FFS disability is now on the pride flag

[sashh]

I'm livid. I'm disabled and I do not want to be represented on the LGBTQ+ flag.

Also this quote: Dayna Halliwell (she/her), Content and Engagement Manager at Evenbreak, led the collaboration and organised the Pride visit. She said: “It was very moving and amazing to see the reaction of disabled people in the audience. You could see the joy on their faces of being represented in the parade.”

https://blog.evenbreak.co.uk/2024/07/02/new-disability-inclusive-pride-flag-unveiled-at-london-pride/

And you think these EDI consultants are trying to claim that straight disabled people are really queer because of their disabilities?

Shades of #nodebate here with all the 'if you're not LGBT and disabled then it doesn't concern you".

Sounds a bit like TWAW - if you're not trans it doesn't concern you (ie women have no say in the matter).

I get that there is more than one point of view here, bit telling other people to shut up because it doesn't concern them is so 2021.

If you've got a decent rebuttal to all the reasonable concerns raised about funding, rainbow washing as opposed to actual accessibility adjustments, ideological forced teaming etc then perhaps make it.

If you haven't.....

The rebuttal is that the entire premise of the thread is ludicrously wrong.

The premise of the thread is that this is about co-opting disabled people, regardless of their sexuality or gender identity, under the queer umbrella.

But that premise is utterly wrong.

There are good reasons to think it's not a great idea to try to include various elements of the LGBT+ community symbolically within a flag. But the idea that this is broadening who is considered queer or LGBT+ is nonsense - LGBT+ disabled people have always been part of the LGBT+ community. This is purely about whether or not they should be visually depicted on the progress flag.

You can't demand that people rebut arguments based on a nonsense premise.

Sorry, replied to the wrong person during that bit of playground tit-for-tat.

I'm asserting that they are:

1. Forced teaming disabled people with trans people.
2. Throwing disabled people under the bus by, for example, declaring accessible loos to be also all-gender loos without building any extra accessible loos so that disabled people with continence problems end up waiting whilst an able person with special non-binary gender feelz uses the only accessible loo. Or, another example, telling someone autistic who struggles with lying that they are "transphobic" for using accurate and truthful sexed pronouns.
3. Coining it by doing so.

But yes - to be clear, if you are not part of the LGBT+ community, how that community chooses to represent itself symbolically is a matter for that community itself, no one else. And in this case, specifically for those within the community who are disabled.

Straight people - disabled or able bodied - do not get to tell the LGBT+ community whether or how to symbolically represent LGBT+ disabled people on a flag.

There are good reasons to think it's not a great idea to try to include various elements of the LGBT+ community symbolically within a flag.

Why do you constantly refer to it as LGBT+ community not LGB community? And why include T and ‘+’ as part of that community?

Examples of 'forced teaming' disabled people with trans people?

Because most LGB people, myself included, recognise that trans people have always been part of this community and consider that we are stronger as a community together. And because ethically, I refuse to throw trans people under the bus of people using similar tropes that were used about people like me forty or fifty years ago.

Straight people - disabled or able bodied - do not get to tell the LGBT+ community whether or how to symbolically represent LGBT+ disabled people on a flag.

Yet trans and ‘queer’ people (mostly straight) get to tell the LGB community that? Why?

Lots of LGB people disagree, they get no say? And no trans have not always been part of the community.

Like every other forced teaming there's ever been. Like the appropriation by white genderists of "Black Lives Matter" into "Black Trans Lives Matter" as if the non-trans Black people who make up the majority of victims of racialised police brutality don't matter to genderists. Forced teaming, "these people are like you so you should work with them for liberation", is then followed by "these people are more oppressed than you and you should subordinate your own concerns to support theirs".

But, I'll talk about something personal to me: autism charities are all captured by genderism. I want to fill in a survey run by such a charity to help other autistic people, I'm asked for my "gender identity" not my sex, even though my sex is why I was targeted for sexual assault and my sex is why I was subjected to female socialisation as a child and my sex is why my autism wasn't diagnosed until adulthood. Their survey data is useless because so many autistic people experience gender discomfort of some sort that the number of males choosing "woman" will distort the data about autistic women.

Forced teaming means never being allowed to say "hang on, this other group's interests and our interests are actually in conflict here". Forced teaming means not being allowed to say "hang on, just why are so many autistic girls being referred to gender clinics?" Forced teaming means autistic people being called on to denounce Cass, and autism charities actually doing so, because "transphobia" even though the puberty blockers ban will protect a disproportionately high number of autistic girls from medical abuse.

