#cultural intersection

[ahb-writes]

"The worst thing that can happen to someone who gets famous is that they believe that they deserve it."

Adam Savage Q&A (12 January 2024)

[trans-androgyne]

"Manhood is fundamentally shaped by the patriarchy and cannot be separated from it." What a sad view to have of gender, and one that directly harms trans men and mascs.

Do you realize how close that is to what TERFs believe? I’ve encountered so many of them that go off about how gender is inextricable from patriarchy, only existing to oppress women. That's where the term "gender critical" comes from. They think gender should be abolished entirely instead instead of preserving what brings people comfort and euphoria. They see trans people transitioning as inherently upholding patriarchy, including believing that trans men are just oppressed girls betraying their sisters by trying to move up in the gender hierarchy.

Gender has existed without patriarchy and it will again. I'm sorry to tell you this, but by saying the two are inextricable you are letting colonizers win. My ancestors lived in a matriarchy before being colonized by Spain and inundated with Catholicism--yet we still had gender roles, ones in which women were respected and had power. We certainly were not unique for that.

What happened to "smash the patriarchy"? Please don't just accept that this is the way of the world, that to be a woman means to be a victim and to be a man means to be an oppressor. My masculinity is queer, not gender-conforming. I resist the patriarchy by my very existence, as do other trans men and mascs. If you want to be inclusive and supportive of all trans people, you're going to have to expand your view of gender beyond what the patriarchy has taught you.

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: How To Decenter Men In Your Life

Consider the values, goals, and desired lifestyle that feel most authentic to you if social scripts/stigmas didn't apply to you

Take time to become radically honest with your desires as an individual – outside of the perception of men, your family, boss, teachers, peers, etc.

Cultivate a sense of personhood and identity established in your interests, hobbies, skillsets, learning capabilities, creativity, and desire for growth in all aspects of life

Act in your own best interests. Speak up for your needs, and advocate for yourself. Be more "selfish." Don't apologize for what you want and go after it. Act in your own best interests

Become confident in negotiating, assertive communication, and standing on your own two feet. Establish relationships in all aspects that are based on mutual benefit and equitable exchange

Unlearn your self-sacrificing & people-pleasing. Stop shrinking yourself or suppressing your needs to make others feel better or more comfortable

Validate yourself: your needs, desires, goals, dreams, preferences, and opinions. You need to choose yourself every day. Your appeal to others means nothing if you don't like the person you are or are becoming to satisfy the needs or desires of others

Consider the ways you're consciously and subconsciously confining your self-expression and belief system to fit the mold/appease the patriarchy. Actively work to deconstruct this mentality and way of being

Be honest with yourself about how men enrich your life. Not the other way around. Do they fulfill you romantically, sexually, both, or neither? There's no right or wrong answer, except the one that requires you to put on a performance rather than live in alignment with your true self

More resources including book recommendations/creators to follow HERE.

[odinsblog]

🗣️ Pay very close attention!

Please forget, for a moment, that many people live in the intersection of simultaneously being Black + LGBTQ + refugee + Asian. Instead, I am asking you to look at how the Republican culture wars are pitting one identity against the other.

DeSantis has banned any mention of Gay and Trans people, Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Critical Race Theory, and much more… but now he is mandating Asian American history.

Florida and other Republican controlled legislators around the country are whitewashing and erasing Black history from school history textbooks, while also making Asian history a requirement. ⁉️

Please be just a little bit curious.

You must ask yourself, why?

WHY would an abjectly racist politician ban one culture’s history, but require another’s?

DeSantis is playing Asian people, the “model minority,” against—in his eyes—all of the “less desirable” minorities: Black people, Lgbtq+ people, etc. etc. etc. It’s a classic divide and conquer strategy.

Please see his ploy for what it is. We are all stronger together. Republicans know this. It’s why they’re working so hard to drive wedges between us.

Don’t fall for the okie doke.

[pidgefudge]

i did it i wrote the shitty teenage poetry

[whereserpentswalk]

Reminder that you should not be comparing two groups to see whose "more oppressed". I don't care how obvious you think the difference is. It inherently involves saying a certain group's struggles "aren't that bad" when you make arguments in those debates. It's a race to the bottom. Interactionality is about how everyone's experience with oppression under capitalism is different, it's not a linear scale.

