Dude I'm getting so tired of people saying that paraphiles can't have pride flags of their paraphilia,
"But it normalizes harm towards others or themselves"
No Shelly it fucking doesn't,
"But we shouldn't celebrate people's harmful disorders"
First off it's not inherently harmful to have a paraphilia, second off we have been celebrating disorders such as schizophrenia, psychosis disorders, bipolar disorder, psycho/social path disorder, and other "harmful" disorders through pride flags for years, mad pride for God's sake is about celebrating mental disorders and anti-institution, and has been a thing for years now,
"But why even make a pride flag about your paraphilia, shouldn't it be better to seek help / institutionalize yourself?"
The only reason someone would seek help is if they are going to harm someone, most of the time though institutions don't work and your form of "seeking help" is usually conversion therapy, which you guessed it, doesn't help anyone and doesn't get rid of paraphilia, also fun fact: institutions and conversion therapy make things worse much much more worse and are usually abusive towards patients trying to seek help,
Also not many therapists are qualified on paraphilias and will just send you to the police if they think you're too much of a danger (you got to love the stigmatized ableism that the mental health system is unfortunately still stuck in),
Also why would someone want to make a pride flag of their paraphilia?, because it gives them a sense of community and a sense of self-love that normally they wouldn't get, not only does it help with the healing/recovery process, but also again it gives you community, it tells you you're not alone when others have that type of flag, it's never been about normalizing harm, it's never been normalizing ourselves within the lgbtq+ community, it's always has been about finding the niche community of others who deal with the same attraction as you, finding others who can help you through your paraphilic disorder, well also finding others who aren't disordered but have paraphilia attractions, having a community such as that helps you find outlets to deal with your disorder,
and I'm sick and tired of hearing people demonize the concept of a paraphilia pride flag, we need this community because the outside world won't give us this community, let us have our pride and joy.
