.)

I can see the logic. At some point, we noticed all the stories with human cis men and human cis women who were almost entirely heterosexual, and some robot who doesn’t have a gender and explains this to someone at some point, and some people went “woo, agender representation!” and then everyone had to be like “that’s not agender representation, it’s a robot.” Which is correct; the robot happens to be agender, but if none of the humans are then having all the robots be agender isn’t agender representation. So some people started thinking that the robot was the problem. The robot isn’t the problem. The robot is fine. The problem is the humans. The robot’s existence isn’t some insult to the agender community, or the nonbinary community, or the ace or aro or autistic communities, depending on what traits it was given. It’s not representation, but it’s not an insult.

“Oh, but making all the robots asexual is saying that being asexual makes someone a robot!” No. It doesn’t. Making none of the humans asexual and making them all confused by it and having them treat it like some big division is what says that. “Making aliens that don’t have genders gives the impression that genderless people – ” NO. IT DOESN’T. Making all the humans cis people who treat the absence of gender as a weird alien thing is what does that.

The aliens and the robots are fine. They’re not the problem. The lack of diversity among human characters is the problem.

[ajdbsjsbsisbfc]

everyone mad and confused dnp didn't know there was a gay man flag is forgetting they are actually old men (millennials)

[ladyimaginarium]

[schoolchaos]

Something something blue hair and pronouns

Can't own a pride flag because the world kinda sucks so I coped by drawing myself with one! Drew myself with the bi flag because the rainbow flag has too many colorsss

I don't really work with colored pencils often (or. Like. At all, really). Ive learned that they are very much not my medium of choice

I wish I had this fit. Like. I need everything in this drawing, especially the shoes that I didn't color in and aren't shown in this pic.

I don't know why I drew myself looking so judgmental. What the hell am I looking at to be doing the (¬_¬) face??

[weaselmonkey]

I am on a couple of subreddits that have had permenant LGBT or even more positive imagery (r/gunpla has a masked haro on a pride flag) that work perfectly for this. Either bigots out themselves immediately or they wait until they can't hold it in anymore and then a thread pops up like fly paper where a bunch of people complain we shouldn't have LGBT imagery because it's August or whatever, and suddenly we know the bad actors in the community again.

only thing that comes to mind today.

[chemicalarospec]

Some intersex people genuinely don't want to be included but the majority of us want to be. It's actually really difficult to be in queer spaces that consistently enforce sex binaries, never use the updated progress flag with us, and never have intersex flags.

Often the idea that we don't want to be included comes from intersexists who want us to remain as "disorders of sexual development" (outdated offensive term). It's unfortunate that this idea permeates the queer community so much.

You can see photos from this intersex organization using the pride flag, if you need more than an anon's word. https://interactadvocates.org/#

Thanks for the information!

I didn't know "disorders of sex development" was considered outdated and offensive, I thought it was actually a modern (more formal?) alternative to "intersex". Unless that was "differences of sex development"? (I almost tagged it on the original post but I wasn't sure what the term was.) Ah, I found more information on the link (x). Thanks for the website, very helpful!

This subpage is a great source on intersex people wanting to be included! It's a bit more ambivalent than I expected - combined with this anon's word and my previous impressions it seems like there are still a significant amount of intersex people who don't want to be a part of the queer community, but the ones who do want to be included would much prefer the queer community open its arms. So it seems to me the best course is to do so and the intersex people who want to can individually distance themselves (my impression is most people of that group more want to be personally distanced than think 'I' should never be a part of 'LGBTQA') and only partake in intersex communities.

We recommend adding intersex to your organization’s LGBTQIA+ acronym only once you have intersex leadership, consultation and/or resources. Intersex people have very specific needs, just like each letter of the acronym.

This line in particular stood out to me because they only provide guidance for what organizations should do... I feel like most times when the decision is being made whether or not to use the intersex progress flag, it's individuals and small groups like my GSA making posts, selling merch, decorating a space, etc. that aren't serving any needs besides community for anyone... I guess I already came to the conclusion to include by default though? (Honestly this page feels just barely strong enough for me to send to anyone if this question comes up in the future, so if anyone has any more sources do send in more anons!)

