The current set of Pride Flag candles are now up at geekstudio.ca. You can pick up one of these delicious vanilla scented beauties in rainbow, pansexual, bisexual, transgender, or asexual.
If you have requests for more flags let me know! If there is enough interest I will expand the line with more flags and more scents.
And here are some obligatory bright and colourful photos!
I know this is such a little thing but its something i see on a regular ass basis. Theres no lesbian pride flag? You guys always will bend over backwards to include ace people but not lesbians who are actually lgbt.
Then get off your entitled ass and source all the necessary lipstick shades in wax from a single vendor for them to use for the 2-year-old rebranded lipstick lesbian pride flag.
I’m sure it’s a piece of cake, so they must have just felt like excluding you. 🙂
I understand that it’s hard to source those colours but please do not call lesbians entitled, especially not just for asking why there’s no lesbian flag. Lesbians are the first letter in the acronym and historically (and modernly) some of the most important people in our community, they have every right to be upset and many people don’t know about the difficulty creators have producing things with the lesbian flag
Tl;dr stop calling lesbians entitled.
You understand this is not the same as saying, “Lesbians are entitled.” Correct?
It is not a default response for lesbians to condescendingly shit on the inclusion of the ace flag as if it’s a direct insult to their identity.
I 100% do not have a problem with the question, “Why is *any pride flag* not included?”
Regardless of if they were complaining about aces, you shouldn’t do this. And you know what if anything they are literally entitled to want be included because they are a Lesbian and yknow what even some inclusionist Lesbians are upset that they are almost never included in this stuff.
Lesbians aren’t being “entitled”, they’re upset and you, a non-lesbian, shouldn’t be arguing with them about this
Did you really just turn around with, “But is it really so bad to be entitled to other people’s labor?”
I am not the one who chose, two years ago, to try and turn the lipstick lesbian pride flag into the defacto lesbian pride flag. Like, I’m sorry that this is a consequence that has already been seen with the pride hoodies, and will continue to be seen with other physical merchandise. It’s much easier to find items like markers and paints in multiple shades.
And, again, I 100% do not have a problem with the question, “Why is *any pride flag* not included?”
Do not fucking say “regardless of if my identity is being shat upon.” That’s not a thing. People do not get to randomly throw out that they hate that aspecs are included as a justification for feeling entitled to someone else’s labor.
I’m ace and an inclusionist and even I could see you were out of line, and that doesn’t mean I think what they said was justified, of course I don’t like what they said but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re being a dick
Oh, cool, so then you also responded to all the REGs on this post to say a-specs absolutely 100% belong in this community and that they’re all out-of-line and being dicks?
Dude exclusionists very rarely listen to what we say, telling every single reg on this post that aces are lgbt+ would be a waste of my time and energy. I was however hoping you would listen, it’s seems I was wrong.
If you already know that, why would you start shit over a sarcastic and petty response to a REG acting like if I wasn’t being sarcastic they would have taken me seriously?
Your first response didn’t even acknowledge that it was blatantly acephobic.
This is so ridiculous. It is absolutely entitled for anyone to be offended that someone would include one lgbtqia+ identity in a post but not theirs and demand that they be included INSTEAD OF that other identity, which happens almost any time a creator of some sort makes a product using the ace pride flag.
The issue isn’t that they want a lesbian flag. The issue is that they think they can just demand someone make the lesbian flag and blame their inclusion of aces for the fact the lesbian flag isn’t there.
A lot of creators have trouble with the lesbian flag because there are so many shades of pink on it. That doesn’t mean they intentionally leave it out, but it means it might take a while to get the materials for it.
Others don’t know it exists, because the flag is so new.
Like, of course you should want to see yourself represented. But there are lots of other flags missing from this too; you don’t hear me screaming at the person for not including the enby flag or genderqueer flag or saying how dare he include someone else before including me, do you? Because that isn’t the way to approach it.
