Hey what if we all just decided to not care about the personal politics of people who make queer flags? idk that seems fine to me. Sure, specific people make them, but after that it's a community thing. It belongs to the community. It's not theirs anymore

Maybe I'm missing something but I just don't understand this behaviour. Why does it matter? It's a flag. Its only purpose is to be a symbol that represents and is recognized by a community. It doesn't itself contain or exemplify the personal politics of the creator, really

There's been a few different people who could probably reasonably credibly claim to have created the rainbow flag. If we found out that one or all of them had some bad politics (as they quite possibly did) would we try to stop using that flag? I'm sure we wouldn't

That would be silly and futile and ignore a lot of other history for the sake of hyperfocusing on a few words of a specific creator, and would probably never work and the effort itself would create all kinds of fissures in the global community that uses that flag

So why is it just the lesbian flag that gets this treatment? Are we just not going to get a lesbian flag until we find a perfect lesbian who has never said or believed anything bad? Because wow that would fucking suck

Pretty sure death of the author can apply to flags as well as books

When I see people going like 'Oh, this person who made the flag is cancelled, we need a new flag'... I just... do you really not see the ultimate futility of the behaviour and attitude you are perpetuating? This is going nowhere and it's just draining for everyone

I am irked

We often complain about the lesbian flag not being included alongside other queer flags - rightfully so. But we're not exactly doing ourselves any favours right now are we?

Imagine being some poor graphic designer and having to make a queer flag banner and you google 'lesbian flag' and discover there are like 6

And they all have very angry discourse about them. You're probably gonna just not bother so you don't get yelled at

I'm not saying this in order to be in favour of or against any specific lesbian flag or creator, just to be crystal clear

Here's a secret: there's no 'official' lesbian flag. Never has been. Make your own flag! Make it however you want

You can have it to represent yourself, or a specific intersection of identies, or all lesbians. Up to you. That's fine and good!

But acting like we, as a community, must move on each time a creator is cancelled is both counterproductive and pointless

Fuck, it's a bit silly, but if you really want we can all just do the 'Hatsune Miku made the lesbian flag' thing. If that helps

At least then we don't keep changing the most widely used flag and, in doing so, denying ourselves a symbol

Maybe I'm missing something but the idea that we have to keep changing each time just seems 100% knee-jerk and thoughtless