Every single argument about who has it worse involves dismissing the oppression of the group you think had it better. You ultimately end up defending one side's oppression the momment you engage in one of these debates.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Yes, let's talk about "your" pronouns for a moment, because I have some thoughts on the matter...

What's that? Oh, silly me. By "let's talk about," what you actually mean is "unquestioningly comply with my demands."

Be that as it may, "we" - which is to say, "I" - am going to talk about it regardless.

Let's analyze this for a moment.

She gives the game away right up front: blue heart is for boys, pink heart is for girls. This ideology is based on stereotypes. If you still doubt this, I don't know what else to show you to convince you.

Secondly, her "gender" isn't a profound knowledge of personal identity, because it changes faster than the weather. I'm not even sure it's her personality, because anyone whose personality changes that rapidly and that wildly has some kind of severe disorder. What she's calling "gender" seems to be nothing but her mood.

Thirdly, and I keep having to repeat this, if your "gender" requires others to participate, then it's not a "deeply personal sense of self." Just like your faith cannot be "a personal relationship with Jesus" if everybody else has to pray or refrain from pointing out the flaws in the bible. "Gender is a social construct" means that your "gender" only "exists" to the extent people play along. People are sick of being bullied into pretending for narcissists.

More importantly, you don't get to make others participate and then deny them any say or input. You can't give people an obligation with no authority, because if you think you can, then others can give you an obligation with no authority.

And you don't get to make others responsible for your mental wellbeing, to carry the burden you cannot or will not, and then get angry when they don't meet your standards or decline the obligation at all. You are responsible for you. Trying to make other people responsible for your emotions or mental state is psychotic. Xians insist that humans - and particularly children - are responsible for keeping their god happy, evidently because he cannot do it himself. You're just as much of an immature psychopath. We are not responsible for keeping you from bursting like a fragile soap bubble.

You can have a personal, unquestionable conviction, or you can have a matter of public interest and discussion. As soon as you insist others participate, you forfeit the right to cordon your beliefs off from scrutiny. If you want your beliefs to go unmolested, then keep them to yourself.

If it's nobody else's business, don't make it other people's business. You can't claim your "gender" is nobody else's business, nobody else gets a say, and then insist it is their business to comply with these demands and prop the whole delusion up.

Private concern or public interest. Choose one.

Fourthly, anyone who comes up with rules like this is a sociopath who is trying to control, manipulate and trap others. Since third-person pronouns are used primarily when someone is not present, when referring to an individual when talking to others, this is a form of authoritarian thought-control. You do not get to dictate how others must see you or think of you. They get to decide for themselves what they think of you, regardless of whether or not you like it, and it's none of your business. And if your sense of self is so flimsy that you must coerce them to conform their view of you to your own view of yourself, then you have bigger problems than "your" pronouns.

When she walks into room, people stiffen because they have to talk like idiots around her - and that's part of the appeal. She wants to be "misgendered," because who is she if she's not a marginalized victim and the center of attention? That's the trick: either you comply, and she wins, or you refuse, and she gets to pretend to be a victim and she wins. Nobody's obliged to pay attention to these insane, imaginary rules, much less play along. When she's already gamed it to win no matter what, the only way for you to win is to retain your integrity and self-respect and tell the truth.

And finally, you do not have pronouns. The pronouns belong to the language, in this case, English. The English language has pronouns for you. You don't have your own pronouns any more than you have your own conjugations or your own adjectives. Other languages, such as German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese, have their own structures, and they're not for you to "fix" with your stupid activism.

And yes, languages change. They evolve through common usage and common acceptance, not through narcissists performing blunt-force creationism enforced with emotional manipulation and vilification.

She's an average, unremarkable girl who's found a socially acceptable way to control other people and pretend to be interesting.

My adjectives are amazing/brilliant/impressive.

Misadjectiving is hate. #BeKind

P.S. I miss the days when pink, green or blue dyed hair was a sign of rebellion and uniqueness, rather than a predictable trope and red flag that warns the world about all your views and opinions before you ever open your mouth. #MakeDyedHairCoolAgain

[sharptoothed-gaze]

Aw!!! Llulah named the turtle áak! (Which is apparently turtle in Mayan)

[stuckinapril]

Every single person on the admissions committees for my dream med schools will roll their eyes when I say I want to become a doctor bc I love science and also love the humanity of it all……… but it’s literally the truth

[jesncin]

Firstly, I loved Lunar Boy and congrats on the Harvey nom! Also wanted to know if you have any recommendations for stories (any medium, any demographic) that you think has a nuanced take on the intersection between race and queer/trans identity? it's really easy (for me at least) to feel pretty doom-and-gloom about the overwhelming whiteness of queer rep but no! the intersectionality we crave is out there! you just have to look for it!

p.s I really enjoy your approach to criticism and have enjoyed reading your recent posts. I genuinely think it's making me a more thoughtful viewer.

