Guardian article celebrates Pride without mentioning gays or lesbians

[pachyderm]

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/jun/20/american-family-trans-gender-queer-nonbinary

Just that really. Where do you even start?

I'm just speechless!!

I now feel very staid and conventional.

Yes. There are branches of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence across the world. Like with any voluntary group, sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't.

I know what the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are. They dress up for a laugh on the weekend. That doesn't mean they're breaking family boundaries in any way shape or form.

I think creating family from friends is still ground breaking, it shouldn't be, but it is.
The fact that article is full of straight people claiming to be different because of what they identify is the wtf in the article.

Dh lived in a squat in the 80s when one of the others living there came out of the closet on his 20th birthday and was very soon a nun of perpetual indulgence.

He was ok but the sister nun that he moved in was an evil abomination of a person - he used to do things like spend hours on sex lines that cost ££££/minute then refuse to pay a penny towards the phone bill meaning it got cut off as obviously the others didn’t have spare ££££ around to pay it, he’d start to run a bath then go out to the shop for a packet of biscuits and come back 3 days later - to a very soggy house that had flooded (house was empty when he went out) and the others had had to deal with sorting it out, he had also done the going out for a biscuit for 3 days trick after putting the kettle on - an old aluminium kettle that boiled dry on the gas job it was on - and then got so hot that it melted most of the way up the kettle befor the molten aluminium put out the gas. Luckily no one was smoking when they came in to discover a very gas-y house a few hours later...

The house became the sisters’ London convent for a while - I have memories of being ill in bed with a sick bug and Derek Jarman ringing and having to take lots of messages for him. One of them had a 6 foot condom/penis costume and there’s footage of him annoying a guard on horse guards parade - and the guard being so annoyed that he drew his sword and chased him... all very surreal and all a very long time ago now!

Oh that article has cheered me right up! Surely The Guardian is trolling?

What is a 'two spirit elder' and what are 'adult kids'? The article is surprisingly scant on actual details.

Be weird, do your thing, whatever floats your boat. It really doesn't have much to do with being gay or lesbian though.

A lot of the sisters I knew were gay. But I agree that pride has bugger all to do with straight people. And I don't know a single person who has come out as non-binary who isn't heterosexual and in a long term relationship. Straight people co-opting Pride and LGB is as revolting as white people leading Black Lives Matter marches. But the queer and non-binary and trans voices are SO LOUD that the boring old homosexuals are just overlooked

My fave is Fresh Lev who is friends with a married couple.

OK, so I was reading this, and I thought there must be something going on here that I was missing. Like I didn't know how to read between the lines or ?

What is a 'two spirit elder' and what are 'adult kids'? The article is surprisingly scant on actual details.

Usually adult kids mean your kids that are grown up.

Two-spirit elder means she's a First Nations lesbian women of a certain age.

If the SOPI have been around since the Flood per some posters here, how then is what they are doing in terms of ‘creating clown nun families’ now deemed groundbreaking?

They dress up in costumes and are activists for various causes and practice communal living as ‘families’. Apart from from the drag costumes they’re no different to hippies eg or many other alternative living groups who’ve been doing the same for decades. Again, how is this relative to LGBT and Pride when most LGBT people are just wanting to live normal fucking lives without all the ‘look at me and how different I am’ signposting so we can ‘celebrate’ them?

There have always been people hanging about LGB things who have never had a same sex relationship, are in an opposite sex relationship, and often have kids. They sued to call themselves bisexual, now they call themselves non binary and pan.

I think creating family from friends is still ground breaking,

What complete and utter bollocks! People have been doing it from the beginning of time. Seriously, wise up! ground breaking I just can’t........🤣🤣🤣🤣

No they do it when they are young adults, but then they settle down with a partner. Creating family from friends that lasts into old age is still rare. Generally people settle down, and the partner and any kids becomes family and friends are relegated to a less important place.

And if you don't believe me, post the exact same scenario here involving a conflict between your partner and mother, and between a partner and a friend. I can tell you virtually everyone will tell you to ditch the friend. Because friends are seen as disposable in a way that blood family is not.
Sure people go nc with family, but it takes a lot for most people to go NC for the rest of their life.

jennymanara

What are you on about?

I don't know a single person who has come out as non-binary who isn't heterosexual and in a long term relationship. Straight people co-opting Pride and LGB is as revolting as white people leading Black Lives Matter marches. But the queer and non-binary and trans voices are SO LOUD that the boring old homosexuals are just overlooked

Eaudear Having a conversation, unlike you who just likes to post sarky insults instead.

Flyingoink I do.

Some of my friends’ kids call me Auntie Sprouts, or just my first name. I await my fawning Guardian interview with impatience.

jennymanara
I'm sure you do. You seem very good at this whole gay thing.

There you go.

Brave and stunning, each and every one of them. Bravo.

Jennymanara I think creating family from friends is still ground breaking
Yes it's so very groundbreaking to marry someone who is your friend, like, hardly anyone does that ...

Outside of marriage, "family" is blood-related. It's usually a bit over the top to insist someone who is a friend is actually blood related to you. Unless you're in a cult, or the Mafia...

Why the sarkiness?
Oh sorry I am interrupting your group mock in with some actual facts?

Dpwm I did not realise you were talking about a partner being described as family. That is normal I agree.
And no friends are not necessarily just friends. It is not saying they are blood related to you, that is stupid. It is saying they are your family. Family is different from just friends. And yes people do create families of friends. But yes most people still dismiss this or even mock it.

So I know someone with a friend who is a family member. When she wanted time off work unpaid to care for her when she had been in hospital, this was refused because she was "only a friend". She wasnt, she was family. And there is a history of this in the LG community, because so may people were ostracised by their blood family. I also see people creating family with friends who have been abused by their blood family.

Creating family from friends really isn't 'groundbreaking'. People have been doing it forever.

Yes, lots of people are closer to family than friends, but this doesn't mean that making a family from non blood relatives is 'groundbreaking'.

Okay we disagree. I don't think it is when you are young, I think meaning it and those friends being family when you are old is groundbreaking.