Small 🧵 on showing up🏳️🌈🫶🏳️⚧️ Sorting Hat Sandras and TERFs spend every waking second on this shit. It’s their whole lives. Hate is literally all they’ve got. Meanwhile too many of us only show up in our thousands when it’s Pride season and for some that’s the only time they ever show up. 1/5
And let’s be honest eh? , a lot of people aren’t even there for the fight, just the party & all that comes with it. WE NEED TO BE FUCKING BETTER THAN THIS! We needed to be better than this 5 years ago. 2/5
When the fuck is enough going to be enough? Bigots are out here organising, pushing, harassing, yelling, 24/7. I’m not saying we need to kill ourselves matching that level of obsession, but come on, we are to some degree letting it get worse and worse by not fighting back harder. 3/5
We’re too quiet. We’re not showing up. And if we actually fought for the community with half the energy we pour into the party side, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. We are handing these arseholes wins on a fucking silver platter. We are serving it up to them. Enough! 4/5
I've only been to the party once - I assumed we were all fight. That said, I'm not sure if it's down just to noise - the papers don't understand noise, for eg, when they repeat simple short press releases/tweets from hate groups. And work by TIE, for eg, isn't "fight" but will make a diff long term
IMO we're in the mess as much from my profession as for wider complacency, which is decades old. We all thought Obama winning put us on the path to a permanent progressive future. So we didn't try. Organising, new media, etc etc. The hate has been there forever and many turned a blind eye.
The hate has always been there and it always will be to a degree, but there’s been a definite growth shift in it this decade. You can see it in the data on hate crime, you can see it in the data with how many articles are written weekly now vs a decade ago. You can see it in anti orgs set up1/2
We need to do more. A lot of our response to this isn’t grand. LGBT Labour for example a lot of their statements are worded in a don’t rock the boat way. No fucking rock that boat. You see at numbers for some protests vs a pride. Frequently often the numbers are vastly different. 2/2
I'm not saying LGBT Labour (surely an oxymoron) is doing enough certainly. From my inside view, it is easier for media to take a pic or three of Pride than cover a protest - the former doesn't require speaking to anyone. And actual reporters are being replaced by AI. So LGBTQ have to bypass tech.
It’s not even about media covering protests which they do on occasion but obviously a lot of that is down to the say so of those above them and what they want covered. I know they do I’ve seen them there, but it’s also only one issue in so much of this. It’s hard to hear but we need to show up.
I'm of the opinion the LGBT Labour account is run by cishets. Probably awfully nice, straight out of a posh school, read the classics at Oxbridge, and want a jolly nice wheeze as a Labour intern before getting a six figure job in the city at daddies bank. 😒
I used to think the same, maybe the account is but not the org as I’ve seen posts from a few folks who are members. It often just reads like ‘Listen we can’t be too careful or something could happen to our crumbs’ And it’s like fuck crumbs, aim for the slice but reach for the loaf.
That's been a long debate on multiple subjects: incremental crumbs or the loaf. Both have worked and both have failed at various points. In this case, it isn't working with LGBTQ Labour.
Imagine if we fought for our rights with the same fire we bring to Pride. With the same fire that those who came before us did. We’d be unstoppable. A lot of those people would be so ashamed of us now. Some of us should be! So let’s show the fuck up! Please! 5/5