Plus, Tumblr has a 10 photo limit on posts. The person might very well have all of those flags, but just couldn’t show us in this one post.
Long story short, it was the first commenter who was out of line. @christopherokamoto shouldn’t be punished for pointing that out.
For the record, THIS is how you ask for the lesbian flag:
Not with some rude ass bullshit attacking aces.
Not to mention someone in the comments pointed out that the original post is old and @geekstudio is already promising to put out a lesbian flag version, so there is no need to be having this conversation anyway.
I’m… pretty sure people were just protesting to someone saying that the lesbian flag should be included instead of the ace flag, not that someone wanted to see the lesbian flag?
The repurposing of the lipstick lesbian flag to be the general lesbian flag is pretty recent, probably just within the past couple of years. There are a lot of content creators that don’t even realize it’s happened yet. Those content creators often include the rainbow flag as a way of including gay men and lesbian women.
Also, you have no way of knowing that these are the only flags the content creator has done or is going to do. Just because these are the ones they’re showing within a post doesn’t mean they’re the only ones.
Politely requesting a flag you don’t see represented is fine. Attacking the content creator on the assumption that they don’t intend to or haven’t done that flag and that that’s out of intentional exclusion and not ignorance is not okay. And suggesting that that flag should replace another flag already represented is doubly not okay.
Also…
Lesbians are the first letter in the acronym and historically (and modernly) some of the most important people in our community
I can’t be the only one who is really uncomfortable with the idea that some people in the community are more important than others…?
Right??? All people in the community are important.
Plus, the L being first has not always been the case, so using that as a reason why it’s okay to be angry that the ace flag was included and to feel that lesbians should be included before aces makes no sense.
And again, as said before, many lesbians use the rainbow flag for themselves. Many creators use the rainbow flag for both gays and lesbians. Many people use the rainbow flag for literally all of us! Let’s not assume that the OP is doing this to spite lesbians.
@im-glad-i-crashed-the-wedding is absolutely way off in their assessment, and I’m surprised to see that coming from an ace inclusionist.
No one here has a problem with lesbians. It’s @angryautisticaesthetic’s rudeness, aggressiveness, and ace exclusionary bullshit that is the issue.
❄💙 Bella 💙❄
Here’s the thing though:
When I first started putting up my Pride Animal shirts, I made SURE to post every single one in the lesbian Pride flag (as well as the queer chevron flag which @officialqueer & I dreamed up like … what, 2y avo? 18mo?). I made a big deal about them being available. I sourced the thread to make patches, too.
They didn’t sell. None of them sold. Not in the lesbian flag. I’ve sold exactly 3 of the pink lesbian Pride items, patches and shirts, in the 9mo. I’ve sold more women’s tank tops (just tank tops, not including anything else) with the word NO on it in the ace flag in the past 2 weeks than I have ever sold anything with the lesbian flag on it. I’ve sold more Bi Pride “the moon is my girlfriend” shirts than lesbian Pride shirts, and the bi Pride version was a custom request!
So clearly the items aren’t the problem. It’s that no one is buying the lesbian Pride versions.
Now.
I had something like 600 Pride shirts. It is impossible to set up Etsy listings with more than 2 variations. What that means is you can pick SIZE and SHIRT COLOR but not flag. I have to have a separate listing for each Pride flag.
Every time a listing renews every 3 months without selling? It costs me money. Not a lot of money, but enough that it adds up when you have six hundred fucking listings.
So, see, I did go all in on representation, and I bought the thread and I put up the listings and I’m still in the negative on those items, not even counting the labor and time to make those designs, upload them, tag the entries on Etsy properly, update all the attributes… just designing fewer than 20 items and updating all that tonight took something like 8, 9 hours.
My market rate for design is $25/h for community stuff. So on top of being in the hole on thread and listing fees, I’m way, way in the hole on time, and every hour I spend uploading things that don’t sell is an hour I’m not doing work I get paid to do from clients, or writing for clients or my Patreon, or designing stuff that sells.
