Pete Buttigieg Is Just A Faggot.

Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.

It's very important to me that younger queers understand this: to the people who you're trying to be more respectable for when you say things like neopronouns set the trans movement back or you're why the cishets don't accept us or including [aces/bi people with the 'wrong kind' of partners/non-binary people/kinksters/non-passing trans ppl/furries/polyam people] just hurts us, can't you wait until we get all our rights before we talk about some of yours? -- to those people? Pete Buttigieg is just a fag.

On Sunday at Pride Northwest, some kids -- late teens, early 20s -- asked what our button I survived Reagan for this? meant. All of the queer adults at the tables making up our ad hoc counter looked at each other and sighed a little. Emet and another adult started to explain the way that the Reagan Administration handled -- or didn't handle -- the beginning of the AIDS crisis. How many people died. How much we were ignored. The Ashes Action. The Time Magazine article which explicitly blamed bisexual men for passing the pandemic to the cishet community, playing on all the worst stereotypical bullshit. The way that even when the CDC started paying attention, they were so focused on gay men that they ignored AIDS in the lesbian community, leading to the "women don't get AIDS, they just die from it" poster. And so on.

I finished counting out change and passed the last Bear Pride raised fist pin over to a bear a little older than me, then turned my head and interjected, "they didn't care until it started infecting more than just the fags." I turned my head back and handed him his change. He laughed bitterly and said, "remember when they called it 'gay cancer?'"

That what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak. A queer. A dyke. A tranny. A fag.

Never.

These are people who will stand by and let you wither away and die alone, gasping for breath in a cinderblock room, and not even claim your ashes, and they will say you deserve it, because of your lifestyle. If they speak of you at all it will be by the wrong name, with the pictures you hate the most. They will curse at your lover, throw him out of the home you shared, and steal the gift you gave last Christmas to throw it in the trash just so he can't have it and they'll say Jesus loves you! while they do it. They'll feel good and righteous and blessed and holy and pure for doing it.

And for them, you spit in the eye of your sister. For them, you disavow your sibling. For their sake, you trim away bits of your heart and lace yourself up tight. Never too loud. Never too queer. Never inconvenient or embarrassing, never asking for too much.

Pete Buttigieg is what happens when your Boomer dad turns out gay. Middle America. Parents still married. Suburban-sprouted. Valedictorian. Harvard-educated. Rhodes Scholarship. Military service. More power to him: I hope he and Chasten are very happy together. Genuinely, I do.

You couldn't create a more respectable gay if you grew one in a lab run by concerned voter focus groups.

But Pete Buttigieg? Is just a fag.

That's the part you don't seem to get: when they abandoned us, they abandoned all of us. Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and even personally friendly with that horrid pair of ambitious jackals. Nancy Reagan refused to help him get into the only place in the world that could treat him at the time, and he died.

It was 1985, 4 years after the CDC first released papers on what would eventually become known as HIV/AIDS and 7 years after the first known death from an infection from HIV-2. Reagan hadn't even said the word AIDS by the time Hudson died.

Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, and so am I. Unless I'm a dyke, which seems to depend on who's yelling what from which window and what day it is.

Yes, there will be people who genuinely love and accept you. Those people are worth all the frustration of the rest, thankfully, and they're the ones who love you in a pup mask or a leather harness and a neon jock like the ones sold by the men up the row from us last weekend. They're the ones who laugh out loud when you tell them you hid the word "dyke" in your company name, the ones who love you in all your messiness and uncertainty and the way you don't fit into neat boxes all scrubbed up and clean.

Most cishets, though... well, they don't actively mean you specifically any harm, at least not when they have to look at you. Not when you're right there in front of them. Maybe they'll be okay with you, personally, especially if you're the kind of gay who makes a good rhetorical device, and as long as you remain a good rhetorical device.

They need people to know that they don't have a problem with the gays, after all, and there you are, being all convenient. You make a nice token, and as long as you do, well. You're useful.

But they call you by your deadname when you're not around, and they put the wrong pronouns in your medical record even though they met you years after you came out, and they won't put themselves out to save you. Not one little bit.

I didn't want to be here again. The year I graduated from high school was the worst year of the AIDS crisis. The world into which I became an adult was a world in which an advisor and friend to Reagan, William F. Buckley, openly advocated for forcibly tattooing the HIV status of HIV+ gay men on their buttocks (and IV drug users on their forearms), and in which my father not only told me that when I was 14 or so, but when was told me that he'd advocated for that tattoo being "over their assholes."

(Buckley wrote that in '86, but he doubled down on it in 2005.

Fucker.)

But yeah. I didn't want to be here again. I wanted my daughter to inherit a better world. I wanted Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas and Hope & Change to really mean something. I work for it, today and all days. I haven't given up.

I need you to know that, too. This isn't a white flag. I'm not surrendering. This isn't over. To misquote Henry Rollins, this is what Marsha and Sylvia and Stormé and Leslie and Brenda and Auntie Sugar trained us for. This is punk rock time.

