What do you think about the rainbow flag?

[DJLippy]

Does anyone else get a shudder when they see a rainbow flag outside a venue? Harry the Owl compared it to a Nazi flag and I'm inclined to agree.

I'm Bisexual so I should be thrilled to find all these inclusive spaces but I just feel a stab of anxiety and make a mental note to steer well clear. It's a real physiological reaction not something I can control.

A few years ago I used to love seeing the pride flag outside bars. I guess back then it actually meant something. Now I feel like it's actually a sign of exclusion - that anyone who doesn't believe that twaw is not safe there.

Also it does kind of imply that all the other venues are a threat to the LGBTQI++ people. I actually get a lot less grief being with a woman in a normie bar than I would in a gay bar. What's more its often just random cafes and shops which as far as I am aware have no gay history. Just feels like a cheap virtue signal by straight woke folk.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who are same sex attracted. Do you feel that the flag which used to represent your community been appropriated by male supremacists? Do you self exclude from spaces which fly the rainbow flag?

Different trusts, different criteria?

For sure. Another round of FOI requests would be illuminating, but it’s a big job.

Perhaps a well established org that claims to represent same sex couples, such as Stonewall, could be persuaded to take it on?

Perhaps a well established org that claims to represent same sex couples, such as Stonewall, could be persuaded to take it on?

There's an idea.

To be consistent, I was taken aback to see Maya Forstater 'calling out' Caroline Criado Perez on Twitter. Emma Hilton then said that she supported Maya's stance altho' she's walked this back a little when challenged in the comments about it:

I really really do not agree with the tactic of publicly hassling women to make pledges of allegiance and to use their platforms to advance the cause we think they should advance, in the manner we think they should. It’s the exact same tactic we deplore when the other side do it.

twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1233929426573963267

I can not agree with asking pledges of allegiance and purity spirals. "If you don't support me/this cause in the way that I perceive to be appropriate then the assumption is that you are against me/this perceived good that I champion." It will always remind me of Catch 22 and everything we've learned about coercion from social psychologists.

I might read that and think that not every woman has to fight every front in this battle and that Maya is expressing a frustration I've seen from a number of prominent women who have stuck their necks out and got clobbered for it.

But you know what? Women asking for support from other women is not a purity spiral. Women defining feminism as something for women, not men, is not a purity spiral.

I will not criticize women for not doing everything, nor for expressing frustration when they feel unsupported, nor for doing anything I wouldn't do myself as long as they are working towards women's liberation.

Can we stop undermining each other like this? And purity spirals are a specific thing, and we do not help ourselves when we apply them to women setting boundaries for themselves - be it by not feeling strong enough to take on the TRA Totalitarians or by saying that feminism is for women.
It was a useful term to describe the mechanisms of purity politics and groupthink, but it's getting on my last nerve now because boundaries are a big part of what we are fighting for, and this is getting distorted.

I don't like purity politics, and I've never supported it, but there is a difference between a purity purging, demanding pledges and brave women asking each other questions about their mutual fight, and while I don't agree with Maya on this specific point as I think Caroline Criado Perez is doing brilliant on the front she is fighting, I will not accuse her of purity politics.

Weirdly even before I found out about the whole trans debate I failed to love the rainbow flag.
It always seemed very corporate and lacking in authenticity (back then I still believed it stood for L and G)
Now I just feel its outright sinister.

Honestly, even without the appropriation and so on, I'm not a fan of the rainbow flag. It's very stereotypical flamboyant gay male/drag queen in glitter and heels imo. You know "my fabulous gay best friend who I go shopping and cocktail drinking with"

Nothing to do with my life whatsoever.

I disagree. The wider context of the tweet is in the thread:

CCP did what she felt comfortable doing. MF acknowledged her for it and wanted her to do more. I find that to be edging towards the sort of purity and coercion that I mentioned upthread about making a pledge with the badge. It's not enough to wear laces, a lanyard and a badge, you need to make a pledge.

Can we stop undermining each other like this?

