(no subject)

Valerie Halla, a queer/trans cartoonist, made a tweet about Pride that feels chillingly relevant to plural identity as well, and perfectly sums up why we've stopped using labels beyond the umbrella ones for both queer and plural matters:

https://twitter.com/valeriehalla/status/1399822015679193088

this is hard to say kindly, but i feel that there are some people who think that pride is the comfort of having a nice, dictionary-defined, socially-accepted box to live in, and not the righteous fury of fighting back against the machinery that tries to put you in that box

fascist sickos like "Gender Criticals" want you in a box and happy with your box and ready to defend the boundaries of your box and your right to live in a box because it makes it so easy for them to come around and start picking off everyone who's stuck outside without one

and maybe, the hope is, they can even get you to help -- by making you fear and resent people who challenge the neat little categorization schema you've invested yourself in! i see this happening so much already, among people just a few years younger than me -- it's terrifying!!

to be clear, i don't think it'll work. the fact of the matter is that when you don't belong, you don't belong. and none of us belong, friends. that's why we have pride. we say we're proud because we KNOW, whether or not we pretend we don't, that it's radical to love to be queer

being a radical, unacceptable, uncategorizable, unapologetic queer weirdo is a form of protest all on its own. belonging on exactly your own terms is the only kind of belonging that will ever matter in the long run. this is my politics and it will be until the day i die. love ya