This.
This article and its comments are what I’ve been fighting since last week.
Right now these kinds of responses are understandable. People are terrified. People are fed up. People are really tired of meaningless gestures especially in the face what we are all about to endure.
But the thing about those pins is – while they might not be for you they are for somebody.
The queer community has a long and rich history of using symbols to determine who is safe, who will stand up for us, who will get in a fight for us, who will throw their body on ours to keep our heads from getting bashed in.
Some of us have a very different response to the suggestion that someone who is not a member of our group would be willing to do this for us.
Some of us are very comfortable with the idea that this is in fact the only way that you build a family or a community – you commit to fight and then you fight.
For a lot of us there isn’t very much time between the commitment and needing to prove that you meant it.
There’s a big disconnect here. There is also an incredible opportunity to learn from each other struggles and successes in our battles over the years. That is what solidarity is for. This is a big complicated nuanced issue with all kinds of elements from trust to action to inaction are all part of it.
At some point, though, we are all going to have to figure out how to support each other. Some people are going to suffer worse than others – that is true – but if the queer community says hey, here’s what we do, and the response is as below, there is a serious Communications issue going on that directly impacts our ability to fight together.
Do PoC have a right to be suspicious? Absafuckinloutley. Does that mean that something that works for another marginalized group should be dismissed as white people shit with no bearing on marginalized folks lives? Nope. We are all more than one thing. Is that complicated? Yep. That’s the world. That’s the work. That’s the way forward – we have to talk it through.
One thing being a radical or revolutionary has never been is safe.
We cannot and must not judge other marginalized people by their need to preserve their own and their family’s safety.
If the only way you’re able to show solidarity in public because you are afraid
you might lose your job,
your livelihood,
your ability to remain in your home or
if you fear you may be injured and you don’t have health insurance etc.
and you want to wear a damn safety pin
instead of wave a flag or
wear a button that might get you fired or
attacked
it’s all good by me.
#intersectionalityisalivedexperience
#safetypins
—darcy totten
Flommist Darcy Totten is devoted to illuminating often-overlooked voices and telling stories from new angles. Darcy has worked with MTV, Spike TV, NBC/Hearst, ABC, Corbis, the State of Texas, Pantheacon, RGBB, LLC, KIA motors, The Promised Band, ACSA, the NBA, several Black Lives Matter chapters and is the co-founder of Activism Articulated. Copyright © 2016 Darcy Totten. Image by flommist Michelle LeClerc.
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