Emma Watson visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (2010)
this in the singularity
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Someone is legit going to get deradicalized as a kink
whatever it takes, man
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ALTSo let's talk about this for a minute.
First of all, how do you think Pride events fund themselves and stay free for attendees? O.o Vendor fees aren't all of it - a lot of money comes from sponsors - but like... we paid $1300 to vend at Seattle Pride this year. That's the money that pays the people who work to make Pride happen. That is not free. Pride as an event does not just magically happen. A lot of people work really hard to make Pride happen and to clean up after it.
We're a small trans-owned company and 100% of our employees are trans & queer. We jokingly refer to Pride as "Gay Christmas". The money we make during Pride means we stay open, Pride events get vendor fees, and our employees get paid for the rest of the year. This company does not exist without Pride events. The only reason we survived as a company during COVID is because my wife has a stable, good IT job.
This shit isn't free to do. It does not just magically happen. Performers need to get paid. Tech crew needs to get paid. Equipment needs to be rented for performers. Stages need to be rented. Electrical services need to be paid for so food can happen. Ice and water cost money. Trash pickup costs money.
A lot of people volunteer and donate, but festivals and big community events? They cost money, and the money we pay to be able to vend is part of how Pride events happen. Without that, small queer businesses like @nerdykeppie don't survive and the only people putting their money in to make this happen, AND MONEY NEEDS TO CHANGE HANDS FOR EVENTS TO HAPPEN, are Smirnoff and fucking Wells Fargo.
For fuck's sake. Y'all want small queer businesses, but you really don't want us to actually survive, do you?
I think that commenter is confused about what rainbow capitalism actually is.
Rainbow capitalism is when uncaring corporations blast rainbow things on their products to get queers to buy them, while not actually doing anything to help queer people. Rich cishets getting millions of off a minority group.
Meanwhile, in regards to nerdykeppie? A small business owned by queer people, that makes products for the queer community that the people involved are a part of. Buying their stuff is supporting the queer community, which is a GOOD thing to happen during pride month.
And for fuck's sake, where else are we supposed to find things that help us proclaim who we are if not by buying them from independent queer-run businesses? I mean, I've got a shirt that tells people I'm a genderqueer bisexual Star Trek nerd, and I promise you Target isn't going to sell that- but when I emailed NerdyKeppie about the possibility of getting one of their designs done for that, I literally got an email back an hour later saying "Here you go, it's up on the website to buy it." Shouting down people making a living by giving the community what it wants and needs is just not a helpful way to do anything.
Yo for real on Sunday night when I was guarding our stuff during load out so Evie and Emet could go get the van and all, I sat on one of the benches at Seattle Center & watched a flock of seagulls and a murder of crows flutter down and start picking through the drifts of trash left behind for stray French fries and bits of bread and other food. There was so much trash scattered across the ground.
And that's not... like... an indictment of queers in specific (though, truly, clean up after yourself) but that's just what happens when there are thousands of people in one place. People drop things and don't realize it, drop a piece of paper or food and then go "ew, it's gross now, I don't want to pick it up" or just don't give a fuck.
Someone has to clean that up. That costs money, because the someones cleaning that up deserve to be paid.
We're planning on going to a smallish Pride event in September in coastal WA. We'll pay $30 in vendor fees but we'll probably also drop a couple hundred bucks on sponsorship, bc that's us giving back to the community that supports us.
Y'all have GOT to learn how to separate "rainbow capitalism" from "intracommunity support." If your money isn't going back into the community, it's going out of the community.
Glad this is being talked about. Our local trans pride org did not get city council funding this year. They will go ahead and run events, but they're having to fund-raise and clearly there'll be significant limits to what they can do.
I think people don't always realise how tenuous the public funding and even corporate sponsorship for these things can be, especially in a climate of redoubled transphobia. We've already seen some big brands climb down or be ambivalent in promoting their own Pride collections this year.
Also, re: artists and makers and service providers: there is a ton of disability, neurodivergence and mental ill health across our community. It's not cheap being disabled, and yet contrary to the media stereotypes of well-heeled gay people, most community members I personally know are just getting by.
I know a lot of queer and trans folks who have jobs making stuff not just for the love of it, but because they can't rely on stable employment from organisations (and not just the obviously capitalistic ones - it's also the universities, and the health sector, for example) that may turn their logos rainbow in June, but maintain ableist hiring, disciplinary and firing policies year-round. I am seeing this dichotomy at work very painfully in the lives of loved ones at the moment.
Supporting disabled queer and trans artists and makers to pay their bills isn't rainbow capitalism, it's praxis, AND you get cool things to wear to Pride, which from what I've seen online this year, are often a lot more interesting from a design point of view, and more representative of intersectional identities, than the big brands' Pride gear.
They're also often where you will find subtle Pride stuff if safety is a big consideration (I think that's true for a lot of us) and you want to be visible only to the right people. That's not a thing I've seen in the chain store Pride collections...
I deeply admire Harrison Ford's unfailing commitment to taking beloved characters out with him every time he leaves a franchise
Have you guys seen Muppet Babies Camilla yet. I really think you guys should see Muppet Babies Camilla
CHORB
Excellent Point
[ID: an unsourced paragraph of text that reads: Reflecting on it, the reason I think the OceanGate situation has become such a flashpoint for anger is because it's such a perfect microcosm of the problem with everything right now. Decisions are not made based on safety, reasonable caution, or concern for human life. Every decision is instead made from a default assumption of what if the bad thing just DIDN'T happen? We are given pie-in-the-sky promises and sizzle reels and an endless PR hype-cycle for every new innovation and inevitably fails to work, harms people, and them is maybe barely apologized for before the next bad idea comes down the pike. OceanGate's underengineered, undercooked, doomed submarine isn't merely a metaphor for the hubris of the wealthy, it is a scale model of the way the wealthy dictate our reality. All consequences can be ignored, all blowback can be forestalled, let the end-user eat the cost. I am not angry because the submarine was badly made. I am angry because I live in a vastly larger pressure vessel being managed and maintained by the exact same people. /end ID]