What in holy hell is this monstrosity???

[punnedout]

https://www.poppyshop.org.uk/products/pride-poppy-badge

Why, just why??? Why does something as pure as remembrance need to be politicised with trans and queer ideology? Or am I being unreasonable to be triggered?!

Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare

Competing rights

They split from the Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare during the great effin' schism. The other spin-off, the Society for the Promotion of Elvis Welfare, wrapped up in 1977.

I no longer buy a poppy.

The Royal British Legion publicly profiles its transgender staff and their contributions. For example, Marci George, a transgender woman and military veteran, works as a caseworker for the Royal British Legion’s overseas team. She also serves as the co-chair of the organisation's internal LGBTQ+ Staff Network. (The Royal British Legion)

So you don't support the charity because they employ a trans veteran? Have I got that right?

Yes, along with the scandals. I’m no longer willing to give my money to them.

A poppy reflecting the fact that LGBTQIA+ people fought and died for your freedom.

The pride poppy seems a reasonable thing to me, especially given how gay soldiers have typically been persecuted or erased in the past. Sure, the association with polarising transactivism is aggravating, but it would be bad to throw out the baby with the bathwater
The Black poppy badge is really lovely, as well as being an important representation of Black service members who have been so under-acknowledged in former conflicts.

Nearly everyone who fought in the so called ‘good wars’ are dead now. No one is dying for king and country anymore!

Most of the famous war poets were gay or bi, along with several members of the SAS. Many thousands more soldiers, medical staff, pilots and auxillary workers who won the war were LGBTQIA+ but could not talk about it.

Siegfried Sassoon, who was bisexual, was decorated for bravery during WW1, publicly protested the war and then returned to the front, where he was shot in the head. He narrowly survived. Robert Graves, also bi, was shot through the chest. Both suffered from PTSD all of their lives, notably Graves.

Wilfred Owen, who was gay, was diagnosed with shell shock (severe PTSD) after falling through the battlefield into the cellar of a destroyed house, where he lay for a long time before being found. He returned to the Western Front after pioneering therapy at Craiglockhart, where he met Sassoon. Although he knew he wasn't well and that influential friends could have saved him, he felt he had to return. He was shot a week before the Armistice. The badge acknowledges him.

There were so many more. They had to hide their sexuality and gender identity for fear of prosecution. Until very recently, LGBTQIA+ people were thrown out of the military without recompense.

Yes they should be celebrated. Forever. The least they deserve for serving, while knowing who they were could see them jailed, is a badge.

Read Sassoon's 'On Passing The New Menin Gate' and see what he did for the men he served with, who died in terrible conditions. He called out the hijacking of war remembrance by people who wished to smooth over horrible truths, and highlighted the pointless suffering instead.

I remember my English teacher going on at great length about the difference between homosexual and homosexual relationships in the trenches - close male friendship isn’t always romance .(not that there weren’t the same sex attracted in the trenches)
(likewise female, it annoys me no end when intense female relationships (in fiction or in real life) are hindsighted as ‘obviously lesbian’ - did the writer of the comment never have a best friend in their teens?)

As ever, anti-women's rights ideology appropriates other people's suffering.

@TransParentlyAnnoyed “Yes they should be celebrated. Forever”

We shouldn’t normalise or glorify war.

Yes, but what is your interest and/or purpose in posting on this particular forum? Are you hoping to achieve anything, or are you just looking for company, or maybe to pass the time?

I don't know what you mean by this.

I just post on threads I find interesting or that I have an opinion on. Mostly in the active section. Like this one was.

That is not what is happening

Remembrance Sunday glorifies a noble sacrifice rather than mourning its tragic human cost, it has become a cultural and political symbol.

In what way do you believe it glorifies war?

What sparked ny interest was this insistence from some members (and subsequent denial of this insistence) that the board is for GC members. Like you're insinuating now by asking me why I'm posting on a board on a site I am a member of given your assumption that I am "battling" for some "cause" rather than expressing my opinion.

Isn’t Marci just an old school lesbian

What does the fact that these amazingly talented, war-traumatised men were gay or bi have to do with transgenderism? Graves and Sassoon and their contemporaries were not men who considered themselves to be women. Unlike TIM soldiers in the 21st century they were not ‘the first woman to be a front line soldier’. So why is their memory being subsumed by the transgenderists? It is forced teaming. It is offensive.

Matching a poppy with the Pride rainbow flag would have been no different to recognising women, Gurkha or black soldiers as specific demographics who fell in battle, and whose contributions have never been recognised to same extent as those of their straight, white, male contemporaries.

Can men become lesbians?

It’s promoting national pride and validating military actions. The red poppy used to be a symbol that was meant to say, "look at what war destroys.”It now says look at how strong and unified our nation is."