Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

The revolution will be supervised.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Bark louder, little dog.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Pride Month Allies: Let’s Share This Far and Wide

Pride Month Allies: Let’s Share This Far and Wide

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Sister Golden Bear linked to this yesterday, but the sound on my laptop was on strike so I couldn’t watch it, but I opened it in a tab so that when sound did finally appear, I could watch it.

Today I finally had time this morning to restart my computer, and the computer gods said “Let there be sound!”  And now there is sound.

It’s a long listen – how sad is it that after years of of twitter, 8 minutes seems like a long time?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    randy khan

    My basic position is that if my Jewish wife can put up with 2+ months of Christmas stuff without complaining (and if you can get her to talk about it, which she’s reluctant to do, it does irritate her), straight people can put up with some flags and rainbows without complaining.

  2. 2.

    Alison Rose

    What I have always said is that being around queer people didn’t make me queer, it made me realize I already was. People want to see that as indoctrination because they desperately want to believe that no one is actually queer, they’re just pretending because they think it’s cool or they’ve been peer-pressured into it, which is so God damn stupid, I can’t even.

  3. 3.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Thank you for highlighting this, Watergirl.

    @Alison Rose:

    People want to see that as indoctrination because they desperately want to believe that no one is actually queer, they’re just pretending because they think it’s cool or they’ve been peer-pressured into it, which is so God damn stupid, I can’t even.

    Once more for the people in the back.

  4. 4.

    realbtl

    Holy shit I’ve been an indoctrinatoror for 20+ years for wearing rainbow shoe laces because I like colors dammit!

  5. 5.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Also my annual link to Joe.My.God’s annual awesome explanation about why Pride matters.

    tl;dr

    I’ll end this by making one final Jewish reference. Possibly you’ve heard the Jewish in-joke that sums up the meaning of all Jewish holidays? “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.” My Pride version?

    They wish we were invisible.

    We’re not.

    Let’s dance.

    Because if there’s anything the haters hate the most, it’s queer/trans joy.

  6. 6.

    Old School

    Eight minutes is a long video, but I’m glad I watched it.  It was worth it.

  12. 12.

    Alison Rose

    @zhena gogolia: And especially for those of us who are middle-aged and up, like…the idea of being an out queer person in high school was MOST DEFINITELY NOT COOL. Even now, the notion that cis straight kids are gonna cosplay as queer because it’s the hot new thing even though it also comes with the threat of violence, ostracizing, loss of rights, potentially loss of life…like, I know these people have at least a handful of brain cells in there, would be nice if they engaged them once in a while.

  13. 13.

    WaterGirl

    Open thread.  Is this not worse than the Democratic presidential candidate riding in the tank?

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Alison Rose:  Much less homoeroticism than than the average rugby party.

    ETA:  And yet I have never wanted to have sex with a guy.  It’s almost like this indoctrination stuff is BS.

  19. 19.

    Evinfuilt

    My wife and I just watched that (thank you) and I’m barely holding back tears, for being in his shoes and not hearing those words, those feelings all in my time. Thinking back to all my years growing up, knowing I’m different, and praying that I wouldn’t be. I’m so lucky to have found someone who supports me for being me.

    and I’m tired of hearing the “but” with support. Or the bitching about a whole month of pride. While we are still suffering, and still not equals, we will be OUT, LOUD AND PROUD!

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    @Alison Rose:  This is so perfect.

    Throw in a quarter and have another ride, Mike.

    It conjures up the pony rides they use to have (still have?) outside stores.  My nieces used to beg for the penny/nickel so they could ride the “pony”.

  21. 21.

    MazeDancer

    Watched the whole thing on Twitter, yesterday.

    And while so sad this nice man had to endure such terrible things, was very impressed with the guy. Charming, engaging, nice-looking.

    Also happy to get his Twitter handle. Alas, the version I saw yesterday didn’t credit him. So, I just RT’d this one.

  22. 22.

    RaflW

    I watched “Of an Age” last night streaming. Set in Australia in 1999, it was mildly upsetting to harken back to the days when high school girls would call a not-yet-out-to-even-himself gay 17 y.o. a ‘f**king homo’ and be ostracizing.

    Not that kids don’t still do this in 2023, but the intensity of the closet for the character Kol was a bit stifling (as I’m sure the director intended).

    The sad reality is, right wingers will not accept the whole “people only come out because staying in the (gay/bi/trans/not-mainstream) closet is more intolerable than people’s public non-acceptance is” argument. Being rigidly uncaring about sinners is baked into those folks (and that is both a nurture and a nature thing, though nurture probably matters more. Being rigid and afraid of change is to some extent an inherited characteristic, I believe).

  25. 25.

    RaflW

    @WaterGirl: I’m gonna be a supergay fashion critic and point out that Mike’s casual golf-style shirt was taken out of the plastic packaging 5 minutes before this photo op. Still has the fold creases visible. And clearly the wrong size was selected, the arms & shoulders don’t fit him.

