I thought they were performative and unnecessary, their removal shows I was wrong.
These were the canary in the coal mine, as long as they stayed up it was safe for us.
In the future, I'll continue to see them as performative and unrepresentative of whether the institutions will actually support us. However, I will never again dismiss them as unnecessary.
This mindset always frustrates me.
Of course it was performative, all public art is performative. This is no different than tv promoting the "traditional american family", or statues "honoring the troops", or memorials, or any other art promoting propagandized values.
But life imitates art. Even if the intent was insincere pandering, it still has an effect on how people perceive their society. We should want our propaganda to reflect our values. We should want statues of MLK and Harvey Milk instead of Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. We should want rainbow streets and pride flags in public spaces. We should want their agenda to match our values. We should want the next generation growing up in a society that shows its support for marginalized people, instead of nationalism.
It took me a long time to get that, but I really feel it. Like, don't get me wrong, putting up a rainbow crosswalk doesn't mean much if the government that does it is v coding trans prisoners, but the statement "these people had to fight for their rights, and we're glad to call them our neighbors" is still important.
And hell stuff like this adds to the vibes in the same way having a bunch of Chinese aesthetic in Chinatown does. Yeah, you should make the gayborhood feel like it. And while you're at it hire black artists to help beautify the blacker parts of town. I actually used to live in a neighborhood with a ton of black art and it absolutely made it a nicer place to live, even as a white person.
Sometimes the point of a protest is to put yourself in a position to get knocked down.
Much of the civil rights movement was based on this premise, that when the police or regime paramilitaries come and engage in brutality, it makes sympathists of bystanders, activists of sympathists and militants of activists. This is COIN 101.
(In the case of counter insurgency, the model reminds the state not to let their police be brutal with the protesters, but putting down the resistance is through hearts and minds. But authoritarian states don't usually listen to counter-insurgency experts, and in fact, enjoy seeing their troopers stomp on heads.)
To be fair, another part of the Civil Rights strategy was then to take police departments to court, and get their municipalities to pay for damages. That way, it hurt the institution, and the administrators would feel it and turn to discipline the police department.
But now we're in an age of ubiquitous phone cameras and an internet where video can be directly streamed. And that amplifies the recruitment effect when police get brutal on video. In fact, I think this is why the various nations are trying to lock down the internet through age verification (de-anonymizing) and saturation with slop. Seeing people on the ground get hurt is visceral and develops support for social movements from across the world.
In my country people, especially teenage boys, try to avoid walking over the rainbow crossings. Since they don’t want to be seen as gay, because other boys will call them gay if they walk on the rainbow. My country is the Netherlands btw.
Yes they might be pandering but they also reveal how people in society still have ingrained bigoted views. You can only really tackle these shortcomings in society if they reveal themselves.
Damn that's surprising, I always thought the Dutch were some of the most tolerant people around. Y'all do have some crazy right wing politicians thought.
Daniella Mestyanek Young, aka Knitting Cult Lady observes authoritarian movemens hate color and seek to deface all public art and expression that doesn't specifically belong to or represent the movement.
I've always seen the Thin Blue Line flag as the diametric opposite of the Pride flag.
For me the LGBTQ colours displayed by the city are meaningful. It feels safer gay kissing in a square painted with rainbows, sitting on pink benches. It made it easier to ease into my own self. It’s like a big sign saying "IT’S OK".
My city put a rainbow-themed art installation in the most heavily trafficked park in the city back in 2019. It was supposed to be there for one year, as a temporary memorial to the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. It's been there for 7 years now, and half the city would lose their minds if someone tried to take it down now.
It's neat how "temporary" installations can become part of the identity of a place. The Eiffel tower was also supposed to be temporary.
They are just like rainbow capitalism. They don't improve the rights of anyone but they are an indicator of the acceptance.
Public symbols matter. If they didn't, the right wouldn't feel the need to target them. You dismiss public symbols of acceptance as if they're not vitally important. I imagine if the symbols that represent you, your background, and your beliefs were targeted, suddenly you wouldn't be dismissing them as irrelevant.
Public symbols and rights are not disconnected. There's a reason they advance or retreat in lockstep.
But they... Represent me. And I think they are important. But I know they wouldn't be displayed or used by governments or companies when the public opinion wasn't already mostly positive.
Symbols used by individuals or groups outside of government or companies are different because they serve as identification.
As an example, in germany we have a lot of pride symbols but the government still puts trans people that change their name on a list. Symbols used by companies/government react to change and don't cause it
Right? Easy to overstate the value of it as we see now, but it sure was nice being a demographic worth pandering to, especially when that meant that the homophobes weren't worth appeasing.
It was a good feeling but always had the aftertaste of instantly disappearing when the political wind changes. We will sadly never truly be free under capitalism
Exactly. People are all "TaRgEt jUsT waNtS yOuR mOnEy."
Well, yeah, but also it just shows an overall acceptance. It makes people more at ease in general. It lets non queer people also feel more open to showing support. It's about the overall mindset of society.
But target literally played both sides
Yeah, having it and taking it away is worse than never having it at all.
Both can be true. The installation can be a bit naff, but the choice to remove it is an act of deliberate hatred.
Did they actually pour colored concrete and not just paint? Awesome if so, makes them work for their performative hatred at least when removing.
Closeted cowards.
Being phobes does not mean they're closeted. It just means that the ones who are closeted are uncomfortably repressed, while the rest are sexually frustrated in other ways
Yeah, Brennan isn't closeted, he just looks at grindr every day to find cool tattoo ideas.
pandering was always pandering,
But pandering is a great canary
Is this a state roadway? If not, crazy that the state has the authority to do this.
TXDoT is responsible for a LOT of roads within cities - especially those with heavier traffic.
The (much smaller) city I work for only has like 2 intersections with enough traffic to require a signal that don't involve a TXDoT road.
This is how I find out that my city has/had a pridewalk?!
They did this to Houston, but they did an extremely half-assed job. It was one thin layer of additional asphalt covering over the whole intersection. But you can still see the pride crosswalk peeking out from underneath at the edges.
I'm still very upset.
Especially now that the sidewalks have been defaced with hate messages, which were then blacked out with spray paint. Is there a way to get the spray paint off the concrete and go back to chalk?
They have us fighting over crosswalks while our house burns down.
E: that’s not cool my comment was pulled for “minimizing queer struggles”. I don’t know how anyone got that out of what I said. I specifically want to make the point that there’s a shitload of bad stuff happening, that bad stuff includes LGBTQ people as victims, but the fact that news coversge goes to arguing over crosswalks instead of the dumpsterfire hppening is ridiculous. We’re in this shitshow together. A crosswalk removed is the symptom, not the actual problem.
As if the queer people they've marginalized in the work force even have houses. As if more kids won't be bullied because it's official government policy to hate gays. As if a generation of queer people will struggle to discover themselves, never seeing themselves represented because we are forced to hide ourselves from view.
It's not about the crosswalk, it's just one particular facet of fascist oppression. It isn't a distraction and it doesn't invalidate any of the other harm they caused.
Threatened by some colors - truly pathetic
TBF I'd feel rather threatened if they start doing swastika sidewalks, and that's just some lines in the shape of an Indian peace symbol.
Or black-white-red stripes (German Imperium, popular with Nazis here because the actual Nazi flag is forbidden).
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