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Celebrating Your LGBTQIA+ Pride Stories 💖

dev.to staff on June 01, 2022

Editorial Update: On July 20th, 2022, we donated $1,000 USD to the Marsha P Johnson Institute in honor of our LGBTQIA+ community members, their all...
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Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Black Queer Trans Lives Matter

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tzwel profile image
Comment marked as low quality/non-constructive by the community. View Code of Conduct
tzwel

lmao what about white queer trans lives?

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layzee profile image
Lars Gyrup Brink Nielsen
 
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Arika O • Edited

EDIT: The community member to wich I'm replying has left the community.

This is a weird hill to die on.

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Michael Tharrington

Woot woot! Happy to celebrate Pride Month with everybody. 🙌

pride flag waving

I'm really looking forward to reading folks posts under #devpride.

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Abby Phoenix

Thank you all for actively working to make DEV such a welcoming and inclusive place on the internet!

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Carleii Dev

My heart

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Saf11000

sending love and rainbow ❤️🌈... happy pride month 🏳️‍🌈💗

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

loving outside the bounds of heterosexual monogamy and living outside of the gender binary

This is very nitpicky, but technically MTF and FTM transgender people still live inside the gender binary, at least to some extent ;)

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Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Thanks for this comment! We are going to incorporate this into the post right now :)

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Ashutosh Sharma • Edited

What an initiative !

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Ben Halpern

Good luck to anyone who participates with a story! 💜

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Yongchang He

Sending love!

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Lisa Armstrong

Glad to hear about the initiative!
Just to nick pick some more, it's Greenwich (not wiTch).
... although I don't think the Queens who were there would be too upset about the gaff!

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Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Ha! Thanks for the edit! We've implemented it :)

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michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington • Edited

EDIT: The community member that this response was directed at has left the community.

As a member of the DEV team, I don't see this post as "political activism" but rather as us being inclusive and celebrating LGBTQIA+ folks.

I think it has much more to do with caring about people and being empathetic than it does about politics. This post is also very much in line with our values and Code of Conduct, so you shouldn't feign being surprised by this post.

We are absolutely a platform for developers AND we're very transparent about our beliefs and values; it's possible to do both!

Lastly, while you say you refrain from posting your political conviction, it doesn't feel that way when you hop into a post that celebrates LGBTQIA+ and complain about us being too political. That's not helpful, it's hurtful. It's uncalled for and not welcoming or inclusive.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

As a member of the DEV team, I don't see this post as "political activism"

But it very clearly is though. There's a clear political message and it's being amplified through platform tools.

Looking at a bunch of definitions online, most of them seem to be well reflected in the first sentence of the wikipedia article:

Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good.

In that sense, I think it's at least reasonable to consider this sort of advertising for a political topic a form of activism, as the ultimate goal is to sway public opinion, thereby influencing political decisions to some degree.

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michaeltharrington profile image
Michael Tharrington

I see it more as social activism than political activism, but I don't really want to argue semantics. If you want to define this post as political activism then okay.

The main point I wanted to get at in my message is that it's rude and unhelpful to hop into the comments section of a post that is celebrating LGBTQIA+ individuals and try to down-talk or dismiss the message. Our Code of Conduct states:

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

  • Dismissing or attacking inclusion-oriented requests

I see the message above as a dismissal of an inclusion-oriented request.

And despite what the original message said, we can absolutely celebrate LGBTQIA+ folks AND still be a platform for developers. In fact, I think we're a better community because we try to do both.

We're transparent about our values here not necessarily to try and "influence political decisions", but rather to be welcoming and celebrate LGBTQIA+ folks — it's a simple as that. You could say that our donations to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute are evidence of our political activism, but again I see this as being compassionate toward people who have been marginalized. And honestly, I don't care how you want to define it. We're not doing anything shady or trying to hide anything from you all... just the opposite actually, we're being super transparent and letting you all know what matters to us and what kind of community we want to foster. This way, if you disagree with us, you clearly know where we stand and so can "vote with your legs and find another platform."

I don't really want to continue debating this with you here because I think it takes away from the focus of this post. To be very clear, please refrain from messaging me any further about this.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Good point tbh. Distinguishing between political and social activism feels a bit like splitting hairs, but I was already nitpicking to begin with, so that's fair.

As I said elsewhere, I don't see the merit in this complaint mainly because Dev never was a community to talk about code and nothing else; there's always been conversations around the broader social topics surrounding software as well.

That being said, from the perspective of someone who misunderstands Dev to be exclusively or even primarily a platform to talk about code, it is absolutely reasonable criticism.

Because of this, I think trying to disprove that this whole thing is some form of activism is just the wrong way to address that criticism. Dev has never been apolitical, so there's nothing wrong with a bit of activism for a good cause, whether this is what's happening here or not.