    I know, shock. He’s a phony.
    With a crapy campaign staff.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    Love this video. Thank you.

     

    Love is love.

    And, children realizing that they don’t fit the “norms of society”- need to be supported and loved.

    They need to know that they are loved and perfect just the way they are.

     

    No more going back to the bad old days.

    Stand up to these religious bigots😠😠😠

  27. 27.

    robmassing

    Makes me feel so lucky that I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Granted, “fag” and “homo” and so on were big insults, and the “obviously gay” boys got made fun of. No one was out – I wasn’t out to myself until I was in my 20s. But there was no violence, no ganging up, no official sanction for all that behavior – all of what I experienced was next to nothing in comparison to what this young man has gone through. And this is 40 years later! But it’s Texas, so there you go.

  28. 28.

    Soprano2

    @Alison Rose: I have known people who honestly seem to believe that no one is actually gay, that somehow they’ve been “turned” gay by other gay people or by what they see on TV or in the movies or on the internet. “They can’t have their own kids so they have to recruit” is the kind of thing they say. They are deathly afraid of their kids being “turned gay”, thus their terror about anything that makes being gay seem normal.

    That was righteous. I was picked on in 7th grade because my dad was the superintendent of the school, it was horrible, but I didn’t go through 1/100th of what that person went through. When I was going through it most of the advice was to not show that it bothered me or that I was upset, and then they’d leave me alone. Rarely was it said that something should be done about the kids picking on me; that was seen as natural and something they couldn’t help doing because of who I was. The teachers mostly acted helpless, as if there was nothing they could do. Sounds like that hasn’t actually changed that much, at least in some places.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @RaflW: It’s also an ugly shirt.  I hope he has a patch on that vest that will piss off a bunch of bikers.

  31. 31.

    Msb

    I looked at the comments on that brave and smart young man’s tweet. What he said resonated so much with other kinds of “misfit”, as well as LGBTQ+ kids: kids who were autistic, or “too nerdy” or “too smart”, not masculine and/or feminine “enough”, etc. Amazing how early children are carefully taught such hatefulness. How well I remember being on the receiving end of such attention back in the day.

  33. 33.

    Tenar Arha

    /sigh watched it all, made me cry, brought back some bad memories from school & summer camps because I was that weird awkward bookworm girl—

    I’m terrible at guessing ages but that guy can’t be older than mid-20’s maybe? For all the Sturm & drang against the use of zero tolerance policies, this kid wasn’t protected at all by his school or his parents. (I’m not familiar at all with Texas, so I’m just making assumptions when I guess it was some kind of private parochial school with lip service, but absolutely no rules for athletes, and his parents utterly incapable, for some reason that made sense to them, of supporting him).

    I’ve often wondered if the reasons there was such an adult fuss against zero tolerance for bullying policies was because the folks protesting them unconsciously (& probably some consciously) remembered, & wanted to pass down, the punching down they’d gotten away with as kids & teenagers against anyone who was different.

  34. 34.

    Origuy

    There’s a YouTube channel called Technical Difficulties that I follow. It’s four British guys who have been friends for years. One of them is Tom Scott, who is a professional YouTube filmmaker. The videos on this channel are of them playing various games, like having one pick the title of a Wikipedia article and the others asking questions to guess it. Their latest series is going on adventures, like learning welding or how to over a helicopter. The latest season started yesterday, with Chris, a big bald guy with a ginger beard, getting a full drag makeover. He appears with a person named Letitia Delish. They tell him about this history of drag. It was very educational and everyone was positive and supportive.

    Chris Does Drag

  38. 38.

    Quiltingfool

    I guess I indoctrinate too, through my quilts!  When my fabric stash gets out of control, I make blocks using shades of one color, and when I put the quilt together, I arrange the blocks in a ROY G BIV pattern.  I was thinking about the visible light spectrum, from shortest to longest wavelength, but perhaps I was subconsciously channeling gay indoctrination!  Not!

    A guy bought one of those quilts for his boyfriend.  He sent me an email after it arrived, and was very complimentary.

    I’m going to make more rainbow color quilts.  Hope they don’t ban them in Florida, lol!

    https://pin.it/6w6NbTo  (I had to put brown and black blocks along the sides to get the quilt math to work)

    Here’s some rainbow cats!  Gotta have cats!

    https://pin.it/6zugTAy

  39. 39.

    Steeplejack

    @Quiltingfool:

    Very nice! I like that first “block party” one and of course the cats one.

    My mother was a lifelong quilter until she “retired” a few years ago, and I took as many as I could.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    @Sister Golden Bear

    Way to mangle the essence of a punch line there, turning it declarative as opposed to observational.

    It’s “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.”

  42. 42.

    mrmoshpotato

    Well said!  And I admire the courage that it takes to put a video out on the Internet of how terrible school was for you as a kid.

  46. 46.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Thanks for highlighting this. I hadn’t thought of the indoctrination aspect like this. Good perspective, and I hate that so many professional adults can’t protect the kids in their care.

