no longer active until further notice

So some days ago, I saw this post on reddit.

This user made a flag for queer slavic people :D. That's pretty cool! However, there are some things that I didn't like about the design. First of I didn't like how it was all pastel, I mean it makes sense because this was posted on a subreddit for xenogenders and from what I've seen online a lot of flags for xenogenders use pastel colors. Second of all, I really don't understand why they added pierogi. I mean, pierogi is a slavic dish but only in poland, Ukraine, and Russia (am I wrong? Too lazy to check right) and here in the balkans, it kind of isn't.

So here's my attempt to make a flag that was heavily inspired by the reddit user above! All creative credit goes to u/somethingisbread! This isn't me stealing their design this is just me editing it as a slavic queer.

It's basically the same thing as the flag in the reddit post. The only difference is that I didn't make the colors pastel, and I removed pierogi. I wanted to add a different symbol to represent queer slavic people. I want to add an owl to represent our slavic mythology and paganism and also our slavic brother/sisterhood because in every slavic language, we have the same word for owl (that is sova/сова). Unfortunately, I currently can't find a good owl design that would go well with the flag.

A couple of days ago I went out wearing a rainbow pride pin. I just wanted to see how it feels to be proud and clear about who you are. You wanna know how I felt? I felt unsafe all the time. I felt terrified. I entered a bakery and the woman waiting in line before me threw me the worst look of disgust I’ve ever seen in a person. You know what the worst thing, though? That I knew, if someone decided to yell at me, harass me for openly being myself… It was likely that nobody would bat an eye. Because in Greece, homophobia is the norm.

I hope it’s okay to reblog as a fellow queer Greek. Of course there are US Americans who live in places inside the US that feel exactly like this - the fear, the knowledge that you have to hide a part of yourself constantly etc. But I understand the rage of this post because the world (aka the US dominated internet) thinks we are at the same level as them.

Many US Americans who rage in front of our faces because their xir/zir pronouns upset someone in the metro station or if how nonbinary they must be to be considered transgender or what colour the “gay” tag on Tumblr must be. I am sorry if that’s your struggle, guys, but it really feels like a mockery. I am not saying this to undermine any problem you have. But do you know the situation where a kid who got A- cries in front of the kid who got a C+? Well, we are the C+ and you can imagine how it feels.

“Happy bride month!” my Greek bi friend wished me some days ago. Happy bride month for who?? Don’t you know half the Greeks can’t even pronounce that, even more, understand what it means?? It’s pride month for North Americans. We get to mostly hide like always. Otherwise we are “provocative”. In this lifetime I am not sure if a same-sex couple WON’T be harassed almost everywhere - especially if they are men. And the psychiatrists will keep asking us if we have been traumatized or had the right parental examples when we speak of our identities, even in “Pride Month”.

I live in a third world country, in which fortunately, people are becoming more supportive, or at least less hostile towards LGBT people. But we still have it bad, we have no real support nets, no real lgbt protection laws (the government say they do but I don’t believe them since they haven’t talked shit about them), people believes sexED will corrupt kids and make them more promiscuous. Not to mention, my country is VERY catholic and homosexuality for most part is a big no-no (no, actually, in general sticking like a sore thumb is just not that affordable and is not like we are hyper colectivist like Japan).

And not to mention how little Americans and WE (Western Europe) care about other LGBT people in the world, including outing people can’t afford to, not listening to mainland POC people when they tell them that all those “third genders” are a result of heavy homophobia, sexism and even transphobia and ableism only because “diaspora” (because appearently the opinions of x-americans that are +4 generations of gringo trash are more importamt that x mainland country lgbt people opinions…), people not bothering in learning x country’s linguistics and trying to impose new terms to get people into more troubling concept (YES! I’M LOOKING AT YOU “LATINX”!), forcing people to put their pronouns in their bios, etc, etc, etc.

And these people don’t realize that just because we aren’t being actively killed/prosecuted like in the middle east or in Russia, doesn’t mean that you aren’t endangering us in other ways. How can american actually know about LGBT people struggles when they even go around saying “Happy 4th of you July!” to a person who doesn’t even wtf is that thing even and they get offended when others don’t know about it?! They only care and know about LGBT history INSIDE the US!