Honestly I was hoping for something like "our survey of as many intersex forums/organizations/people as possible found that 80% of intersex people want to be included in 'LGBTQIA', pride events/orgs, and the progress pride flag" --that this had been "laid to rest" and I could just tell my friend straight "no, intersex people want to be included now"-- , but of course I shouldn't expect things to be too simple haha, people & groups are nuanced and nuance comes in the form of caveats. At least I feel much more informed now!

[nintendont2502]

Keep seeing videos of all the big cons over East and like... man. Why did I have to live in the state that has fucking nothing

Don't get me wrong I *love* the small local cons we have here they're so well run, they're really in touch with the local community (*especially* the creative- they're all focused mainly on the artists and local performers and idols and game devs (which could be me soon - id kill to show a game at a local con) and shit which is great) and they arent overcrowded but. God the vibes of PaxAus or Oz Comic Con (the over east versions, not WAs (aka one of the worst cons we get here)) or the fur cons over there is just,,, it's something I *need* to see. There's so many people! It's so fucking huge and the vibes are *incredible* and god I need to move over east or ill die. Actually.

[ltcaneko]

i feel really sad that the gay pride flag is now only considered to just be the lgbt+ flag for many and not something that. i don't know. many gay men identify with anymore. if that makes sense.

[blurred-cat]

my friend made a very good point. the 2SLBGBTQAI+ community has a lot of artists in it. lots of creative people. lots of designers of things. but all of our flags are some combination of Colored Bars. no extra symbols for the most part. no extra designs. just. bars. some bars. what the fuck?

[inkskinned]

i'm a little afraid to go to pride this year. many of us are, a little. sitting around our tapas and video games, the silence that hangs over the discord server. it feels different, we say.

we're privileged. the community that came before us laid the groundwork so i could be raised in a different world, and i will never forget their sacrifices and dedication. they gave us this: a pride that feels like community and celebration and joy. i remember the first few times i went to a queer event - i'd been raised so catholic. feeling safe like that, for the first time... it saved my life. i go to pride to celebrate that feeling - my people, laughing. out in the sun, the way we couldn't have been even 25 years ago. that feeling: no wonder we call it "pride."

who am i to be afraid anyway. there are parts of the world where people are doing much better work than i am. but it's just: i felt at home there, you know? and this year feels different. we are waiting on the dam to break. last year, at boston pride, there was a whole gaggle of sign-holders shouting about jesus. you walk around them and try not to let it get to you.

this year, i'm going to DC's pride with my girlfriend. google sends me concerns about if it's safe to exist in trump's america, if World Pride is a bigass target on all of us. every article uses the words "safety concerns" many, many times. three days ago i witnessed a shooting.

even straight people keep telling me - people are weird lately. sometimes we blame it on Covid and sometimes we blame it on the full moon. but i do remember a time before this, right. it's not just that people are more comfortable being rude. it's this strange, outwards violence. a comfort in being cruel.

it's a big hole to fall down anyway. it's not like they're going to do anything to make pride safe, not really. i don't want a police presence as the solution. and what if this is just fearmongering! what if this is just to get us to stop attending our own events! what if everything is actually fine, and i'm just freaked out by the stated intentions of our president!

and what if i'm just listening to things that are being said. what if i'm weighing the shape and size of this america accurately.

my mother calls me. she's been getting the articles too. i assure her i'll be careful, but i put the phone down and stare at it. i'm going to go to pride. other people made it safe for me, it is my duty and my honor to show up for my community. the only thing we've ever had was each other. it was always an act of bravery. being ourselves is brave.

but i am afraid. i lay out my outfit and i kiss my girlfriend. i cut my nails and clean up my undercut. i hold her hand and hang the sunset flag. the sound of this america feels different. like a volcano trembling. i will love her and i will love being queer and i will sing over the noise of it.

but ... still. in the back of my mind. that feeling, like something terrible has been shifted. like somewhere in the night - they remembered we're different.

[babybluebanshee]

So I finally got my water heater replaced after more than half a year of it leaking and nearly destroying my floor, but that's not the story. The story is of the handyman that installed it.