Now, I have a line at the top of every shirt listing that says “send a request if you would like a different shirt cut or flag and i’ll list it.” And I do, and fast. Ask anyone who has gotten a custom from me. And a lot of people do ask for customs and get them.
But, frankly, I’m not going to default to posting that particular Pride flag, the same way I don’t default to posting the Queer chevron flag or NB flag either, and the latter 2 are MY identity. It just doesn’t sell enough. If you see either one of them in my shop currently, either it was a custom that someone bought and the purchase paid for the renewal of the listing or it just hasn’t timed out from the last auto renewal since I decided to stop bleeding money on listing fees for stuff that never sold.
All of that is just economics. Ace, Bi, Rainbow and Trans stuff sells, and sells well, so I list those 4 as my main flags. I have a mortgage to pay, a teenager to feed, 3 dogs to pay vet bills on… asking me to pay money to list things that don’t sell so that I don’t get harassed by people who feel entitled to my time and energy but don’t want to apparently purchase those listings is pretty much bullshit.
And boy am I starting to get real fucking weary of seeing artists get harassed like this, over the same exact subgroup, and protesting that the exact same other subgroup is getting included by default. Over and over again it’s “how DARE you make an ace one and not a lesbian one? I can’t BELIEVE it you are THE WOOOORST.” Over and over.
Well, idk about anyone else but in my case it’s simply proven that a given design in the ace flag is likely to get viewed hundreds of times and sell ten times while the lesbian version of the same shirt will get looked at half a dozen times and never sell. And I’m not getting harassed over not posting the NB or demisexual or Queer flag by default.
Demanding that small business owners/artists spend money and put up versions of their art that you don’t intend to buy is shitty behavior. Harassing creators and telling them they’re terrible, that they’re lesbophobes, etc, bc they’re not posting a difficult to make color combo that doesn’t sell is also shitty behavior. Unfortunately it’s become such a trend of late that if I didn’t know at least a good chunk of these blogs were legit I would think it was some sort of elaborate Russian “split the community” thing, or artists getting trolled.
tl;dr – if you intend to buy it, ask for it nicely and you’ll probably get it. Small business owners like selling things! It’s kind of what we do! If you don’t intend to buy it you’re literally asking someone do labor and spend money to make you feel good while giving them nothing in return, and that’s not okay. And harassment of creators is NEVER ok.
I cannot stress enough that the same pride animals and pride designs that sell in bi, ace, trans, queer, nonbinary etc DO NOT SELL in the lipstick-lesbian-made-lesbian flag. I have sold ONE lesbian pride patch ever, and sourcing the threads was expensive and not easy.
So, yeah.
Honestly this bit of knowledge makes the anger of the random exclusionists on this post even more ridiculous to me.
I 100% support everyone being represented, but not at the cost of content creators’ mental health, safety, emotion health, and income. No one deserves this.
This is just unbelievable.
❄💙 Bella 💙❄
I want to make it totally clear that I will, and do, set up any freaking flag someone wants. I got thread to make a leather pride patch, made an agender leaf patch… all you gotta do is ask nicely. Every small business owner wants to sell shit.
But this repetitive BUT WHERE IS THE LIPSTICK LESBIAN FLAG THAT BEGAN IN 2015 YOU HATE LESBIANS (that shit is NOT an exaggeration, I just went through the notes and there were multiple notes talking about how the OP hates and is excluding lesbians and how ppl trying to explain stuff and saying ‘stop being rude, y’all, you’re not entitled to someone’s labor’ is lesbophobic) is just NOT ok. Especially when it’s accompanied by not… buying the thing??
also i resent the implication that being in a certain spot in the acronym makes you more or less important than other members of our community…
The next time I see the “it wasn’t canon argument,” I’m going to run screaming at you with copies of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 and news articles detailing the treatment of convicted homosexuals in 19th Century England, and then continue screaming until you understand exactly what would have happened to Arthur Conan Doyle had he explicitly written Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as gay lovers.