My response to that exchange is that MF is criticising CCP for not engaging on MF's preferred front. I don't perceive that we have a right to demand that of others as it usually leads to a raising of the ceiling of what that preferred support must look like.

Well I’ve seen a flag sticker in a window with ‘the rainbow railroad’ printed above and some gubbins about this venue being a lgbTetc haven (and we are talking a trendy central London gym class with juice bar not a spit and sawdust joint in a redneck town).

Appropriating the underground railway now??

My response to that exchange is that MF is criticising CCP for not engaging on MF's preferred front. I don't perceive that we have a right to demand that of others as it usually leads to a raising of the ceiling of what that preferred support must look like

I don't really disagree, and these conversations have happened before, when Julie Bindel lost her shit with women who supported her privately but not openly, and I could see both sides of the issue.

Not really sure why we're having this conversation on this thread, though, didn't notice where we were.

I think I'm one of few on my current uni cohort who hasn't switched to wearing a rainbow lanyard this month. Let's not think that they're all wearing them as a statement of being allied and supportive - they're wearing them because they were being given away free with a lot of pressure to accept them - I've avoided by staying away from the building in question most of the month until supplies ran out.

I don't like being pushed into doing/wearing things anyway - I stopped wearing poppies when the poppy-related hysteria got to the levels it is, and I don't agree with the current state of the pride movement in terms of how it treats lesbians who don't want to sleep with penis owners. Wasn't pride all about loving who you wanted to love... not loving who you want to love unless you don't love someone we expect you to? So I've avoided being be-rainbowed as a protest against the bullying lesbians are being subjected to in terms of being pressurised to ignore their own instincts and feelings and sexual attraction. I'm not brave enough to openly challenge it - so I just carry on wearing a range of lanyards I bought myself (because our default one is itchy as fook) and conveniently "forgetting" to go pick a rainbow one up.

Currently I think I'm pledging my allegiance to Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario as I recall...

Being 'bullied' by strangers on Twitter for not wanted to sleep with trans women is so far down on our list of things to get upset about.

I can see why - you are married.

As the mother of a lesbian teenager who has already had a massive amount of bullying for refusing to consider a male presenting teenage trans girl as a potential partner it’s high on my list of things to get upset about.

OverMy sorry to hear that is happening to your DD. Is it IRL or online?

Sadly lesbians are often propositioned by men. We are seen as a challenge. It's tiresome.

I can well believe these propositions also come from men who identify as women although I have had no personal experience of this.

I don't see one as worse than the other. I also don't understand how one is harder to refuse than the other. They are both equally tiresome and both equally disrespectful of boundaries.

If it is happening IRL I would consider getting her school / college involved as it's sexual harassment.

I also don't understand how one is harder to refuse than the other. They are both equally tiresome and both equally disrespectful of boundaries.

I would guess that part of the problem is that when it’s a boy who identifies as a boy, people sympathise with OverMy’s daughter. When it’s a boy who identifies as a girl, people sympathise with him & the daughter is called a transphobe.

EmpressLangClegInChair who are these 'people' you refer to?

Pressuring someone into a relationship they're not comfortable with is never cool whether it's coming from a male, female or someone in between. Nobody I know IRL would ever think this was acceptable.

If these 'people' are random TRAs on the internet then block and ignore.

It’s in RL and it is her peers because a teenage lesbian saying I’m only attracted to females is transphobic.

What’s she meant to do say you aren’t my type/I don’t think about you in that way? Why can’t she just say - I’m a lesbian, same sex attracted and it be respected?

And before you say contact school - it’s all over the LGBT youth guidelines which agree with it being transphobic.

OverMy I suggest a simple thanks but no thanks. She doesn't have to get political about it. She absolutely does not owe this person an explanation of any kind.

Of course she doesn’t owe them an explanation. But her same sex attraction is also not respected or protected.

How can it possibly be 2020 and a lesbian saying I’m same sex attracted is getting political and to be avoided?

OverMy okay so imagine a white lesbian is asked out on a date by a black lesbian.

It's fine for her to turn down the offer of a date.