Thank you for the kind words on Lunar Boy and our media criticism!! ;0; Ooh yes! Here's my list of recs for QPOC stories:

Our Dreams At Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani. While race isn't directly talked about, it's still specific to the realities of being queer and Japanese. This short manga series inspired a lot of Lunar Boy.

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender. YA novel about a trans masc Black teen going through love triangle shenanigans and self discovery.

The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (this author does a ton of sapphic novels I believe). YA novel about two girls starting a rival henna business but perhaps?? Love?? Happens??

The Ribbon Skirt by Cameron Mukwa. This MG graphic novel is available for preorder now, and is written and drawn by a friend of mine :3 the story is about a 2 Spirit child who wants to create a ribbon skirt to wear for the upcoming powwow.

Sergius Seeks Bacchus by Norman Erikson Pasaribu. A collection of poems (translated into English by Tiffany Tsao) covering an array of genres and stories. Beautifully touching queer Indonesian writing, I recommend anything Norman writes.

These are harder to find but for more queer Indonesian film there's Memories of My Body (coming of age story about a Lengger Lanang dancer, Indonesia's drag dance tradition), Lovely Man (a religious young woman seeks to reunite with her estranged father, who is now a waria sex worker) Madame X (extremely camp queer SUPERHERO MOVIE about a trans woman fighting a violent hate group).

Idk if this is available anymore, but I adore To All The White Girls I Loved Before by Sarula Bao. A short comic from Short Box's annual digital Comics Fair (which I recommend keeping an eye out for comics in the indie scene). It's about the author's unflattering desire to assimilate with the white girls she had crushes on. Some pages are on her site.

Those are what immediately come to mind for me but I'm sure I'm forgetting more!! These are the ones that directly engage with the intersection of being queer and POC, as opposed to a character being incidentally QPOC.

[trans-androgyne]

Okay so I've been puzzling over the nonsensical "saying that trans men have different experiences than cis men is misgendering" talking point for a while and I think I've finally figured out a reason it even exists.

I think a LOT of the queer community has replaced the way they conceptualize gender as, instead of being based on sex, with being based on being a victim or a perpetrator.

So within this new dichotomy (not actually new it's how patriarchy has defined its two genders forever but with the "trans inclusive" change of not also being based on sex), of women being victims and men being perpetrators, it's easy to fold trans women into that because, well, they are victims.

But trans men are victims too. But under this dichotomy, men can't be victims, especially not for their gender. So... "saying that trans men suffer, especially in ways cis men don't, is misgendering" becomes a thing people actually believe...

It's just very. Hm. How instead of letting gender be defined as an internal sense of identity like we've been FIGHTING for a lot of people would rather just very slightly change the patriarchal definitions no matter WHO it hurts.

(Alsp worth mentioning that trans women are very easily also thrown into the "perpetrator" pile if they step out of line at All so this fucked up dichotomy doesn't help anyone except the cishet white perisex (plus other axis of privilege) women who are the least likely to be thrown into the perpetrator pile. Despite being the group of women with the most access to power and therefore the most opportunities and support to Be a perpetrator and hurt others...)

This is an excellent analysis, thank you for sharing it with me. This behavior of theirs falls into the traps of cultural feminism and oppositional sexism. I hope people will start listening to each other and learning to understand the complexity of trans and intersex experiences with gender, gendered oppression, privilege, and power.

[femmefatalevibe]

Essential Feminist Texts Booklist

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

A Vindication of The Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by Bell Hooks

Feminism is For Everybody: Passionate Politics by Bell Hooks

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution by  Shulamith Firestone 

Sexual Politics by Kate Millett

Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner 

Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape by Jessica Valenti

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez 

Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit

The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women by Alicia Malone

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel

Is This Normal?: Judgment-Free Straight Talk about Your Body by  Dr. Jolene Brighten

Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D

The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism by Dr. Jennifer Gunter

The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain 

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn 

The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion by Diana Greene Foster, Ph.D

Regretting Motherhood: A Study by Orna Donath

[dilfdyke]

whatever gender shit armand has going on in the books is fascinating and i hope the show finds some way of incorporating it even though show armand is kind of too old for a lot of it to apply

[sol-insidious]

Luke weilding both his green lightsaber and the darksaber is my favorite thing in the world actually.