So, I wrote this a bit cheekily last night, but now I want to expand on it with some actual facts. I see a lot of people saying, “Oh, back in the 19th century, Sherlock and John couldn’t openly be together.” And that’s true, but what’s at the heart of that sentiment is this one, “Arthur Conan Doyle couldn’t have written them openly together, because the general public would assume he was encouraging homosexuality, perhaps was even homosexual himself, and that would have been dangerous.” Here’s why.
In 1885, the British Parliament enacted section 11 of the he Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, known as the Labouchere Amendment which prohibited gross indecency between males. It thus became possible to prosecute homosexuals for engaging in sexual acts where buggery or attempted buggery could not be proven. Note that they didn’t have to actually catch you in the act, they just had to suspect that you did it. During this time period, many notable men were prosecuted with disastrous results; Lord Arthur Chilton committed suicide after being implicated in Boulton and Park trial involving two transvestites and Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison and hard labour after being found guilty.
Was there still a homosexual culture in England at the time? Yes, it was around this time that the movement began to flourish, with clandestine gatherings preceding the opening of the first gay pub, The Cave of the Golden Calf in 1912. There was even the beginnings of gay erotica and publishing, but it was still very much subversive and not openly distributed among the public.
The opposite of who Arthur Conan Doyle was; Sherlock Holmes increased subscriptions to The Strand magazine by 30,000. While Oscar Wilde, if not embraced, accepted, the consequences of his actions, Arthur Conan Doyle was not in a position to do that. He received a knighthood in 1902, he was involved in political campaigns and other civic work throughout his lifetime, and he had 5 children to support. He was not in a position to risk what an accusation of buggery would bring.
So, when you look at the situation, Arthur Conan Doyle was unable to go any farther than he had with Holmes and Watson in his original stories. Even if he wanted to. Even if he tried to fill it with as much subtext as possible, he would always have to be mindful of what would happen if he went to far.
This is why this argument bothers me so much. Were Sherlock Holmes in John Watson explicitly in a romantic relationship in the original stories? No, and no one is arguing that they were. Are we intended to imply, with the clues that were safe to include given the environment at the time, that it’s a possibility? That’s up to you to decide. But demanding that the only way a relationship could be legitimate is if it had been clearly stated by Arthur Conan Doyle is frustrating because it’s imposing today’s standards on a time period where they do not fit.
Extremely well written and accurate, thank you. I wish more of the ‘Doyle would have written them gay if he’d wanted them gay’ brigade actually bothered to understand this. But no, they impose today’s situation on Doyle’s writing. ‘Dorian Gray’ was cited as evidence in Wilde’s trial in 1895: the first openly ‘lesbian’ novel, Radclyffe Hall’ ‘The Well of Loneliness’ was prosecuted as obscene. And that was in 1928. All it takes is a little research. Thanks again 🙂
Anyway, I bring up Wilde because Doyle makes a somewhat ambigious statement in one of his stories, The Adventure of the Three Students, that may relate to Wilde:
“It was in the year ’95 that a combination
of events, into which I need not enter,
caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself
to spend some weeks in one of our great
University towns, and it was during this time that
the small but instructive adventure which I am
about to relate befell us.”
What is the combination of events into which he “need not enter” that would lead Holmes and Watson to spend some weeks away from home? Possibly nothing, but also possibly the trial & conviction of Oscar Wilde, which occured that year and brought public attention to the issue, making London a very unsafe place for men who may be suspected of homosexuality. (Here is an informative post that also mentions this, among other things.) I’m not sure that a month is actually given in the story, but Sherlockians tend to place it in spring based on context in the story itself. Spring of 1895 also is when Wilde’s trials and conviction occured.
