NHS Rainbow badge scheme good news

[Imnobody4]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak38ak/uk-government-shuts-down-nhs-lgbtq-diversity-program-rainbow-badge-scheme

Good news if true, written by our friend Ben Hunte.

Maybe not yet, but the hostility to any rainbow symbolism is striking on this board, isn't it?

Plenty of threads on FWR advocate about defacing rainbow flags, and also give advice on this, which is of course illegal.

Mumsnet moderators don't even remove the posts that give advice on how to successfully deface another's property, citing that is freedom of speech.

So they allow this advice on how to commit an illegal activity to stand on their boards. (I have an email conversation with them about this.) We have to assume since this is brought to their attention that this is a position that Mumsnet HQ holds.

So yeah, there is definitely a strong hostility to my rainbow symbolism here.

I'm a lesbian and I and my lesbian friends find it terrifying. We feel unsafe and at risk from increasing prejudice when we see the hostility directed towards the symbol that for decades has represented who we are.

I'm a lesbian and I and my lesbian friends find it terrifying. We feel unsafe and at risk from increasing prejudice when we see the hostility directed towards the symbol that for decades has represented who we are.

Do you believe it represents who you are now?

Because to a sizable proportion of the population it doesn't - it has become synonymous for them with the worst excesses of gender ideology and Queer Theory and public displays of fetishism.

I'm not sure how you could go about reclaiming it.

The rainbow symbol has come to represent homophobia to a lot of people because of the trans insistence that homosexuality doesn't exist. Or as stonewall puts it, is now an outdated 'medical term'.

Nothing to do with prejudice towards lesbians, who they described as sexual racists, and everything to do with the trans ideology that undermines the very concept.

The problem is the rainbow flag doesn't represent lesbian gay and bisexual people now, it represents the T and nothing but the T (with the occasional nod to the letters after the T because they need the numbers).

It may have all its different colours and stripes and stuff but the only group that get a look in when a rainbow flag is deployed and have their voices heard and their demands met are the letters after the LGB. Usually the T.

They latched themselves onto the flag, cause and hard won battles of the LGB like cuckoos in a nest.

I hate the rainbow flag now with a passion. That does not mean I hate the people who feel that flag represents them, but I hate what certain factions have done with that flag and how they have twisted what it once meant, how they've rewritten history, and how they've walked all over what it means to be a lesbian or gay.

suggestionsplease1 · Today 08:34

I haven't seen anything instructions on how to deface flags, but I don't read every thread. Not to cause offence, but you do seem humourless, could it be that they're tongue in cheek?

Or do you mean the thread from last year, where a woman was arrested for taking photos of a Pride flag, which someone had put a sticker on?

We don't have 'flag desecration' laws in the UK. Perhaps PP is thinking of the US.

The difficulty for women is the ability to speak up

There’s two threads atm that relate to this. One where a pp gets backlash at work in a training module and another where a male has sexually assaulted a child and uses ‘woman’

You can see the oppressive part of the T daily

The LGB part there are no clashes with women

I knew I'd mentioned cuckoos before

CUCKOO

There are cuckoos in the nest
that are stoking the unrest,
so bloody insistent that the LGB
join up and partner with the ubiquitous T.

Just at the point of being equal,
and accepted as just regular people,
the cuckoos, they came along,
declared that people were wrong.

That sexual attraction is not based on your sex,
apparently it’s really much much more complex.
It’s now all about the gender feels,
despite whatever undressing reveals.

Saying a son can be the same as your daughter!
That’s what the teachers at school have taught her!
That a person’s genitals need no checks,
and it matters not if you’re XY or XX.

Just because she fancies women,
and not the men who want to be them,
she’s now seen as homophobic,
just because she won’t do dick.

The T have managed to push the LGB out,
whilst claiming all their political clout.
They even claimed they threw the first stone,
and have taken the spoils for their selfish own.

They’ve forced on people a partnership,
whilst all their words they’ve tried to strip.
Without bothering to try and find
if any usurped would actually mind.

There are cuckoos in the nest
that are stoking the unrest,
so bloody insistent that the LGB
join up and partner with the ubiquitous T.