But I need you to understand that if Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, if that human embodiment of a Wonder Bread, mayo and Oscar Meyer bologna sandwich is not respectable enough for them -- and he's not -- then the rest of us have absolutely no hope of measuring up. Not even if we trim away every colorful, beautiful piece of our community, not even if the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence vanish into the ether, not even if we sacrifice the five elements of vogue on the altar of white supremacist cishet middle-class conformity: we can't trim ourselves down to something they'll accept.

The only other option is radical acceptance of our queer selves. The only other option is solidarity. The only other option is for fats and femme queens and drags and kinksters and queers and zine writers and sex workers and furries and addicts and kids and the ones who can look us in the eye and see all of us to say we're here, we're queer, get used to it just the way we did 30 years ago. It's revolutionary, complete and total acceptance of our entire community, not just the ones the cishets can pretend to be comfortable with as long as we don't challenge them too much, or it's conceding the shoreline inch by inch to the rising waters of fascism until we've got nowhere left to stand and some of us start drowning.

That's it. Either it's all of us or it's none of us, because if we leave the answer up to the Reagans of the world and all the people who enabled him in the name of lower taxes and Democrats who wring their hands, weeping oh I don't agree with it but we'll lose the election if we fight it right now, the answer is none of us.

The brunch gays can come, too, I guess.

But just as the most recent group of students have been accepted into the initiative, Tumblr terminated Isnad's blog.

Even if you're not doing the killing yourself, if you're denying a besieged population the chance to support themselves, you're complicit in genocide.

As we try to look into getting Isnad reinstated here, please continue to share Isnad's fundraiser. I would hate for all this hard work to be lost due to staff's predictable bigotry.

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ghost-birb

2 months ago

What Strength Really Means 💪

✅️ Vetted by @gazavetters {537}✅️

Hey everyone, my name is Abdelmajed. I don’t usually talk much about myself, but today, I want to share a little piece of my story.

I was born and raised in Gaza, a place that has always been my home 🏡. I grew up surrounded by my family, my friends, and the streets that I knew like the back of my hand. Life wasn’t always easy, but we had love, laughter, and dreams. I used to think that no matter what happened, home would always be here. But life has a way of changing things in ways we never expect.

Over the past months, everything I once knew has disappeared. The streets that were once filled with children playing are now silent. The houses that held so many memories are now just rubble. And the people I loved—some of them are gone forever. 💔

✅️ Vetted by @gazavetters {537}✅️

Chuffed

Help Abdelmajed Escape Gaza and Rebuild His Life

My name is Abdelmajed, and I am a survivor of the war in Gaza. Everything I once knew has been taken away—my home, my safety, and the people

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ghost-birb

3 months ago

Unfortunately we've seen a significant drop off in donations.
If donations don't pick up soon we will be forced to close some of our kitchens.
We really don't want to have to do that given that so many people have come to depend on these kitchens to survive. So if you are able to help, please click on the link in the reply. Thank you

[image description: below the text are images of Sudanese people sitting two long lines on the side of a road by a building to be served food at an aid kitchen]

gofundme.com

Donate to Fight Hunger in Sudan: The Khartoum Kitchen appeal, organised by Mustafa Ibrahim

The War in Sudan has created the World’s largest Humanitarian cris… Mustafa Ibrahim needs your support for Fight Hunger in Sudan: The Khart

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ghost-birb

1 month ago

Breaking News 🥺😢💔💔💔

Gaza under fire again‼️‼️

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters , my number verified on the list is ( #523)

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b1a39dd40a43ad1c82338b7051b9af31/5db484802745fc98-3f/s640x960/482b12c53ac804c08c2fc4a658ee96c86d036491.webp

We wake up afraid from bombing and unfortunately the war return again. 💔💔💔

I'm so afraid about my family and my kids please help us evacuate from this place we are crying now and screaming because of the strength of bombing around us.

please help us everything is very dangerous and we return to the killing people. you can support us and my family by donating or sharing my compaign.

gofundme.com

Donate to Please Save Khaled and Nana’s Family In Gaza, organized by Jess Rapoza

Hello all, my name is Jess Rapoza from the USA. I am raising money on behalf … Jess Rapoza needs your support for Please Save Khaled and Nan

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ghost-birb

3 months ago

I just found out two local gay artists were found murdered in their home. fuck. jesus. I knew these guys. I own their art. I've attended so many gallery openings at their shop. they've meant so much to the community here. and they're just fucking gone? just like that?

and of course the cops are claiming it's not a hate crime.