Close-ups below:

✨slay✨

[not-gray-politics]

I find it fascinating how many people can acknowledge on some level that the bmi is bad, outdated, inaccurate, wasn't made for individual use, and isn't even useful on a broader scale... but will still use terminology that comes directly from it and won't bat an eye at the fact that it's still in doctors' offices. So, just a reminder for folks who don't know:

"Obese" and "Overweight" are both terms that come directly from the BMI, and are both inaccurate and harmful.

The BMI itself was invented by a eugenicist who believed that all people should strive for the population average of his time period and only conducted research on white men. Women, poc, disabled people, and many other demographics were intentionally left out. It provides no meaningful information on the health or wellbeing of those who use it, but simply stacks them up to an outdated population average. Nothing more, nothing less. Using the terminology that comes from it is reductive and does damage to the scientific community. It has done irreversible damage to marginalized people and the culture as a whole, and is often used to dismiss the health concerns of fat patients. This can and has lead to many people's deaths and is an issue that should not be taken lightly. It has also been used to insult and dehumanize fat people for generations and could be considered a slur under those contexts. Stop using eugenicist language. Be mindful and be kind.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Jun 25, 2024

The impact of the riots at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 has often been overblown. Those few summer days when the beleaguered gay community fought back against the police on the streets of New York City are rightly considered a milestone in the struggle for equal rights in the West. But endless arguments about ‘who threw the first brick?’ have obscured the truth that gay equality was achieved by the activists who persisted in the aftermath, harnessing that energy and changing the world forever.

Perhaps a more important milestone was the march organised by a handful of campaigners a year after Stonewall. Craig Rodwell’s idea had been to make this a yearly commemoration that would supersede the ‘Annual Reminder’ picket events that he had been holding every Independence Day in Philadelphia since 1965. It would be known as the ‘Christopher Street Liberation Day’ – later retrospectively rebranded as the first New York ‘Pride’ march – and it was orchestrated chiefly by Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Linda Rhodes and Ellen Broidy.

The march took place on 28 June 1970, and it was an audacious display. Police hostility to gay people was rife, the local media were overwhelmingly unsympathetic and there were fears of violent repercussions from observers. The day passed off peacefully, perhaps because of a general sense of astonishment that thousands of gay people would assemble so openly. A reporter for the Village Voice wrote that ‘no one could quite believe it, eyes rolled back in heads, Sunday tourists traded incredulous looks, wondrous faces poked out of air-conditioned cars’. At the head of the march, Fred Sargeant carried a bullhorn and called out instructions to the marchers as they made their way from the West Village to Central Park.

Fifty-four years later, and Pride has transformed from an important act of resistance into a month-long orgy of corporatism and virtue-signalling, full of heterosexuals desperate to identify themselves into an oppressed group with the help of trans ideology. ‘Progress Pride’ flags flutter from every high-street store. This relatively new design – a kaleidoscopic eyesore that has replaced the traditional six-stripe Pride flag – is emblazoned on schools, universities, hospitals, civic buildings. In the city of Arlington in Texas, this year’s family friendly Pride event included displays of dildos, half-naked drag queens and human dogs in bondage gear, all co-spon.sored by Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest producer of armaments. In London, numerous pedestrian crossings have been repainted with the ‘Progress Pride’ motif. Police horses find walking across the coloured stripes confusing and disturbing, so the animals have undergone special training to overcome their fears. After all, it is essential to address the rampant homophobia within the equine community.

What might the thousands who turned out on that summer day in New York in 1970 make of this distorted version of Pride? Those gay men and lesbians who risked social ostracism and physical violence to gather in public have little in common with this garish and unsettling facsimile. A poll from 2021 determined that almost 40 per cent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 now identify as LGBTQ. Given the vast majority identifying as such do so as ‘trans’, ‘nonbinary’ and ‘queer’, this means it is statistically certain that gay people are now the minority in this coalition. The early pioneers of gay rights didn’t risk so much for their movement to be usurped by fetishistic heterosexuals with a martyr complex.

