danielnelsen:

tamizhnadu:

i know ive talked about this before but we literally have no reason not to bring the original gay flag made in the 70s by gilbert baker back to regular use!

the pink stripe was simply taken away because pink fabric was too expensive to mass reproduce at the time, and the turquoise stripe was taken away for a really odd reason: for the harvey milk remembrance parade in 1979, they wanted three stripes on each side of the street and didn’t want it to be asymmetrical, so they did away with the turquoise stripe. like, they could have fixed it in some other way without removing a whole stripe, but eh whatever history’s history.

the pink originally symbolized sex and the turquoise was for magic/art and it would just be really cool if we could bring both the stripes back into regular use again since there wasn’t any significance behind the removal of the stripes and we’re perfectly capable of mass producing flags with all the stripes again!

if anyone is interested, in 2017, shortly before he died, gilbert baker added a 9th stripe in lavender to represent diversity, partly in response to trump’s election. while i dont expect it to gain any kind of widespread usage, it is an interesting fact!

(source 1; article) (source 2; official site)

aw hell yeah double thanks!!!!!

thanks!!!!!

tiredgaykeith:

Remember today when you see 100+ articles about how ‘civil’ and ‘noble’ H.W. Bush was that today is World AIDS Day. That 100,000 people, many LGBT+ individuals, especially gay men, died under his and Reagan’s watch. That he banned HIV+ people from entering the US, reduced research funding, and prevented educators from speaking about safe sex in favor of abstinence only education.

funereal-disease:

http://thecharmingchimaera.tumblr.com/post/180550791977/some-guy-today-mentioned-he-was-in-a-band-to-me

OP is behaving cruelly. No one should brag about treating another person like this. The third reblogger is spot on that conversations aren’t battlefields – you don’t “win” by shaming or rebuking your interlocutor into silence. 

That said, I’m really not fond of statements like “kindness is free”, or “it costs zero dollars to be nice”, or any other permutation. Kindness isn’t free. No person has a limitless capacity for patience and understanding. To ignore that is to ignore the huge amount of work – yes, work – that humans put into cultivating compassion for others. And it not-so-implicitly shames people for whom that work isn’t easy. 

Listening to someone infodump is not effortless. As an avid infodumper myself, I am always mindful that people willing to listen to me ramble are doing me a kindness. Hanging onto a topic that doesn’t interest you in the slightest, especially when the infodumper is speaking quickly or making leaps that don’t make sense to you, takes effort. That doesn’t make it ~emotional labor~, and it doesn’t mean you’re entitled to rudeness or to bragging about making someone “visibly uncomfortable”, but it’s not free. It’s a competing access need.

Responding with eye rolls or stony silence when I ramble about historical clothing is disrespectful, but so is expecting limitless attention. “Just listen! It’s not hard!” elides that. And it ignores the fact that the neurodivergences that make people prone to infodumping are often the same ones that make it hard to listen intently.