Over on Bluesky, #HorrorWriter Mark Allan Gunnells posted:
Reading books with diverse characters as a child didn't make me queer. However, those books did teach me there is nothing shameful about being who I am. And therein lies the problem a lot of conservatives have. They want their queer children to grow up feeling ashamed.
Good people of Mastodon, camarades, hear hear, oyez oyez ! L'organisation Coming Out, qui apporte une aide légale et psychologique aux personnes queers de Russie, a besoin de notre aide. La situation se dégradant de jour en jour, les demandes pleuvent et iels ne peuvent faire fasse en l'état actuel de leurs moyens. Aussi je vous demande si vous le pouvez de participer à leur fundraiser d'urgence, et le cas échéant de faire circuler cet appel de fonds autant que faire se peut !
The organization Coming Out, who brings legal and psychological help to queer people in Russia, needs our help. The situation keeps worsening over there, and they are struggling to keep up with demand. That is why I ask you to participate in their emergency fundraiser if you can, and to share it as widely as possible!
"[That] is YOU that is sexualizing MY community. It is YOU that is referring to ME as a sex act or a lifestyle... The only reason you saw it differently is because when you look at me and people in my community, you immediately sexualize us. That is a YOU problem."
“Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts of ourselves are truly us and which parts we’ve created to protect us.” ~ Alexander Leon