It would be interesting to see polling data on how many gay people support Pride in its new ‘trans-inclusive’ incarnation. One recent poll on X asked a simple question: ‘Do you want Pride anymore?’ And although 93.5 per cent of respondents replied in the negative, social-media polls are notoriously useless and we would be unwise to draw any conclusions from them. Still, it is surely significant that this poll was reposted by Fred Sargeant, and that his answer was a resounding ‘No’. That the man who led the first Pride march, bullhorn in hand, should now reject the annual event that he co-created because of its embrace of gender ideology is far from trivial. Nor is it trivial that while handing out pamphlets critical of the trans movement at a Pride event in Vermont in 2022, Sargeant was physically attacked by trans activists.

[ A parade through New York City on Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day, 1971. ]

He is not alone. Many gay people have expressed dismay at the metamorphosis of Pride and feel that it no longer represents them. This can be confusing for those who have not been paying attention to its ongoing political evolution, but there is a very good reason why groups of gay men and lesbians are now holding alternative Pride rallies this year. In August 2022, police insisted that lesbians leave a Pride parade because their banners, proclaiming that ‘lesbians don’t like penises’ and ‘trans activism erases lesbians’, were causing consternation. When gay people are being escorted away from Pride marches by the police, we can safely say that the movement has fallen.

Some might argue that the LGBTQIA+ explosion is an example of what happens when liberalism goes unchecked, that it is the natural consequence of an excess of tolerance and the rise of identity politics. Yet while identity politics in its current intersectional form has proven to be deeply illiberal and regressive, there have been sound reasons throughout history for people with shared characteristics to organise and resist. Unlike the various campaigns for imaginary victimhood that dominate today’s ‘social justice’ causes, being openly gay in the 1970s came at a huge cost. At the time of the first Pride parade, every state in the US with the exception of Illinois criminalised gay sex. In services and employment, discrimination against gay people was permitted, and even most progressives assumed that homosexuality was a mental illness. This is a world away from the exaggerated or fabricated grievances of the diversity, equity and inclusion industry today.

Now that gay people have complete equal rights under the law, the protest element of Pride has been appropriated by those with an apparent craving for oppression. Asexual activists, for instance, have taken centre stage at certain Pride events, even though nobody in the history of humankind has ever been burned at the stake for not wanting to have sex. It isn’t the case that those who identify as asexual are facing discrimination; it’s that nobody cares about what they don’t get up to in the bedroom. But of course, for those of a narcissistic temperament, there can be nothing more devastating than being ignored.

[ Furries march on Congress Street during the annual Pride Portland parade, 2017. ]

Many of those who call themselves ‘nonbinary’ are similarly vocal, but there is no serious comparison to be made between the historical persecution of homosexuals and experiencing some pushback when you demand that others refer to you as ‘they’ or ‘them’. Coming out as gay in 1970 increased the risk of being violently assaulted; coming out as ‘nonbinary’ today only increases one’s chances of being employed at the BBC.

Of course, all of this must be symptomatic of the developing cult of victimhood in the Western world. Ironically, there is now power in being the victim. Those who claim to be ‘marginalised’ are able to get people fired, drive them from public life, and harass and bully them in the name of ‘progress’. Who would have thought there was so much clout in being oppressed?

Far from being a collective gesture of unity, Pride is now widely interpreted as a celebration of homophobia. This is because it has become infected with gender ideology, which seeks to eliminate gay people from their own history. Although trans-identified individuals were rarely seen at activist meetings and events in the early decades of the gay movement, revisionists are now insisting that gay people owe their rights to the hard work of trans campaigners. We are told that a black trans woman, Marsha P Johnson, was the key figure at the Stonewall riots. This is wrong on many counts. The riots were overwhelmingly dominated by young gay men. Although Johnson took part in the demonstrations, he wasn’t present when the rioting began. Most significantly, by his own admission, he was a transvestite who didn’t identify as female.

Fred Sargeant has been much vilified for exposing the truth of what took place in these early years of the gay rights’ movement, and he is now a thorn in the side of activists whose worldview depends on a narrative that runs contrary to the truth. Recently he posted a link to the Digital Transgender Archive on the Third International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy, which explicitly outlines how gay and trans movements in the 20th century were completely separate. The conflation of the LGB and T is an invention as recent as 2015. As the document explains, while the gay-rights movement in the US began in the 1920s, ‘the existence of a transgendered community that seeks reforms did not come into existence until the 1990s’.

