Know Your Queerstory

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

new york city 1978

greenwich village

fiveforfive - collective fund for trans women and girls and transfem causes

gendered intelligence - trans led advocacy org

mermaids - supports trans youth

akt - lgbtq youth homelessness charity

loving me - domestic abuse service for trans people in england

The deadline is 9 July 2025.

Trans rights are always wavering in safety and are not stable and well protected in the UK. Please sign.

This is as of April 19th.

more on this page:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

1. He is a vocal ally to the LGBTQ-community.

In 2016, Bruce cancelled a concert in North Carolina in a protest to the transphobic “bathroom law” that they just had passed, arguing that this is the strongest means he has to raise his voice against bigotry. He ha s also stated that he has “long believed in, and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples”.

2. He has spoken out about police brutality.

in 2000, he made the song “American skin (41 shots)” as a response to the death of a black man who was killed by 4 cops. The man had been reaching for his wallet, which had promopted the police to fire 41 shots at him. The police force was not a fan of the song, and refused to provide Bruce and his band with security if they performed it live. Bruce sang it anyway. He also played the song in response to the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, stating that the song is 8 minutes long, and“that’s how long it took George Floyd to die with a Minneapolis officer’s knee buried into his neck”.

3. He gives away songs to other musicians.

“Because the night” was a song that didn’t fit the album he was working on, and when he learned that a new singer named Patti Smith needed a debut-song, he simply gave it to her. The song became a huge hit, and to this day Patti is grateful to Bruce for it. On occasion, they have been seen performing it together on stage.

So today I'll be talking about the history and creation of the trans flag! This will probably be a shorter post but still equally as important of course

The transgender flag was originally created by Monica Helms, a trans woman from America, in 1999. She got the idea from Micheal Page who had created the bisexual flag a year earlier. Helms describes the meaning of each stripe in the flag as:

"The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender."

- Monica Helms

The original flag (pictured below) was later donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2014 by Helms.

Later on, in 2019, Helms published a book in which she expresses shock that her flag design has been adopted so wholeheartedly by the trans community. I'd like to end off this post with that quote.

The speed with which the flag’s usage spread never fails to surprise me, and every time I see it, or a photo of it, flying above a historic town hall or building I am filled with pride.

I've met the sweetest, prettiest queens who tell me "Well, I'm a transsexual. Sometimes I call myself a transman because both my trans self and my manhood are me."

New friends tell me about the sexcapades their closed polycule gets up to that they just watch because they're a kinky ace.

There's staunch lesbians who helped the love of their life transition as a transmasc, gay men begging to be topped by trans men with the fattest tits.

Older queers don't hesitate to shout "oh, like Prince!" when I tell them I'm androgyne. Vanilla questioning men will text me day after day before shyly confessing I'm their dream guy. Closeted trans women ask to kiss me because I'm their dream girl. Doms and subs who melt when they realize I'm both and neither, and they didn't know somebody like me existed.

There's vanilla lesbians on Grindr and acearos who have shown me love deeper than I thought possible and guydykes kissing girlfags and MtFtMtX elders and throuples that have so much affection that they just collectively parent babygays who got disowned.

Queerness is not the exclusive domain of the thin, the white, and the ablebodied. If you are any of those things and can only picture queer people like you? You need to ask yourself why.

That's why I'm making this addition. It is on me as a white person to make the room for queer BIPOC that is vehemently, violently denied. And I did not make that room in the original post.