Aside from being friends with Wilde, according to Doyle’s official biography, Doyle had liberal views on homosexuality for his time. During his life, Doyle on a few occasions had gotten involved with legal cases in attempts to help people. One example involved a man he knew, Sir Roger Casement, whose life Doyle almost managed to succeed in having spared, but failed due to “the discovery of Casement’s diary. It chronicled in detail his homosexuality, which at the time was also a criminal offense.” (this is also taken from the official biography of Doyle)
None of this is hard evidence that Holmes and Watson were intended to come across as a gay couple; all I am intending to suggest is that Doyle would not necessarily have been against the idea, and that at any rate he had lost real life friends and acquaintances thanks to laws against homosexuality that Doyle considered too harsh.
This is getting more than a bit long, but I have one more point to bring up: the Turkish baths. The Adventure of the Illustrious Client begins with Holmes and Watson relaxing together at a Turkish bath.
By the time that Doyle wrote that story (1924), public baths had already been known as a meeting place for gay men. Even around the time the story takes place (1902), the first recorded police raids on public bath houses (in the US) had occured (1903). As I don’t want to add any more to the length of this post, I will just link to a page that talks about this story specifically and a bit of info from this page of Wikipedia:
can’t talk about periods because it “triggers” trans women
can’t talk about their vaginas because it “triggers” trans women
can’t talk about issues in other parts of the female reproductive system because cissexism, transphobia and it “triggers” trans women
can’t talk about how they don’t like penises because it hurts trans womens feelings
can’t talk about their attraction to female body parts because not every female has [insert body part] and it may hurt trans womens feelings
has to overcome her sexual boundaries because penises are “female organs”
[insert more]
It would be a constant walk on eggshells. They would be always at risk of getting called a cisbian/cissexist/transphobe and so on. We know how gendershits react if you say the “wrong” things. It can be very dangerous.
So who benefits from all this?? Hint: Not lesbians
I’m a trans woman in a relationship with a girl.
– When she talks about her period, I listen. If she is on her period, I offer her support and try to make her comfortable in any ways I can. I’ve thought a thousand times about how I don’t have a female reproductive system, I’m quite used to it – the word ‘period’ isn’t going to upset me. All it means is I can’t talk from experience about periods, so I might start to feel uncomfortable in social situations where such discussion is taking place.
– We have frequent discussions about vaginas, the female reproductive system, issues that target women with a female reproductive system, and about the female body and how beautiful it is. It doesn’t trigger me. At most, it makes me slightly impatient for the later stages of my transition.
– My partner doesn’t particularly dislike penises, but if she told me she doesn’t like them, my response would be something like “me neither.”
– If my partner’s sexual boundaries excluded penises then I would be fine with that, there are plenty of other ways in which to enjoy each other’s bodies.
And the whole egg shells things – Yes, there are many sensitive issues that I have, and I do often get upset about things while my girlfriend is around. For example I was watching her get dressed, and I noticed how well clothes fit her, then I got upset about how my proportions don’t lend themselves so well to female clothing. But I wasn’t there calling her transphobic for getting dressed in front of me? I wasn’t blaming her for how I was feeling? Everybody has sensitive issues, it would be difficult to find a partner who doesn’t have at least a couple of issues that might come up in day to day life; just because trans women may have a concentration of these issues around certain areas doesn’t mean we aren’t viable as female partners?
I’m not saying every trans woman is the same as me (though, looking at other comments people have made, many of us seem to have a similar outlook), what I’m saying is that any number of these supposed reasons may or may not apply to any given trans woman, so they aren’t not reasons enough to rule out trans women as potential partners.
It still stands that for a lesbian (or anyone who dates women) to say, outright, that they don’t date trans women, is transphobic. Even if your standard of woman, or the types of women you’re attracted to might rule out many trans women, there are thousands of trans women whom you wouldn’t know aren’t cis without being told, so to rule those out just because they’re trans is definitely transphobic.
To conclude, all your points are flawed and you need to learn some things.