Dude's name is Chris, and he's your typically midwestern schlub - friendly, apologizes too much, really likes the Cardinals, maybe a little younger than my parents. Hella nice tho, gets the heater installed quickly, and even offers to fix the floorboards it warped (after nearly tripping over the hump it made in the floor twice). Overall, a stress-free experience.

Then, as he's gathering up his tools - "So, I noticed your, uh, banner. Over your bed."*

*(The closet where my water heater is is located in my bedroom because I live in a mobile home, dude wasn't just wandering creepily into my bedroom)

He's referring to a giant pride flag that's hanging over my bed, with the words "Sounds gay, I'm in"

My anxiety spikes instantaneously, thinking oh christ I'm about to get hatecrimed or at least microaggressioned.

But then he says "Yeah, my daughter is gay, and I was wondering, like...where do you guys, ya know, meet up?"

What.

"Because she met her most recent girlfriend when she was in jail, and I keep asking why she doesn't just find a nice lesbian librarian or something and she said 'dad I know they're out there, I just don't know where'. So...like...where do you?"

So I ended up confessing to this nice man who installed my water heater that I don't know of any real gay culture in our mostly Baptist Missouri town of about 18,000 that routinely freaks out over pride displays in the library (I'm sure it exists but I'm lazy and haven't gone looking for it). My girlfriend lives in an area with a rather bustling gay community (we just did a face painting booth for their pride festival a few weeks ago), so maybe have her go out there with some friends, and also a lot of queers I know play dnd so maybe find a nice group of them and network. I then apologized that I wasn't more helpful in getting his daughter settled with a nice, wholesome dyke.

On the plus side, he was not deterred at all, and seemed to be very interested in the fact dnd was so popular amongst the el gee bee tees. I told him the names of some dms I know and told him to go to town. I do not know if the names will be given to his daughter or hoarded for himself so he can join a group and play like he did when he was a teenager and not be called satanic for it.

He's coming to fix my floor next week.

[transfemstalin]

so much of “queerness” is really just consumption, and i think june makes it especially clear.

buy tickets to a shitty festival, buy merchandise, watch this tv show, listen to this artist, support queer small business— that is what modern day western queerness has become. it all comes back to wringing out every last note and coin from working class queer people. we do not have unity, as class divides and transphobia has turned any sense of community into a fine paste. yes, we’re pit against each other, but it’s important to recognize that we’ve rapidly gotten to a point where we simply do not want the same things. we cannot unite under the formerly common slogan of “rights for all”, when racism, sexism, transphobia, biphobia, so on so forth, has been allowed to run rampant in queer spaces. this is no coincidence!

the “queer community” exists, not as a bulwark of lgbtq+ people fighting for their rights, for the rights of their siblings, but as a tool wielded by corporations to gain favor for a month, make extra profit, and by the ruling class to sew division.

and this sewing of discord is not out of random malice, not out of religious fervor, but out of a need to maintain total domination of the bourgeoise. the queer community will forever be successfully divided in this sense, as long as the majority of queer people fail to be cognizant of the class divide amongst ourselves, and even moreso, fail to recognize a collective class consciousness, furthermore failing to see that the only way to truly secure rights for the entire queer community, is a complete destruction of the bourgeois state.

homonationalists and social chauvinists show their colors in full, celebrating their rights (only nationally, of course) that are about as secure as a broken lock under the dictatorship of the bourgeoise. they can forget for a weekend, a month, longer, about the queer people suffering from their country’s imperialist attacks— fuck you, i got mine.

capitalism absorbs these formerly radical movements by depoliticizing them, and what was once a threat to bourgeois domination, has now become a market category. pride is not a political struggle for as long as we do not consciously work to build unity amongst the working class. you have more in common with a working class homophobe than you do a trans rep from lockheed martin.

the business selling you mass produced nylon flags is not your queer sibling. the gay guy closeted in the military is not someone to sympathize with. these people are, ideologically and materially, part of the oppressor class.

if you care about queer rights, you will go out and get organized. this june is not a time of celebration, as the fight is not, has not, and will never be over for as long as the bourgeoise exerts its control over the proletariat.

PRIDE IS NOT A RIOT. join a communist group and do something for once ffs