Firstly, the false distinction between LGB and trans or queer people. Many trans people are LGB. Many LGB people - myself included - embrace the term queer.

Secondly, trans and queer people are not forcing anything on LGB people. Trans people are part of the LGBT+ community. LGB people who object to that community are free to do their own thing - some of them do, they're just a small minority of LGB people.

Who said they get no say.

LGB people who do not want to be part of an LGBT+ community can do their own thing. They can have whatever say they like.

But they don't get to insist that people like me throw trans people under the bus or demand that the majority of LGB people who support trans people only form the communities that they approve of.

👏

This is off topic a little but in relation to the LGB buggering off and forming their own group. They did. LGB Alliance.

That's apparently a "hate group" according to the TQ+ segment of the alphabet, presumably because they did exactly what PlanetJanet advocates.

Wasn't allowed according to TQ. Exclusionary. Hateful. Blah blah blah. Charities regulator involved and everything.

I think they won the right to their own space but hey, they were taken to court first.

Is that the "bus" you're referencing?

Oops, misspelled your name Planet, sorry.

You say 'not allowed'.

Who precisely is preventing you from doing so? Your objection seems to be more that people disagree with you, since there is absolutely no barrier to you either making your feelings known to those charities or setting up your own organisations that match your own beliefs.

That is a long way from 'not allowed'.

But of course your BLM example is massively flawed - what you're describing is organisations or movements giving consideration to parts of the movement that might need particular inclusion, support or consideration. It is perfectly legitimate for black trans people to work within the BLM movement to try to ensure that the specific concerns of black trans people are heard and reflected in the movement. That's not forced teaming - black trans people are part of the black community, and they are part of the trans community. There is no forced teaming involved.

To be an example of 'forced teaming', it would have to involve, for example, white trans people insisting that the BLM movement should advocate for them. Which is not what has happened.

Similarly, autism charities choosing a particular approach to supporting trans autistic people isn't forced teaming. Because the people they are supporting are already 'on the team' so to speak.

To be an example of forced teaming, it would have to involve autism charities being compelled to provide support to neurotypical trans people.

When you say they weren't allowed, that's nonsense though isn't it?

They were - and are - allowed.

You seem to conflate the fact that a group is criticised as meaning they are not allowed to exist.

LGB people who do not want to be part of an LGBT+ community can do their own thing. They can have whatever say they like.

Yes, because when the LGB Alliance broke away to form a “LGB only” organisation, they absolutely weren’t denounced as a transphobic hate group because they excluded the TQ+, were they? And there absolutely wasn’t a sustained campaign to strip them of their charitable status?

Like not welcoming tw into female shelters is "literal violence" and not giving kids pbs will lead to multiple suicides, as per Jolyon Maugham? That kind of nonsense? Like you claiming that us criticising ugly flags etc is asking you to throw other people under the bus? That kind of nonsense?

Oh, and lesbians who’ve wanted to restrict their dating circles to biological women only absolutely have not been likened to “sexual racists” either.

What about the woman who wanted to have a “biological woman only” dating event? It was shut down by TRAs as I remember.

You can try and dress up the opposition to these efforts by LGB people to have their own spaces etc as “criticism” all you like but the bile and hatred heaped down on anyone who steps out of line goes far beyond “criticism” and straight into out and out efforts to oppress.

But it's not just criticising the aesthetics of the flag. If it were, I may well be on here agreeing.

What this thread is about has almost nothing to do with aesthetics.

But good deflection from your debunked claim that the LGB Alliance aren't allowed to exist.

Do you think the right to exist is the same as the right to be free from criticism?

LGB Alliance are, of course, motivated by their campaign against trans people. It's why they never have anything to say about LGB rights that aren't focused on trans people or gender.

Pointing that out doesn't prevent LGB Alliance from existing for those who object to being part of an LGBT+ community. The problem they have, of course, is that only a tiny minority of lesbian, gay and bi people actually want to break up that community.

Also, judicially reviewing charitable status when LGB Alliance do not do what their mission on which their status was secured says they do is entirely legitimate.

Did you miss the charity commission investigation? Did that pass you by? That there was a legal attempt to strip them of charitable status? Did you miss that? Were you asleep? The fact that it was "allowed" after a legal battle doesn't mean the attempt to make it "not allowed" didn't happen. It just failed.