I’m a cis girl attracted to girls. I am in a relationship with a trans women
– When I’m on my period curled up in pain, she curled around me and tells me she would take the pain away if she could. She gets me a hot drink and chocolate and watches films with me. I don’t hide it from her, she knows how her body works and she’s getting use to how mine works. Not every women has periods, trans or cis.
– We are in a sexual relationship of course we’re going to talk about vaginas, aside from this we talk in general if she has any questions I’ll answer them.
– I don’t have an issue with penises. If I did there are plent of other sexual ‘adventures’ you can have with people.
– Why can’t I talk about an attraction to ‘female’ body part? She’s with a girl she clearly appreciates them too!
As the women above stated my girlfriend has somethings she will get upset about, I know what these are and try to minimise her upset. I know she thinks she’s too tall and wishes she was closer to my height. No matter what happens she can’t change her height, I tell her how amazing her height is, I try to help her accept who she is. She’s got beautiful long legs every time we are out and she’s got her legs out and heels on people approach her and tell her how jealous of her legs they are, sometimes it’s small steps to acceptance that helps her.
Stop generalising trans women. So what if someone other than you benefits from something?
I love my gorgeous girlfriend.
Many many many women love transwomen, again as the lady said above refusing to date a trans person is transphobic. End of story.
❤️read the comments & ignore irrelevant twefs
what world are terfs fucking living in where trans women are triggered by everything and need to be ~protected~? it really goes to show that you don’t see them as people and instead see them as problems. jesus.
On July 27, the same day President Trump banned transgender people from serving in the military, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit arguing that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not — and should not — provide legal protection against discrimination based on one’s sexual identity.
“The United States submits that the en banc Court should reaffirm its settled precedent holding, consistent with the longstanding position of the Department of Justice, that Title VII does not reach discrimination based on sexual orientation,” the document reads.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act officially prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex and national origin.” The Department of Justice’s brief interprets that information with the following: “The essential element of sex discrimination under Title VII is that employees of one sex must be treated worse than similarly situated employees of the other sex, and sexual orientation discrimination simply does not have that effect.”
I’ve been contemplating for several days something, and I’ve been trying to distill it into meaning, and put nice little bullet points on how this relates to things that have been bugging me about some common Discourses I’ve been seeing, but at the end, I only really have a story. So here, have a story.
About ten years ago, sometime in the eventful 2006-2007 George W. Bush-ruled hellscape of my identity development, I was just starting to figure out how I felt about my conservative upbringing (not great) and whether I was some brand of queer (probably, but too scared to think about what brand for too long). I was working as a server at a popular Italian-inspired sit-down restaurant that was the closest thing my tiny South Carolinian town had to “fancy” at the time but isn’t really fancy at all.
The host brought a party of four men to one of my tables. It was hard to tell their ages, but my guess is they were teenagers or in their early 20s in the 1980s. Mid-40s, at the time. It was standard to ask if anyone at the table was celebrating anything, so I did. They said they were business partners celebrating a great business deal and would like a bottle of wine.
It was a fairly busy night so I didn’t have a LOT of time to spend at their table, but they were nice guys. They were polite and friendly to me, they didn’t hit on me (as most men were prone to do – sometimes even in front of their girlfriends, a story I’ll tell later if anyone wants me to), and they were racking up a hell of a tab that was going to make my managers happy, so I checked on them as often as I could.
Toward the end of their second bottle of wine, as they were finishing their entrees, I stopped at the table and asked if they wanted any more drinks or dessert or coffee. They were well and truly tipsy by now, giggling, leaning back in their chairs – but so, so careful not to touch each other when anyone was near the table.
They’re all on the fence about dessert, so being a good server, I offered to bring out the dessert menu so they could glance it over and make a decision, “Since you’re celebrating.”
“She’s right!” one of the men said, far too emphatically for a conversation on dessert. “It’s your anniversary! You should get dessert!”
