#if you supporting homophobia I'm gonna go cross platform to chase it up

[realasslesbian]

Anyway, @star-observer is censoring my Facebook comments in response to Sydney 'Gay' and 'Lesbian' Mardi Gras trashing all their rainbow flags and replacing them with 'progress' pride flags, but I ain't gonna let no covert hettie corporation silence me bc my gay ideas are putting their shareholdings at risk so enjoy my alleged wrongspeak:

I know you probably don't care about the atrocious state of gay rights in the world today, but fyi the 'progress' pride flag WAS commissioned by a corporation and was designed by a functionally heterosexual male (though I'm sure Danny boy's being paid quite handsomely to keep that lil tidbit under the radar). The creative commons license on the 'progress' pride flag applies to small and large gay owned business (i.e. everyone from your lesbian Etsy hobbyist to Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras will be forking out money to use this flag, as opposed to the free publicly owned original flag). So, unless you're stitching your own flag together out of rags (which the design of this flag (deliberately) makes that difficult to do without an industrial workshop) then you have to pay up. Essentially gay people, in %99 of cases, have to pay Daniel 'Straight Man' Quaser and the corporation he works for to use this flag. Gilbert Baker, designer of the original flag, war veteran, actual gay man, committed homosexual rights activist, specifically stated he made the flag public domain because it should be 'accessible to all for public use and owned by everyone'. That's clearly not the intent of the 'progress' pride flag.

As 'inclusive' as the 'progress' pride flag claims to be, it has obviously been designed with complete ignorance of the original flag and it's meanings, which actually included everyone to begin with. Many of the extra designs in the 'progress' chevron are, at best, duplicating the meaning of the original stripes and, at worst, erasing specific gay cultural facets (i.e black actually stands for AIDs victims, not black people). The design's phallic look has also been considered in poor taste given the increasingly toxic rape culture that lesbians currently experience within the queer community; a rape culture widely abetted, supported and encouraged by TRAs. Seems a bit of a dystopic joke to have the trans flag inserting itself into the rainbow when y'all won't even acknowledge widespread TRA violence against lesbians, but I digress.

Looking at the wider context of the 'progress' pride flag paints an even more insidious picture. The book on gay rights was apparently closed and tossed in the bin several years ago when a handful of countries passed marriage equality (despite the fact that even more countries still criminalize homosexuality (and not transgenderism)(in fact many homophobic countries encourage or even enforce gender transition as a 'solution' to homosexuality). It was around this time that studies started showing gays and lesbians are difficult to market to (especially lesbians) but trans, by it's very nature, was potentially a huge cash cow for the retail/beauty/medical industrial complex. And now we live in an era where Sephora is happy to show men in make-up every day, but has still never explicitly featured recognisably same-sex people. Every form I fill out will ask me for my pronouns, but even the Bureau of Stats won't ask about sexuality. Corporations are having an absolute field day appropriating gay and lesbian pride and turning it into something more marketable. Not only are they now able to take advantage of males and their higher disposable incomes, but they've created a whole new level on which to make young girls feel bad enough about themselves that they'll spend what little money they have in the hope they might one day be treated like a human being. Young girls seeking gender transition has absolutely sky-rocketed in the last few years in an industry that previously saw only a handful of mostly male patients. Why is that, do you think? At the very least, do you think it's worth more consideration than the current trend of calling any inconvenient truths 'transphobia' and moving on?

In any case, the 'progress' pride flag to me represents the corporatisation and mutilation of gay and lesbian pride. It's a symbol of corporate greed and society's continued abhorrence of gay people, simply repackaged in 'inclusion' and 'diversity' and 'creating the largest customer base as possible'. Gay and lesbian people are statistically a very small and shrinking minority within the queer community and our voices have been silenced by the far larger, louder, more socially acceptable and more marketable BTQ+ contingent and the billion dollar corporations that support them. There is no 'progress' for gays and lesbians here, just the same old heteronormativity we've always struggled against. Anyone waving that flag isn't part of my community🤷‍♀️

#lmao I ain't no corporate shill that has to stick to one platform to earn a buck #if you supporting homophobia I'm gonna go cross platform to chase it up #y'all corporates can suck it lmao #lgbt #auspol #lesbian #gay #mardi gras #feminism