One community, one family, one flag
How do we decide who belongs where?
I talked about this yesterday already, in reference to Laurie Penny’s “There is no LGB without the T,” but there’s always more to say. Stonewall preached the “all stand together” line in response to the debut of the LGB Alliance:
The LGBT community is at its strongest when we stand together 🏳️🌈 Let’s raise each other up today and every day. We are one #LGBTQFamily
That’s a lot of colors though – are they all one community and one family? And how do they know? How do we know, how does anyone know? How do we know who belongs in and who belongs out?
We know it’s not everyone. It’s a specific group, set, tribe, “community” – it’s not all humans. But then what makes it a community and family while the rest of the humans are not part of it? Why are trans women in while feminist women are out, for instance? What exactly is the commonality? And how does anyone know?
I suppose the truth is it’s a silly question, because they don’t mean it that way. It’s not meant as a statement of fact but as a demand for obedience.
The dirty truth is that there can be LGB without the T, but without the LGB, the T would have to do the hard work of getting accepted and gaining the ground. They insist on being slapped onto LGB because that means they automatically come in for all the gains made by LGB, but unfortunately, sometimes LGB gets in the way of T (especially L) and must be reprimanded.
They hitched their wagon to a star that had already risen. By making themselves part of that community, they automatically gained the status of that community, even though they are in many ways diametrically opposed to that community. Now they are taking over, trashing the clubhouse, drinking all the booze, and playing loud music that drowns out all the other music. They won’t be happy until there is only one color on that rainbow flag – the T.
Funny how much that sounds like men. Well, not men, exactly, more like frat boys.
Good point.
And trans women do the same thing with feminism, don’t they – latch on to the existing rights movement, benefit from the progress made, and bully the people who did all the work.
I sure as hell feel like many trans people don’t belong in “my” “community.” Specifically: the heterosexual ones. If you’re trans –and gay, in the biological sense — you’re one of us. If you’re Bruce Jenner or Morgane Oger or Rhys McKinnon, not so much. Especially because many heterosexual trans males’ chief reason for wanting to be a part of the L’s & G’s’ “community” is to gain access to lesbians.
That flag is apt because it looks like the trans colours are wedging themselves into the flag and putting themselves over top of the pride rainbow. Seems about right.
Where would the “trans rights movement” be if it had not been able to ride on the coat-tails of gay rights activism? As Ophelia has pointed out, same-sex attraction is a completely different thing than “gender identity.” What’s the connection? It’s a shotgun wedding, not a natural grouping. Not apples and oranges, but apples and elevators. I think the “relationship” is parasitic, not symbiotic. Gay and lesbian liberation has been used to give cover to toxic, AGP trans activism. TRAs don’t want to be exposed as the cuckoo in the nest, even as they continue to demonize lesbians who are trying to protect their rights. If they get cut loose and are left to fend for themselves, trans activists are going to have a lot less appeal and sympathy without the “support” and camouflage of their gay and lesbian “brothers and sisters.”
#AllLivesMatter
First off, that flag is really ugly. What a horrible composition. Second, yeah, it does look like the triangular segment at left is invading the field of rainbow. And the pink/blue/white is clearly using the brown and black as a shield. Which is, I suppose, a great representation of what’s going on. Every time a white middle-class TIM gets privilege-checked, he starts going off about how black and brown trans people are getting killed in the streets.
he starts going off about how black and brown trans people are getting killed in the streets.
Which could be because black and brown people are getting killed in the streets in general. No, wait, it must be because they are trans, because white trans are being killed in such high numbers…no wait…oh, of course, it’s…no…shut up, TERF!
If there is even a single one of those peoples represented by that flag with an issue unique to itself, or shared with some but not all, why can’t they rally together on that issue as a self defined group? Are the T really so conceited that they believe there is not a single issue affecting L and G and B that is not also affecting T? Holy martyr complex, batman!
And if there is not even a single issue that affects LGB but not T, is the reverse also true? No, it is always a one way street. There are issues affecting the T that the others can never possibly understand yet must support, and there are no LGB issues that warrant them campaigning together without the T. Everything must include T, every LGB outfit is suborned to those issues only.
And so I believe a more representative colouration on that flag would be a riot of colour plus sparkles for the triangle to represent the T, and a single drab other colour for everyone else because fuck them.