Happy Pride Month!

Faust the Crow loves you even more than she did the last 2 years!

Thought I’d round off Pride Month with more flag edits -this time of the Doug flag, a symbol of Pacific Northwest bioregional pride.

CascadiaNow! notes that Alexander Baretich designed the original Doug flag in 1994, and that it’s an “inclusive and open source symbol”; the organization’s rainbow Doug design inspired mine, as well as the other flag edits above. Take pride in being both here and queer.

Flags in order: gay/lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, asexual, aromantic, transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid

Feel free to use with credit; no permission needed.

✨girls✨ am I right ladies? //

Some pride cats designed for a patreon pattern. They're napping.

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”

When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?

And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.

“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.

Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.

(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)

That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..

So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.

And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”

This is good information for people who carry on with the “queer is a slur” rhetoric and don’t comprehend the push back.

luna lovegood aka love of my life // follow me on instagram @/annalilliendahl

✨do not repost✨

Happy Pride Month folks!

Closeted or not, haven’t figured out who you are yet, just know Faust the Crow loves you very much.

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH EVERYONE!

Pansexual Harry Potter characters coming your way! Luna, Sirius and Tonks 💖💛💙

As you may or may not see, Sirius and Tonks have a couple of pins and Sirius’ are the pan flag and a pin with the Demiboy flag because I think he uses he/they pronouns. Tonks’ are the pan flag and the agender flag! My Luna uses she/they pronouns aswell but I couldn’t figure out a clever way to show it lol. Hope you like it!!!

Love to all of the pansexuals out there !!! You are all so so valid and I love you loads!

part three of pride with Victoire and Teddy!! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

albus and scorpius + dominique and talia at pride

Happy Birthday, Draco!

credit to @our.pride_ on Instagram

Bisexual

Transgender

Lesbian

Gay

Non Binary

Pansexual

Asexual

Genderfluid

Intersex

https://www.instagram.com/p/CIDybBtrHO4/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

The difference between a bisexual person and a pansexual person is that a bi person identifies as bi and a pan person identifies as pan and you don't get to fucking tell them that their understanding of their own sexuality is wrong

Pan Flag + Nature 

(all images public domain)

[Video description: a man holding a small chocolate box is wearing a orange plaid shirt, he is mostly bald but has a beard and small amount of hair on his head. The man also has tattoos on his arms.

Man: you know, momma always said having kids was like a box of chocolates

You never know what your gonna get

(the man opens the box and pulls out a small note with the word pansexual written on it)

Man: thats a good one!

(pulls out note with bisexual written on it)

Man: i like that one too!

(pulls out another note with asexual on it)

Man: thats a good one!

(pulls out card with gender fluid on it)

Man: yes!

(pulls out card with non binary on it)

Man: oh, yes!

(pulls out card with trans gender on it)

Man: definitely!!

(pulls out card with straight on it)

Man: thats a good one

(pulls out card with gay on it)

Man: i like that one!

(pulls out card with lesbian on it)

Man: and i like this one too!

There isn't anything in this box that i dont like!

The video ends and is credited to princess dad @/ourdadnow on tik tok

End description]