It was like a movie. The whole table went absolutely silent. The clank of silverware at the next table sounded supernaturally loud. Dean Martin warbled “That’s Amore” in some distorted alternate universe where the rest of the restaurant went on acting like this one tipsy man hadn’t just shattered their carefully crafted cover story and blurted out in the middle of a tiny, South Carolina town, surrounded by conservatives and rednecks, that they were gay men celebrating a relationship milestone.
And I didn’t know what I was yet, but I knew I wasn’t an asshole, and I knew these men were family, and I felt their panic like a monster breathing down all our necks. It’s impossible to emphasize how palpably terrified they were, and how justified their terror was, and how much I wanted them to be happy.
So I did the only thing I knew to do. I said, “Congratulations! How many years?”
The man who’d spoken up burst into tears. His partner stood up and wrapped me in the tightest, warmest hug I’ve ever had – and I’ve never liked being touched by strangers, but this was different, and I hugged him back.
“Thank you,” he whispered, halfway to crying himself. “Thank you so much.”
When he finally let go of me and sat back down, they finally got around to telling me they were, in fact, two couples on a double date, and both celebrating anniversaries. Fifteen years for one of them, I think, and a few years off for the other. It’s hard to remember. It was a jumble of tears and laughter and trembling relief for all of us. They got more relaxed. They started holding hands – under the table, out of sight of anyone but me, but happy.
They did get dessert, and I spent more time at their table, letting them tell me stories about how they met and how they started dating and their lives together, and feeling this odd sense of belonging, like I’d just discovered a missing branch of my family.
When they finally left, all four of them took turns standing up and hugging me, and all four of them reached into their wallets to tip me. I tried to wave them off but they insisted, and the first man who’d hugged me handed me forty dollars and said, “Please. You are an angel. Please take this.”
After they left I hid in the bathroom and cried because I couldn’t process all my thoughts and feelings.
Fast forward to three days ago, when my own partner and I showed up to a dinner reservation at a fancy-casual restaurant to celebrate our fifth anniversary. The whole time I was getting ready to leave, there was a worry in the back of my mind. The internet web form had asked if the reservation was celebrating anything in particular, and I’d selected “Anniversary.” I stood in the bathroom blow-drying my hair, wondering what I would do if we showed up, two women, and the host or the server took one look at us and the “Anniversary” designation on our reservation and refused to serve us. It’s not as ubiquitous anymore, but we’re still in the south, and these things still happen. Eight years of progressive leadership is over, and we’ve got another conservative despot in office who’s emboldening assholes everywhere.
It was on my mind the whole fifteen minutes it took to drive there. I didn’t mention it to my partner because I didn’t want to cast a shadow over the occasion. More than that, I didn’t want to jinx us, superstitious bastard that I am.
We walked into the restaurant. I told the hostess we had a reservation, gave her my last name.
She looked at her screen, then looked back at us. She smiled, broadly and genuinely, and said, “Happy anniversary! Your table is right this way.”
Our server greeted us, said, “I heard you were celebrating!”
“It’s our anniversary,” Kellie said, and our server gasped, beaming.
“That’s great! Congratulations! How many years?”
And I finally breathed a sigh of relief, and I thought about those men at that restaurant ten years ago. I hope they’re still safe and happy, and I hope we all get the satisfaction of helping the world keep blooming into something that’s not so unrelentingly terrible all the time.
So apparently last year the National Park Service in the US dropped an over 1200 page study of LGBTQ American History as part of their Who We Are program which includes studies on African-American history, Latino history, and Indigenous history.
Like. This is awesome. But also it feels very surreal that maybe one of the most comprehensive examinations of LGBTQ history in America (it covers sports! art! race! historical sites! health! cities!) was just casually done by the parks service.
I’m torn, because on one hand I love anywhere I see the Pride flag, because more exposure and the normalization of celebrating, not denigrating, our community is great. On the other hand, McDonalds really is crap. There is a ton of sexual harassment and it is often worse for the LGBTQ community. This just feels like a money grab for our community. As a franchise, though, I think things like this may vary by location?
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 