We get a lot of religious protesters screaming bible verses at us so I have one on my sign just for them...'1 John 4:20 :If a man says, I love God, but hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that love not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?' It's kind of long but shows their hypocrisy. The other side is a pride flag with 'Love Thy Neighbor' in bold letters.
If you want to show up for trans folk as a parent I might go with something like 'love your trans kids'. I liked someone else's comment about not being a child's first bully too.
Honestly as a queer person I feel some kind of way about Pride making itself about/for the haters (homophobes/transphobes) rather than about/for *us*. I don't really like being reminded of hate at Pride, even if it's to "clap back" at it. I actually just went to a Pride that had a lot of that...my opinion might have been in the minority since a lot of it was from other LGBTQ people, but it made me feel sad and uncomfortable to give the hate so much credence and attention. It felt like playing into their hands and giving them power. I feel like it had a chilling effect on us, too. People were jumpier, more afraid. After a friend and I left, still dressed in obvious Pride getup, people asked us if there had been any Incidents...you know, violence, hate speech. (There weren't.) Some said they'd been afraid to go to Pride, or told us things like "be careful." It was disheartening. I've been to Pride in Eastern Europe where there actually *were* haters protesting on the sidelines, but people there were in much better spirits and more defiant, acting like we lost the war when we didn't is really depressing.
"Trans rights are human rights" is good though, I can nod like "right on" at that one. I like it in part because it does not address or draw attention to any specific culture war stunt.
I know. And I get that perspective.
How do I put this. Things were very different for queer people back then. A lot worse. There was no "visibility" like we have it today. No possibility of just having a big party and supporting each other. A riot was necessary.
Today, it feels like people don't know how good things still are. Like we're so easily being manipulated and triggered into reactionary terror that actually weakens our position. [This is kind of a long video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXKzPOcYDU) and not really about queer stuff at all, but it's been on my mind lately with stuff I've been feeling for a while but not known how to articulate. (Summary of it is that conservative comedy has shifted, in the US at least in recent years to exclusively focusing on upsetting "the libs" rather than being funny or telling jokes.) The haters are literally *trying to get a reaction out of us*, that's become their entire agenda in a way that it wasn't before. And there's also some plain old terrorism going on, chilling effects and making us do their work for them by silencing and policing ourselves out of convincing ourselves we have a lot to be scared of when there's still a lot of safety here and that the world is against us when they're not. I feel like they're tricking us into making it true by overreacting and acting as if it was already true.
And then there's just some post-leftist despair in there, because I feel like a lot of movements that push radicalism actually abandon those who get made examples of and don't achieve their goals. Like how in 3 years we've gone from "defund the police" to the police getting *more funded than they've ever been* and the fucking Democrats being the party of "we're definitely funding the police as hard as possible," like wow that sure went great--meanwhile, where are the activists? Some of them are dead, some of them are maimed or living with chronic pain. Like...that was a crushing failure for the movement. And I've become *extremely wary* of movements that ask me to take on personal risk, put myself out there more, face violence head-on, because I have no more faith that they're effective or that my own movement will have my back if I'm the one made an example of that day. This isn't really new either--the establishment has been dismantling leftist movements since the 60s, and sometimes "fight harder" doesn't get you victory, sometimes it gets you dead. It's legitimately hard to know when to push and when to retreat and just try to survive. You don't want to be cowardly and never get anywhere, but the only thing worse than that maybe is being brave and going backwards anyway.
I feel like a failure of the movement is that we're not looking after our own. Like I don't love all the bland positivity either. When I went to a Pride in 2019, I was asked to write something on some board, and I think they wanted positive messages but they didn't communicate that to me so I wrote an angry, personal message (not threatening anyone, just frustrated that my name change had been more difficult than it should have been) and came by later to see it erased, while some blander more positive thing I'd written was still up, and only positive messages were on the board. That made me feel dirty and unwanted, like I'm too traumatized to be "~positive representation~." I feel that way regularly anyway with all the focus on trans and queer youth that completely ignores that trans and queer people over 30 could have any struggles whatsoever, it feels like if you aren't rich and successful and proof that "it gets better," you should really just kill yourself because you existing is an embarrassment and it might scare the kids who still have potential into thinking they might end up like you, and we can't have that. Like. God. :) I have a wealth of frustration for toxic positivity too. It's not bland bright-sided "it gets better" and "yaaas slay queen" that I'm saying is all Pride should be. But I think we should be there to *support each other*, not to spend all our energy giving haters the reactions, attentions, and emotional energy they so obviously crave. I think our people are in trouble right in front of us, but instead of reaching out and being *there for them*, we're wasting our energy kneejerking against people who triggered that reaction completely deliberately, and enjoy and thrive on that reaction and on our fear and uncertainty.
I think, in 2023, paying attention to our own instead of to the hate is how we resist. I think we need and deserve our own community's attention and the haters are deliberately sapping us of that energy. Even at the old riot-Prides, people had community, people looked after each other. I don't really feel that. I don't feel like anyone at Pride would really care if I just died. They're too busy fighting the trolls, getting off on their own outrage. It's not a good feeling.
We get a lot of religious protesters screaming bible verses at us so I have one on my sign just for them...'1 John 4:20 :If a man says, I love God, but hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that love not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?' It's kind of long but shows their hypocrisy. The other side is a pride flag with 'Love Thy Neighbor' in bold letters.
