#hope this doesen't come across as mansplaining

[vindictar]

Hi queer Jew here. I noticed your icon is a pink triangle and it worries me if you're not Jewish or Romani because reclaiming that symbol is uncomfortable otherwise. It's still shoah imagery and it makes queer Jews and Roma uncomfy when non Jews and non Roma try to reclaim it.

hi and hello thank you for reaching out to me it’s smth that i have had a lot of conversations with other queer people about and i always want to hear what other queer people think.

but i’m aware of the connotations and history behind the pink triangle. the inverted pink triangle was what was used in concentration camps and by the n*zi’s. the upward-pointing pink triangle, like what my icon is, was popularized / and used by the act up movement in the 80s / 90s. 

“Avram Finkelstein is credited with designing the campaign’s pink triangle — which is right-side up, instead of the N*zi-era upside-down pink triangle — after conservative pundit William F. Buckley suggested that HIV/AIDS patients get tattoos to warn partners in a 1986 New York Times op-ed.”  -(Times article on the history of the pink triangle)

obviously its impossible to separate the pink triangle from the holocaust, which was the intention, but it is my understanding that it was not just jewish and roma queer people that were persecuted but any person that was “identified” as queer. i think both the holocaust and the AIDS crisis are incredibly important aspects of queer history, which is actively erased and ignored and destroyed. my use of it is not an attempt to co-opt it from jewish and roma LGBTQ people but as a symbol that has been reclaimed by the queer community to raise awareness to the suffering and persecution of past generations of LGBTQ people, which is why i use the upwards pointing triangle. 

if you want to talk off anon i’d be happy to talk to you more about it and hear your side. i also understand that it can make some LGBTQ people uncomfortable, just like the reclaiming of the word queer which also has a violent history though certainly not the same scale as the pink triangle and i respect why some people do not use it or would prefer it not be used. but it’s true that i am neither jewish not roma, and if you could explain more to me why it is something that non-jewish and non-roma people should not be using i would 100% be willing to listen