ThePurpleOctopus 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🇪🇺🇹🇼
@thepurpleoctopus@lgbtqia.space
Soft-inked greetings from ThePurpleOctopus 🐙 Queer, non-binary, trans, pan, polyam and many-armed, and thinking in several directions at once. I like curiosity, kindness, politics with teeth, art with feelings, and science done properly. I like languages, cats, cows, trains, and the Oxford comma. I'm a Translator and Teacher by trade, a Traveller by desire. Here to listen, to learn, to tangle gently, and to leave the tide a little warmer than I found it. [Berlin/Amsterdam]
lgbtqia.space
CW: Queerphobia, censorship, discrimination
Hover or focus to reveal
Sensitive
Berlin loves calling itself the Rainbow Capital. Apparently that rainbow ends at the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district border (I guess it does in other parts as well, but this post is not about that).
A district councillor from the Christian Democrats cancelled drag story hours at a public library, claiming children needed protection from "polarisation." She also objected to a drag performer's stage name, criticised a press release for mentioning that an invited author is a lesbian, and now reportedly wants library press releases "vetted" before publication.
Let's call this what it is: censorship wrapped in polite bureaucratic language. Queer visibility is not "polarising." Bigotry is. Libraries exist to broaden horizons, not to erase people because a politician finds them inconvenient.
The real threats to children are poverty, abuse, neglect and exploitation, not someone reading them a story in fabulous clothes. Diversity isn't something you praise in speeches and ban in practice. If your support for LGBTQIA+ people disappears the moment we become visible, it was never support at all.
#Berlin #LGBTQIA #DragIsNotADanger #StopCensorship #StandWithQueerYouth #NoPasaran