The historical revisionism doesn’t end at Stonewall. Activists have attempted to claim that certain gay historical figures were mistaking their true trans identity for homosexuality. Just as Mormon priests have been known to baptise the dead and thereby convert them unwillingly to their cause, trans activists have been busy harvesting the annals of history for potential recruits. Those falsely claimed as trans include George Eliot, Dr James Barry, Radclyffe Hall and Joan of Arc. People who were gay and gender nonconforming are particularly vulnerable to this kind of retrospective ‘transing’. It’s very convenient for activists that the dead can’t complain.

While many trans campaigners consider themselves supportive of gay rights, overt homophobia is nonetheless often tolerated and encouraged within their circles. There are innumerable examples online of trans activists claiming that homosexuality is a form of transphobia and that only bigots have ‘genital preferences’. ‘If you’re a cis gay man’, writes one, ‘and your sexuality revolves around you not liking female genitalia I hope you die and I will spit on your grave’. A video recently went viral featuring an activist explaining to gay men why they should transition to female and that ‘maybe being gay is an outdated concept’. An online influencer called Davey Wavey uploaded his attempt at gay conversion therapy in a video entitled ‘How To Eat Pussy – For Gay Men’. One can imagine it being shown to young men at an evangelical Christian retreat for those who wish to find a ‘cure’ for their immoral urges.

This isn’t simply a case of a handful of lunatics on the fringe – this idea has also been normalised in mainstream gay culture. Australia’s Human Rights Commission prohibits lesbians from holding female-only events on the grounds that it discriminates against men who identify as female. Sall Grover, the founder of women’s app Giggle, is currently in a legal battle in Australia because she refused to allow a man to join. Stonewall has even redefined ‘homosexuality’ on its website as ‘same-gender attracted’. Its former CEO, Nancy Kelley, once suggested that women who don’t wish to date trans people are ‘sexual racists’. No, Nancy, they’re just gay.

We have seen all this before. In the 1980s, it was a common trope for gay men to be told that they ‘just haven’t found the right girl yet’ and to suggest to lesbians that they ‘just need the right dick’. The rights of homosexuals depend upon a recognition that a minority of people are attracted to their own sex. Once sex is eliminated from the equation, gay rights are no longer tenable.

The most obvious example of how gay rights have been threatened by trans ideology is that young gay people are disproportionately at risk of surgical ‘correction’. Given that between 80 and 90 per cent of adolescents referred to the NHS Tavistock Clinic were orientated towards their own sex, it is clear that in many cases homosexuality was being treated as gender dysphoria. I am usually mistrustful of accusations of various ‘phobias’ which can be used as a rhetorical technique to discourage disagreement. But if medicalising people for being same-sex attracted doesn’t qualify as homophobic, I’m not sure that anything does.

And so Pride and its accoutrements have come to represent an ideology that seeks not only to erase the foundations of gay rights, but also to re-conceptualise same-sex attraction as a condition that requires medical treatment. When police officers decorate their cars with the Pride colours, when NHS workers display the rainbow lanyard, when schools decorate their halls with bunting in solidarity, they are almost certainly doing so with the noble intention of promoting equal rights. But they are inadvertently promoting a movement whose end goal is the eradication of homosexuality.

This is not to deny that the ‘Progress Pride’ flag and all it represents have been embraced by many gay people. It is clearly the case that a majority have not realised the extent to which the flag has been hijacked for a cause that actively works against their interests. The situation has hardly been helped by prominent celebrities, often now referred to as ‘Vichy gays’, who have cheered on this sinister development. Homosexuals are not immune to the condition of useful idiocy.

Given that Pride has become so divisive, and given that so many lesbians, bisexuals and gay men now consider it to be an essentially hostile enterprise, it would be prudent for corporations and government bodies to stop pretending that there is a consensus on this issue. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. By flying the ‘Progress Pride’ flag, they are taking a side in a highly contentious cultural debate, one that alienates as many gay people as it attracts. Those who are serious about gay rights need to distance themselves from Pride once and for all.

==

When the demand for 'oppression' outstrips the supply.

Time to resist again.