So someone designed a new ace flag and got a ton of backlash from a mix of actual critique and just racism. Which she didn't deserve any of the like, racism, to be clear.
The way she kinda presented it as the official new flag even though she didn't mean that to be the old flag wasn't still to be used really rubbed people the wrong way. People found this extra egregious because making the ace flag was a huge community effort made through AVEN and lots of voting all the way back in 2010, picking the asexual flag was a HUGE community thing. So seeing it get dismissed as outdated and framing its lack of changes since as a bad thing was very much a BAD WAY to express the desire for a new flag.
Especially since it seemed to not take into account any of the history and feel very focused on new aces. Along with the language again failing to sound at all like she wasn't just trying to completely change the flag for personal taste and distance the community from the one we've been using with basically no complaints for nearly two decades
From what I can find a big reason she decided on making a new ace flag was based on not agreeing? on the flag stripe meanings? Which to be honest I don't think I've met anyone who overly cares about the flag stripe meaning, I seriously doubt most people could name what each stripe of the gay flag means let alone when we get more complicated then bisexual.
Specifically with the white stripe which stands for allies, which she thought was weird to have in such a big role and be centralized in anyway. Which, having seen the shit aphobes have put our allies through and the specific dynamics that can go into asexual relationships even with straight partners, I disagree extremely heavily with this. However I also understand why a lot of people would want to change it.
So instead of just... changing the meaning, which we could totally just do without changing a single other thing because lets be so real how many aces actually knew the meanings, she made a whole new flag and presented it as just objectively superior even if she may not have meant for it. Especially since so many people didn't even know there was any sort of polling or anything about this topic. I sure didn't.
This all sparked a lot of outrage, with one big point against it being that Love is something actually very hot button controversial in the ace community. Having it so highlighted in the flag despite the efforts of those of the loveless identity to fight that derogatory "well just because we're ace doesn't mean we don't loooove" standpoint. See op above.
So people got real mad, and because Grace is black, means some people were ~really racist~ about that anger at least so I've heard since a lot of this happened on instagram and you can't make me use instagram for longer then like ten minutes if forced but I fully am willing to just believe because it feels obvious it would. Which also sparked a conversation on race in the community which some people definitely took too far in the opposite direction to say all critique of the flag was done out of racism so now everyone's agitated and annoyed!
Again, I do want to reiterate that Grace did not deserve all the racism and hate, just because a black woman did something perhaps not as well as possible or worded things badly or just made a mistake or however you read it doesn't mean she deserves to get strapped into a pyre. At worst we are two people in the same community with a disagreement over the flag and its purpose. That's it. Our community should be held accountable for the racism and we should examine our biases as a group. Though the turning the whole thing into a race thing of "only racists dont like it" to shut down all negative discussion even aimed to be constructive is kinda stupid ngl.
At the end of the day there's nothing inherently wrong with just having more flags even if it was framed poorly. I personally think its ugly and dislike how it was presented. The framing of it like its some software update or logo rebranding gives me major ick so I likely won't ever associate with it any time soon. However, if other people like it then sure, whatever, their choice, not my business.
But yeah, that's been the ace discourse for the last like month or two, I really think a lot of this could have been avoided if she just... framed it less like she was making the true successor to the ace flag everyone should use (which she very much did even if she didn't think so due to a lot of her language sounding kinda corporate talking about logo change with statements like "Whether this change to the flag will be implemented or not") and instead leaned more into it being something to go along with the ace flag as like, a bonus. Race 100% did play a role in the backlash, i dont want to understate that, but it definitely was pretty poorly presented from the start.
Honestly the whole thing is just kinda stupid and I cannot imagine it catching on but hey thats what I said about the sunset lesbian flag debacle and look at the world now so who knows, not me.
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