CW: Pulse Nightclub, Berlin CSD, Homophobia
I am going to say this in English but it's about Berlin. I'm doing this as I'll also be referencing Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. So I came out about a year after the Pulse shootings. It wasn't phrased as an attack on the queer community but rather Florida and US Democracy as a whole. A muslim extremist slaughtered 49 and wounded 58 with a machine gun.
I remember the queer community being robbed. I remember the pride banners. I even had one to support a community I would find out I belong to the next year. I remember it being made about not the deaths of queers but an attack on democracy. "Those depraved Muslims." they said, like they were any better
Florida is now one of the most conservative, anti-LGBT states to the point that tourism has died. So clearly this event meant absolutely nothing. I remember on the anniversary a year later as a freshly hatched egg, neutral NPR asked a Neo Nazi what he thought and he thought in retrospect he was glad they had killed the filthy perverts. I went and wept in a bathroom. I had never even met this man and he would glory in my death.
Now this is linked to the same terror group IS except in Germany. The CDU/CSU has decided no firewall has to be crossed if they stand on the side of fascism. They have been painting a target on our backs for years. Increased extremism. Increased hate and now what do I hear all over again, the queer community robbed of it's own massacre.
It's an attack on European Values. An attack on democracy. Full stop it's an attack on LGBT. This is the same issue I have with allies. We aren't allowed our own deaths, discrimination or massacres. It has to be about you. When there's blood on the hands of the AFD and the CDU/CSU, you can't call us depraved perverts and then turn around and rainbow coat your regressive, populist politics to make this about you and your xenophobia.
I've already seen this played out so often that what stings the most is my inability to care. It's so much par for the course for cishets to make our extermination about you that I have given up on even feeling. But the ordeal is as follows. We have seen this before. We are watching and dogshit wrapped in rainbow sprinkles remains dogshit.
The suspect was born and raised in Germany. He is a German. This is not about Immigrants or Islam. It's about increase in populism. Stop weaponising our deaths for your politics. We, the queer community, are tired of your dogshit, rainbow sprinkles or no.
#Berlincsd #pulsenightclub #homophobia