Boiledbeetle 11th June 2023

Yes, I believe it represents who I am now, as do dozens of my friends when we all march behind it at Pride, and when we all remind each other that we have to do what we can to push back against the increasing hostility that is occurring in society now.

We are going backwards to the times people wished we would just disappear, or shut up and sit down. Of course the threads on FWR propagate this as well with the frequent posts about nobody needing to be out, framing it as 'We don't need to hear about your sex life' , when of course it is nothing to do with sex lives, it is just a desire to live openly about who you are in an accepting society.

Covering up our symbol is an attempt to cover up who we are, to make us invisible, to make us ashamed. To push us into a secretive existence out of fear of what encounters we may have.

Some individuals may frame this as a Trans issue - that is not the experience of the hundreds of thousands of gay men and women, who experience hostility to rainbow symbolism as hostility towards themselves.

Mumsnet FWR has perhaps gained ground in this framing exercise, as it attracts people drawn to antipathy towards the rainbow symbolism and rationalises it in this anti-trans context to appeal to others.

But of course Mumsnet FWR is not really very representative of the viewpoints and experiences of gay men and women (I am in social groups which number hundreds of lesbians, and I've not met one yet who isn't aghast when they hear I post on Mumsnet 😂)

Hundreds of lesbians. Many of them male.

Vlad is Mr April on my calendar.

There was a post from someone giving advice on how to deface rainbow symbolism more effectively. They advised a certain technique when placing the defacing stickers so that they would be harder to remove.

Of course, this is promoting illegal activity, and I thought that should be fairly straightforward for Mumsnet to remove when I flagged it, as generally they seem happy to remove other posts giving advice on how to more effectively commit illegal activity.

But they did not remove it. So clearly Mumsnet HQ are quite happy for certain posts advising on criminal activity to stand, and they are the ones that advise on how to deface rainbow symbolism. Putin would be very proud.

O @SinnerBoy , of course, silly me, if only I found the increasing prejudice my community is experiencing a little more funny, I must just be humourless eh? 😂

Do we get to invoke evil dictators / people on threads about male sexual offenders recorded as women?

Or are we honoured with Putin alone

It’s a silly way to go as I get that the flag means different things to different people and coming in strong on the Putin line doesn’t help the cause

And to many women the T means no voice on things that matter. Hence the pushback

I, for one, welcome our new gender overlords.

Also if pp want to look at violence and threats of violence look to males on this

Women say no

Men retaliate

We are no where near aggression just no consent

Could you even define the word lesbian, in the way that would exclude people who have a penis?

The hang up on singular definitions is misplaced.

For example, the top 4 countries in the world for achieving women's parity with men have all taken more relaxed approaches to gender self-ID

https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2023/in-full/benchmarking-gender-gaps-2023/

They are not obsessed with achieving singular definitions, and they are performing the best for women in the world.

Why are you so hung up on this when these countries are showing you it is not necessary to be, in order to be at the very top of the league globally for women's parity and wellbeing?

Plenty of threads on FWR advocate about defacing rainbow flags, and also give advice on this, which is of course illegal

so we’ve gone from the above to ‘there was a post’

So no

God, lesbians, why ARE you so hung up on penises?!

The new,improved type of lesbian.

Variety,spice of life etc.

We are going backwards to the times people wished we would just disappear, or shut up and sit down.

It's not feminists who are trying to disappear lesbians. If a male-bodied person is a lesbian, what is the definition of lesbian?

I don't think LGB can reclaim the rainbow, in the minds of the majority of it's too tainted now by AGP sex offenders and by violence and hate directed towards GC people. LGB need something new to separate them from the extremist TRAs. The Swastika is an ancient symbol from Neolithic times which originally symbolised health, light, fertility, and was associated with solar deities, but it is forever tainted since being adopted by the Nazis. Not as extreme obvs, but the rainbow as a symbol is tainted by it's adoption by the TRAs and their misogynist attempts to erase women as a class.

We say no on a female dominated chat forum and get Putin lobbed at us

Males punch, insult, threaten with violence including decapitation and it’s all rainbow land

Amazing how the word no meaning no consent prompts such retaliation