It's progress, duh!

[PaddleBoardingMomma]

Also, pony love is pony love, ok?

🙃

(I'd like to point out this is being marketed as classroom wall material and childrens wall art, so there's that...)

www.etsy.com/listing/1022966458/love-is-love-guide-to-pride-flags-lgbtq

I’m surprised this isn’t being cancelled for cultural appropriation of Native American Two-Spirit.

Also, I that the gender queer flag uses similar colours to the suffragettes.

I honestly don't know if this is actually about bears 🐻or some weird Stonewalled subsets.

Ah, cultural appropriation is somehow A-OK if it means appropriating a mystical made-up poorly-understood fantasy version of some often dispossessed, marginalised and almost certainly gay people from another culture. That’s absolutely fine whereas doing yoga or eating noodles somehow is a terrible Western-imperialist crime. Didn’t you get the memo?

Does anyone else think that this narcissistic obsession with trying to define a small aspect of the self is a path to disaster? It's got to the point where it is just salami-slicing tiny aspects of the psyche, and for what? What does it actually deliver in terms of improving anyone's life in any real sense?

Maybe I am showing my roots here, but my God ... the amount of energy and time spent on all this, and what does it really deliver? Does it actually give you a better and happier life to constantly fret over whether you are gender queer or not, and which flag you need to put on your bloody social media profile?

The whole thing is a net: a sticky net, designed to trap and imprison.

100% this. It's also unbelievably tiresome.

Yes, agree with all this totally! A sticky net is exactly right.

And these are also exactly the reasons it is incredibly useful to a late-capitalist right wing economic culture, in which it is a huge boon for people to be endlessly obsessing and focusing in on themselves and their “identities” — and most especially, on how they can purchase stuff that displays their “identities”.

If you can render the population ever more self-obsessed, atomised, anxious and divided, that’s fantastic for late capitalism, because it prevents its populations realising the ways the system economically and socially exploits them.

Keeps them fragmented and inward-looking — instead of being politically “woke” in the original sense, in which you are “awake” to systemic injustice within the wider culture (not just race, but all the big systemic issues of inequality and crisis caused by capitalism — ecological crisis, global capitalism, the big systems of inequality in race, sex, culture, politics).

Pony as in Brony? That's been around for a while. There was a case a few years ago...well, I'm not googling the search terms but it involved a stable and he was identifiable through his My Little Pony tattoo. There was an article a couple of years ago in the Atlantic about their Nazi problem too (yes, this really is a thing).

Should there be a tractor flag in with that pony flag? Or should I look both up?

Noooo Helleofabore Do not look this stuff up.

No! Twink is an Irish performer, otherwise known as Adele King. She is/was a mix of song/dance/comedy. She famously told her unfaithful (now ex) husband to 'Zip up your Mickey'.

extra.ie/2020/10/13/entertainment/celebrity/twink-lucy-kennedy-voicemail

Also, I am outraged that 'King/Queen Gender' is not there. That is my gender identity, and the variety of 'little people' genders shouldn't be displayed unless below my more important/significant one.

Oh dear, I foolishly ignored your sensible advice Fudge. Yikes - serves me right!

Hell fire how do you all know this stuff? Actually, don't tell me, I don't want to know 🤣

Several of the ones people are doubting (making fun of, even) here are actually pretty prominent parts of the gay community and subculture. Twinks have already been mentioned- and yes, people do self-identify as twinks, especially in gay male communities- but pony play is also closely linked the leather community which has a huge intersection with the gay community to the point where I don't know any straight people personally who engage with leather subculture, though I'm sure there are a few. Pony play isn't anything to do with bronies, though again I'm sure there are a few who cross over. While I don't think these kink groups should be considered a part of the LGBT+ community inherently as they aren't sexual orientations or gender identities, there is a deep historical connection between those groups.

(As I say, not that that makes them appropriate elements for a pride graphic like this, but it's worth knowing that some of these are long-established subcultures closely linked to the pride movement and not something made up by teenagers in the last few years)

@gayhistorynerd you obviously know your stuff and while I don't pretend to have anything like as deep a knowledge, I do understand that there are varied gay subcultures which interlink and interconnect and aren't 'for' me as a straight woman.

But in terms of something like a twink- I think you would agree that's not really suitable for a classroom wall? I wouldn't want young straight girls self-identifying as sugar babies in primary school, just as I don't want young gay boys identifying as twinks in primary school.

I absolutely agree with you there- 'twink' isn't a sexuality, so even though it's a term people use within gay culture it shouldn't be included in a pride flag post on a classroom wall. It's not an inherently sexual term but a heavily sexualised one in most contexts, which definitely makes it inappropriate in a children's setting, and even in a non-sexual context it's an identity and role heavily influenced by society and how you fit into broader gay subculture. Even if kids who see the poster would grow up to identify as twinks in their early adulthood, it isn't something any child would inherently be, in the same way they could be a lesbian or gay.

These things aren't even a personality, they are more like preps and greasers, which we all know from watching Grease are ultimately meaningless descriptions.

There are quite a few people in Native American communities who use that language, and in fact pushed the idea of two-spiritedness into mainstream culture. It's a little generalist, First Nationsincludes quite a few different cltural groups who have totally different viewpoints about gender and sexuality, but in any case it's not a matter of some radom white person decising to use the term.

Dd2 & her gang spent a wholly disproportionate amount of time mooning over a rather poorly & possibly psychotic anime character called Nagito (I'm like 'bloody hell, at least in my day the vampire Lestat got off his arse & started a terrible band...').

They're so into this stuff - or they were a year ago - that they've now spiralled, to the point that they've reached sheepishness & are trying to pretend it's a strictly year 8 thing, which they definitely abandoned a year ago when no-one was looking.

I'm being flippant. But genuinely, I'm seeing it losing its grip over sensible teenagers. Dd2 is 14, has a nice girlfriend, & is just going off on lovely sensible dates with her to see a movie & grab a veggie burger these days.

The flags & badges & tiktoks...well, they haven't even been particularly consciously rejected, I don't think. They're just one more strata of 'yeah, that was some of the shit we were into last year'.

Again, I don't intend to be dismissive, & I know all this is a hugely present issue for many.

But as a parent & as a teacher, I am very much seeing an ebbing tide.

It makes me very happy to read this @CorvusPurpureus Dd and I went for a open evening at the secondary school she’s attending in September and the library was hung with all the hundreds of gender flags, ‘queer’ authors with their pronouns displayed around the walls and pride stuff everywhere.
It felt a bit like a little corner of indoctrination and Dd is ripe for that. I had a read through her discord chat last week and she’s currently gender fluid pansexual although even she thinks all the flags and genders are ridiculous. Fingers crossed it all blows over soon.

What parent allows their child unrestricted access to a platform like discord as a primary school aged child? The minimum age requirement is 13 years old as well.

My dd is 20, 3 or so years ago she was all for gender being on forms (couldn’t quite get her to see that sex should be on there as well or instead of) very much be kind and non binary being a thing etc

i didnt push at all for various reasons

we had a tentative chat the other day about certain aspects of this…again I’m not going to push but her mind has been changed, whether thats because of experience or maturity i dont know

Yes, it's a very low bar really. I think for folk who are ashamed of their 'cis het privilege' (ie are like 90% plus of people) but want to either a) join the party or b) virtue signal, especially if they have a beard. And hey, I love a party! I just don't need a special flag.