  48. 48.

    KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))

    I was able  to make it through 6 minutes and 43 seconds. That’s all my heart would take. It reminded me too much of my older son’s school years. I’m hopeful that my telling him that what was happening to him wasn’t right, going to the school & telling them it wasn’t right, finally taking him out of that school and putting him into another, marginally better school, helped. I know growing up helped. But it was painful to watch and remember.

  49. 49.

    randy khan

    @Alison Rose:

    I’m old enough to remember that the first person who came out to me directly quite clearly was doing it because he thought it would shock me.  He was a bit surprised when I didn’t blink an eye.  I didn’t know anybody in high school who was out, although a guy in the class before me was killed by AIDS, and if I’d thought much about it – which I never did because I didn’t care – I would have figured it out.*

    *But speaking of indoctrination and the point in the video about kids learning they’re supposed to hate nonconforming kids from their parents, by far the greatest gift my parents gave me growing up was more or less doing the opposite of that.  One of my mom’s best friends – one of the women on her bowling team and someone I kept in touch with after my mom died – was Black.  My dad worked in a company owned and run by two gay men and brought the whole family to the company picnic, held at the home of one of the owners.  It didn’t seem at all remarkable to me, and they certainly wouldn’t have put up with either of their kids displaying any kind of prejudice.  It honestly makes it hard for me to understand parents who don’t bring their kids up that way.

  51. 51.

    KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))

    @WaterGirl: Yes. And too many feel like they are the failures , rather than the system that failed them.

  52. 52.

    WendyBinFL

    I thanked Sister Golden Bear yesterday when that video was first linked, and offer another grateful “thank you” now. For those who might be interested, I’m currently reading “Shuggie Bain,” by Scottish-American author Douglas Stuart, about the similarly horrific childhood of a boy growing up in Glasgow. Like Don Martin, Shuggie is confused and traumatized by the mistreatment of his peers. The novel won Britain’s Booker Prize in 2020.

  53. 53.

    Ramalama

    I was at Boston Pride. Late 1990s. I saw a woman who sparked something. I thought long, hard about what to say to her. “Excuse me, are you my cousin?” Is what I settled on. She was with a woman who might punch my lights out. My friends made endless fun of me subsequently. But yes, that was my cousin, from the Midwest, looking for me, against all odds.

  54. 54.

    Mike in Oly

    What a great video! I am so thankful he has put that testimony out there. Painful, unfortunate, necessary, infuriating. It resonates with me so much, having grown up in a very small town in the middle of the corn in central Illinois. I was luckier than most. Even tho I went to Catholic school, and was relentlessly bullied there, I had a family that loved me and tried to look out for me, and I was never in a place mentally where I thought *I needed to change* to be like everyone else in my age cohort. Altho I was constantly given the message that I was responsible for the bullying happening to me. I was the reason and if I just changed it would stop. It was never once considered an issue that other children were being violent against me. Thankfully, I never hated myself – I just hated the situation I was stuck in by fate. My depression, alienation and survival were rooted in my knowledge of self that told me I was just fine – it was those around me being regressive that were on the wrong side. And this in the early 70s-mid-80s! I survived, and things got better. I found my people when we moved to a larger city my Junior year of HS. I found community and connection. I was able to focus on the big picture that little me had to navigate in society. And I educated myself and joined with my compatriots to effect change as much as I could. I cannot express just how life-changing it was to be in Washington, D.C. in 1992 for the march in my 20s. It was the first time in my life where everywhere I went people like me were the majority. For those few days people like me were the norm. I am so happy for all the children growing up today in tolerant areas where they are accepted and protected. And I am distressed at all the children who still do not have that safe space to discover who they are as they grow. We have so much work left to do. We have so much growth as a society left to do.

  55. 55.

    Caphilldcne

    Thanks for posting this. I managed to survive the 70s and 80s in places like Louisiana, upstate NY and Nebraska by never never revealing my secret. Which led me to do stupid things like get married. Also used to drink to suppress emotions. So of course I eventually ended up in a divorce and had to rebuild my life. Fortunately I’ve come a long way and my former wife is now my dearest friend. When I did try to date someone it was a person who was not a citizen of the US and since we could not get married we ended up separated by 12,000 miles. I can see now that anti gay bigotry has impacted and stunted my life in many ways. I’m pissed on behalf trans people and kissed at the antiLGBTQ+ backlash cynically created gif political gain. It’s really disheartening to hear people use language like groomer.  We must defend our children (including many straight kids who get bullied for being different)  from these monsters and the only way to do it is to keep voting and eventually push them out. Anyway thanks to the many LGBTQ+ people and allies here. Special thanks to Sister Golden Bear. You really represent! I’m a gay who doesn’t like dancing much so I’ll just carry on.

  56. 56.

    brantl

    That guy is terrific. That should be our new motto on rainbow t-shirts, ALL PEOPLE, no “buts”.

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