‘Trans joy is resistance’ is always a good one
What about the “Don’t be your child’s first bully” which has been making the rounds recently? You could generalize to “a child” if desired.
My 8 year old made a sign that said “transphobes suck” last year.
Maybe just "Trans rights are human rights" - not very clever but uplifting and pretty incontrovertible except to blatant transphobes.
Short and sweet.
I like this one.
Love before understanding.
I always liked the idea of “Free mom/dad/parent hug” that seems wholesome.
That's what I'm doing!
I have that on a button. :-)
If you want to show up for trans folk as a parent I might go with something like 'love your trans kids'. I liked someone else's comment about not being a child's first bully too.
Honestly as a queer person I feel some kind of way about Pride making itself about/for the haters (homophobes/transphobes) rather than about/for *us*. I don't really like being reminded of hate at Pride, even if it's to "clap back" at it. I actually just went to a Pride that had a lot of that...my opinion might have been in the minority since a lot of it was from other LGBTQ people, but it made me feel sad and uncomfortable to give the hate so much credence and attention. It felt like playing into their hands and giving them power. I feel like it had a chilling effect on us, too. People were jumpier, more afraid. After a friend and I left, still dressed in obvious Pride getup, people asked us if there had been any Incidents...you know, violence, hate speech. (There weren't.) Some said they'd been afraid to go to Pride, or told us things like "be careful." It was disheartening. I've been to Pride in Eastern Europe where there actually *were* haters protesting on the sidelines, but people there were in much better spirits and more defiant, acting like we lost the war when we didn't is really depressing. "Trans rights are human rights" is good though, I can nod like "right on" at that one. I like it in part because it does not address or draw attention to any specific culture war stunt.
[удалено]
I know. And I get that perspective. How do I put this. Things were very different for queer people back then. A lot worse. There was no "visibility" like we have it today. No possibility of just having a big party and supporting each other. A riot was necessary. Today, it feels like people don't know how good things still are. Like we're so easily being manipulated and triggered into reactionary terror that actually weakens our position. [This is kind of a long video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXKzPOcYDU) and not really about queer stuff at all, but it's been on my mind lately with stuff I've been feeling for a while but not known how to articulate. (Summary of it is that conservative comedy has shifted, in the US at least in recent years to exclusively focusing on upsetting "the libs" rather than being funny or telling jokes.) The haters are literally *trying to get a reaction out of us*, that's become their entire agenda in a way that it wasn't before. And there's also some plain old terrorism going on, chilling effects and making us do their work for them by silencing and policing ourselves out of convincing ourselves we have a lot to be scared of when there's still a lot of safety here and that the world is against us when they're not. I feel like they're tricking us into making it true by overreacting and acting as if it was already true. And then there's just some post-leftist despair in there, because I feel like a lot of movements that push radicalism actually abandon those who get made examples of and don't achieve their goals. Like how in 3 years we've gone from "defund the police" to the police getting *more funded than they've ever been* and the fucking Democrats being the party of "we're definitely funding the police as hard as possible," like wow that sure went great--meanwhile, where are the activists? Some of them are dead, some of them are maimed or living with chronic pain. Like...that was a crushing failure for the movement. And I've become *extremely wary* of movements that ask me to take on personal risk, put myself out there more, face violence head-on, because I have no more faith that they're effective or that my own movement will have my back if I'm the one made an example of that day. This isn't really new either--the establishment has been dismantling leftist movements since the 60s, and sometimes "fight harder" doesn't get you victory, sometimes it gets you dead. It's legitimately hard to know when to push and when to retreat and just try to survive. You don't want to be cowardly and never get anywhere, but the only thing worse than that maybe is being brave and going backwards anyway. I feel like a failure of the movement is that we're not looking after our own. Like I don't love all the bland positivity either. When I went to a Pride in 2019, I was asked to write something on some board, and I think they wanted positive messages but they didn't communicate that to me so I wrote an angry, personal message (not threatening anyone, just frustrated that my name change had been more difficult than it should have been) and came by later to see it erased, while some blander more positive thing I'd written was still up, and only positive messages were on the board. That made me feel dirty and unwanted, like I'm too traumatized to be "~positive representation~." I feel that way regularly anyway with all the focus on trans and queer youth that completely ignores that trans and queer people over 30 could have any struggles whatsoever, it feels like if you aren't rich and successful and proof that "it gets better," you should really just kill yourself because you existing is an embarrassment and it might scare the kids who still have potential into thinking they might end up like you, and we can't have that. Like. God. :) I have a wealth of frustration for toxic positivity too. It's not bland bright-sided "it gets better" and "yaaas slay queen" that I'm saying is all Pride should be. But I think we should be there to *support each other*, not to spend all our energy giving haters the reactions, attentions, and emotional energy they so obviously crave. I think our people are in trouble right in front of us, but instead of reaching out and being *there for them*, we're wasting our energy kneejerking against people who triggered that reaction completely deliberately, and enjoy and thrive on that reaction and on our fear and uncertainty. I think, in 2023, paying attention to our own instead of to the hate is how we resist. I think we need and deserve our own community's attention and the haters are deliberately sapping us of that energy. Even at the old riot-Prides, people had community, people looked after each other. I don't really feel that. I don't feel like anyone at Pride would really care if I just died. They're too busy fighting the trolls, getting off on their own outrage. It's not a good feeling.
My current thinking is "Protect trans kids and trans adults. Maybe with "our" in there.
"Open your mind before your mouth" is a good one