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ghost-birb

2 months ago

a whole bunch of gazan mutual aid projects and nonprofits. if the decision of which individual fundraiser to give to feels too daunting, or if you just want to help as many people as possible in one go, these are great initiatives to support.

care for gaza - focuses on providing food and essential supplies. donate here or here.

connecting humanity - securing internet access via donations of virtual sim cards (esims). if you can't afford a whole plan yourself, crips for esims is a communal pool that will use your donation to purchase and maintain esims

gaza soup kitchen - provides food, medical care, and classes for children. also has a gofundme

glia gaza medical support initiative - provides medical care through field clinics and tents at hospitals. donations can also be sent through their website.

ele elna elak - provides clean water, food, clothing, and shelter. they also have a gofundme

life for gaza - raising money for the gaza municipality to repair water and waste management infrastructure

taawon - partners with local civil organizations to provide food, water, medical care, shelter, and basic supplies

the sameer project - running various initiatives providing tents, medical care, and necessities. they have their own encampment project focused on sheltering families with children, sick and disabled members, or members in need of perinatal care

islamic relief worldwide's gaza emergency appeal - provides food, water, hygiene kits, medical supplies, and psychological support

baitulmaal - provides a variety of necessities, including food, water, shelter, and medical supplies

gaza mutual aid fund - distributes food, hygiene products, water, and other essential supplies, including financial support. run by @/el-shab-hussein's amazing friend Mona. updates can be found on her instagram.

hygiene kits for gaza - provides hygiene supplies including menstrual products, wipes, and toothbrushes/toothpaste

anera - provides a variety of necessities, including food, water, hygiene supplies, medicine, blankets and mattresses, and psychological care

palestine children's relief fund - provides supplies and support with a focus on children. also has an initiative for lebanon

dahnoun mutual aid - provides water, food, tents, baby supplies, financial support, and other necessities. updates can be found through their instagram

certainly this is not an exhaustive list, so please feel free to add on other projects or organizations that i didn't include. and as always, please take the time to donate if you can and share. it truly makes all the difference.

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ghost-birb

3 months ago

Read it once in your life, and never regret it. ✋✅

Do you feel bored of the posts asking for help from Gaza? You’re right, but imagine our situation as we live this war day after day for 13 months. Do you think we’re tired too?!!

Asking for help is not easy; it’s very embarrassing, especially for a family that used to live a decent life. My husband and I completed our university education with distinction, worked in respectable jobs, and were used to helping others, not asking for help. But the war has turned our lives into a nightmare; we lost our home, our sources of income, and even our ability to provide the simplest of needs.

Read It Once In Your Life, And Never Regret It. ✋✅

I'm Hanan. For the past 13 months, we have been struggling to get healthy food and medicine for my child, whose weak body was attacked by infection, and for my elderly mother-in-law, who fell into a coma for several days and almost lost her life due to anemia caused by our inability to provide healthy food, as prices have risen more than 10 times. Now, we have run out of everything. While you are reading my message, my family and I are trying to survive amidst all kinds of suffering.

What was once a beautiful dream and reality has now become a nightmare. Starvation is one thing, but starving, freezing, and being forced to flee in the middle of the night when tanks suddenly arrive in your area, running for your life and your family’s life under fire, leaving behind everything you built over the years, and returning after 5 months of suffering in displacement and tents to find that your home, where you lived your happiest moments, is nothing but rubble, is something completely different! 💔😓

Can you feel my broken heart now? Can you imagine what I’m going through at this moment? Everything I am living now cannot be described with words, and every moment here is filled with pain and fear. We desperately need your help, as we live in hope of escaping Gaza to save our lives and live safely away from the explosions.

You might feel powerless to stop this genocide, but you can certainly save my family. We appeal to your compassionate hearts to help us escape this catastrophe, which the human mind cannot even fathom.

Please share our campaign with your family and friends. This will help us reach those who can help us directly. Be the reason to bring hope back to our hearts ♥️✨

gofundme.com

Donate to Donate to Save Hanan Al-Salout's Family in Gaza, organized by Gregory Lewin

I am an American, Greg Lewin in Minneapolis, who made contact with a… Gregory Lewin needs your support for Donate to Save Hanan Al-Salou

$14,100 USD raised of $30,000goal

Or donate via PayPal

I will be honored to follow me on Instagram

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #152 ) ✅

Vetted by 90ـghost Click here ✅

Updated on 3/12

Dear Friends, 🌷

I know you share my story out of love and humanity, and I am truly grateful for that. 🙏💚

The painful truth is sharing alone does not feed the hungry or provide medicine for the sick.💔

Cost of a bag of flour is $300 which is the main source of food for my family and is needed weekly just to make bread. We live in a tent my child trembles from hunger and cold, and all I can do is pray. 😥

Please, don’t just watch or share. Even a small donation could be a lifeline for a hungry child or a suffering patient. 🙏

Don’t close your eyes to our suffering. We are calling upon your humanity.

The last donation 20 hours ago!! 😓

Thanks to your generous donations, we were able to buy some essential necessities that we couldn't do without, despite their high cost. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to feeding my child, even with a piece of bread 🙏💚. Your generosity gives us hope in facing these indescribable catastrophic circumstances 💔.

Our hope for survival comes from the generosity of your hearts. Your donations are the lifeline that keeps my family standing strong, They are our only source of income. Every contribution brings us closer to securing food and medicine for my family. Please, don’t leave us alone; your compassion is the light that dispels this darkness. ✨🫂