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/

Maybe they're actually thinking ahead. Including those who are currently residing elsewhere on the flag, but may, as a consequence of "gender affirming treatment", warrant a move into the "disabled" space? Maybe the designers are just ensuring there will be a warm welcoming space for these gender warriors.

Ironic that the disabled heart and triangular trans/poc/intersex (their term not mine) are literally covering up the original lesbian gay and bi flag.

Nothing about that offensive flag, with all the hateful misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric it now embodies, in any way represents me.

This is how I feel exactly.

It’s nothing but forced teaming. As soon as (mainly) heterosexual autogynaephiles triangled dd themselves over the LGB pride flag, they buffered themselves with black - for the people who died of AIDS, and brown - for non white people. Any objection from LGB people was treated with accusations of racism or not caring about women in Sub Saharan Africa who are living with HIV. “Haven’t you heard of intersex? Educate yourself ffs” followed soon after. Now we have “included” disability so any objection to TQ dogma will invite accusations of ableism alongside everything else. In the meantime trains will be covered with the “pride” flag but accessibility for disabled people will not improve. What are you complaining about? Disability is included in the flag! Who cares if you can’t get in the train? You are INCLUDED in the paintwork!!! Can you not see my lanyard??????

The original rainbow flag was supposed to cover every same sex attracted person. The idea that it excluded LGB people who are disabled or not white or had HIV/AIDS is a gross and despicable misrepresentation of our history.

If you are sexually attracted to both men and women then you are bisexual. It’s entirely normal to only be attracted to a very small number of people - perhaps only one. Many people mate for life. Many people have a few short lived sexual relationships and then find one person they are next level attracted to and are not attracted to anyone else. It used to be called falling in love. That doesn’t require a special name or flag. It’s just ordinary life, even if you are biphobic.

I'm a bi woman with several disabilities. I have a massive problem with disabilities being included in a pride flag. My disabilities aren't an identity, and I'm not proud to have them, I'd rather not go through life in a body whose health conditions threaten my lifespan, access and enjoyment. Disabled people's rights deserve visibility, inclusion in every factor of life from building design to government legislation, and HR policy and practice, and if necessary sure let's protest and march but our disabled struggles, visibility and rights do not deserve to be lumped in with our rights to openly be attracted to both men and women. Adding disability pride to the flag does absolutely fuck all to make life better for us, it's the equivalent of planting a few trees as a greenwashing exercise. (A "rainbow-washing" exercise, if you will!)

A quick look finds that many many many queer scholars include gender under the queer umbrella.

SULLIVAN, N. (2003). A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. Edinburgh University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvxcrwj6

Ruberg, B., & Ruelos, S. (2020). Data for queer lives: How LGBTQ gender and sexuality identities challenge norms of demographics. Big Data & Society, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951720933286

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-84891-0

Though I appreciate a clear definition becomes problematic when authors assert that "I realized that rather than a straight review, I wanted to try to illuminate queer as a prompt, provocation, pleasure, and promise in contemporary
queer anthropology.3 I wanted, in other words, not only to explore recent work in queer anthropology but also to consider queer less as a key term and more as an affective, political, and intellectual mobilization of precisely that desire to do justice to it—even as that desire, when it returns to us in the form of our academic work, must always fall short" (Weiss 2022: 316).

So completely clear as to what is and isn’t included as ‘queer’… it’s an affective, political, and intellectual mobalisation of a desire to do justice to queer.

Got that? Good.

They've also banned a women-only group due to pressure from TRAs deeming it a 'hate group'.

They've eradicated most of the original flag, leaving only 39% intact. A powerful metaphor for the ongoing and rapid erasure of the LGB from their own movement.

This really is beyond offensive. And The Lobby are the first to cry when they are offensive, calling misgendering, for eg., 'literal violence' and having women persecuted and denied their livelihoods, so they are the last people in a position to cry foul on that count.

People with DSDs have repeatedly asked for their rare medical condition not to be politicised in this way. They have also requested not to be referred to by the inaccurate (and also offensive) term of Intersex.

Small, and perfectly reasonable requests in anyone's book. But just like the women who would like to maintain autonomy over their own protected spaces, sports and language, it's apparently asking too much.

In my living memory I can't think of a most-persecuted-minority-on-the-planet,-ever, who are this aggressive, this violent, (cf. death and rape threads), this powerful, this effective in having a whole dictionary of medical language changed to suit their will, this able to have dissenting voices fired from their professions, or this persistent in demanding that others suit their own identities (fuck off with the 'cis' yeah?) to suit their whim. Ever.

Oh, wait. This is old male supremacism with a new shiny label.

This. It is a means to gain funding/lobby opportunities directed at those with disabilities. It is about taking control and establishing a monopoly over it all, which means you can never talk about disability without prioritising gender ideology and queer theory.

I know a disabled woman who's strongly GC and another who votes tory

Disabled people are all individuals and it cannot be assumed that they want to be a part of the alphabet soup / authoritarian progressive movement which the pride flag now represents

Groucho Marx' comment that he wouldn't be a member of any club that would accept him suddenly comes into sharp focus now ....

They did include race, via the brown and black additions a few years ago

Of course if a gay disabled woman told the bearers of this flag she voted Tory and is GC she would be instantly excluded at best, and abused a called a Nazi at worst.

Because, you know, inclusion.

That is queer theory.

Disabled people - the afterthought.

And people are supposed to be proud of this?

Actually reading this thread, as many have alluded to, this may be part of the Stonewall money grab. Funding was drying up after all the big legal wins for gays and lesbians were achieved. The trans thing is proving to be more of a difficult sell than they realised. But having already changed Pride from sexuality to vague, general diversity, why not reposition yourself as also fighting for disabled rights? That opens up more funding opportunities, you can add it to your diversity index you get organisations to comply with, you can start doing training on it, and it acts as a useful diversion against the less savoury implications of arguing for males in female spaces. And who cares if you end up taking funding from charities who actually specialise and know their arse from their elbow on disability issues? Its a dog eat dog world in the Third Sector.

Your niece is bisexual and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Calling it something else doesn't mean it isn't true.

@JusteanBiscuits

Trans is gender identity. Queer encompasses more. Some people who may be, for example, non binary, but there are many MANY who identify as queer who are CIS.

I think I see what you’re saying? But whilst trans = gender strictly speaking and CIS (for want of a better word) identity as queer, queer does include trans. It certainly does for many queer theorists. So queer also encompasses gender. That is, both trans and cis are included under the queer banner.

This is stupid. Not all but many in the lgbtq... whatever... choose this way of life, no one ever ever chooses to be disabled so should not be on the freaking flag.