It's not necessary for her to qualify this rejection by informing the black woman she would never consider dating her and she is only attracted white women. This could come across as racist.

Hence, no need for your DD to make a song and dance about it. A polite refusal is just fine.

OverMy - hope your daughter is alright . Sounds horrible. She absolutely should be able to define her boundaries, to have these respected with no questions asked.

I'm returning to this thread to explain more about my experiences of the rainbow-bedecked places and why I am a bit wary. Sadly, I don't think that the bullying faced by lesbians is uncommon or restricted to only internet "trolls." Some people seem to not see this. To me, the rainbow does not mean lesbian at all anymore. It means LGBTQIA+++, which is dominated by trans and queer. The "L" part of the acronym is often forgotten about. When the rainbow flag does perchance signify a space is something to do with sexual orientation, then it's usually about/for men. Also, if someone could give me a coherent definition of queer, I'd be ever-so-grateful. For exhibit A of why the rainbow isn't for same-sex attraction anymore, I'd point you to the vitriol directed at the LGB Alliance for wanting to separate sexual orientation from gender identity.

There are barely any lesbian nights/venues in the city I live, and the ones that do have men in them. Both men-who-identify-as-women and those who just call themselves men. Neither group respect women's boundaries, but we're supposed to put up with it. Especially the first one. Because "inclusion." These venues have the flag.

I'm not allowed in certain lesbian social circles because I genuinely do not think there is a difference in whether I deny sexual access to a man-who-identifies-as-a-woman or just a man. This goes against the "LGBTQ++ community" saying we need to be "inclusive." So I'm not welcome, or in some situations I may come along but I can't say anything about what I think. But these women would proudly wear rainbow flag apparel.

I went to a LGBTQ+/queer history event recently that didn't mention one woman, nor the word lesbian. Not once. But they did talk about drag queens (who by contemporaneous accounts identified as gay men), called them transwomen. The organisers stopped communicating with me when I asked them why they erased lesbians and bisexual women from our own history. The event was advertised with a rainbow flag and "inclusive."

The thing that really breaks my heart, more than everything else, is how often I meet interesting, smart, sweet and quirky females who are same-sex attracted but no longer want to identify as a women. Some of them will bind their chests or want to modify themselves permanently with hormones or surgery. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to celebrate that as progressive under the banner of the rainbow flag. I find it upsetting, because I love women as women. I fail to see how what is happening to women (who a few years back would likely have been my lesbian sisters, rather than women-who-identify-as-men-or-nonbinary) isn't a form of internalised misogyny and homophobia, in a cultural environment that I think is specifically lesbophobic. I'd like to see women's wonderful bodies being left alone and women free to live as their amazing selves without them feeling any need to change anything. But maybe I'm just not "inclusive" enough.

Sapphos

Please tell me you did not just compare a young lesbian asserting her boundaries by saying no a teenage-boy-who-identifies-as-a-woman with racism?

Please tell me I read that wrong.

I understood what you meant, Sappho's - there's nothing wrong with saying no to someone, you owe noone an explanation to whether you want to date them or not.
We're attracted to who we're attracted to.
Your explanation makes perfect sense.

Black women have repeatedly asked not to be used in trans analogies. Because it’s racist.

Black women are not in anyway more similar to men/male people with variant gender identity than black women are to white women.

Biological females are biological females.

Oh very neat. How to take a perfectly reasonable assertion that someone is allowed to say no, but manage to layer on plenty of 'be nice' messaging with a whopping great dollop of 'if you mention that you are exclusively same sex attracted, it's a bit like being casually racist, so you should keep it quiet'.

Both Sappho and Willis have taken two unrelated concepts - a) that you are allowed to say no to someone for any reason and you don't need to explain and b) if you do reject someone for some reasons, you might want to keep that quiet, and being exclusively same sex attracted is one of those reasons and illustrated exactly what the problem is in a few insidiously nasty posts.

They'd be the ones saying to OverMy's daughter that of course she can say no, but don't make it about being a lesbian, ok? That's mean.