it was originally worn by george michael in the music video for wake me up before you go go, back in 1984. at the height of the aids crisis.
even before he came out as gay himself, he was a big proponent for gay rights and awareness of the aids crisis. not to mention the shirt was designed by katharine hammett, a designer known for her leftist political statements in her works. here’s a relevant snippet from her wikipedia page.
Hamnett has spoken out several times against the slogan’s use by prolife activists in the U.S. She wrote on her website, “It’s not about the anti-abortion lobby. The US anti-abortion lobby attempted to appropriate CHOOSE LIFE. We are taking it back and promoting its real meaning. Ours is authentic and I believe in a woman’s right to choose.”
so yeah, its not a pro life shirt, and the meaning has become heavily misconstrued over the years.
What she means: Why isn’t it taught that abortion was perfectly legal in the US in early 1870s and it wasn’t until a Jewish doctor, who was being framed, was put on trial for manslaughter (a trial, as well as the press covering it, which was greatly tinged with antisemitism) that opened the floodgates for antiabortion crusaders which eventually led to its criminalization?
I did not know this!
Me neither, until I read this book.
Look at the notes for the name of the book if anyone else is interested.
And one of the things that tells us is that the One Good Mind of consensus actually requires the active participation of everybody in the community, that it can’t be done without active participation by all. So, everybody matters, everybody counts. And I remember my mother specifically saying, “Don’t leave anyone out, don’t leave anyone out”. And if anything was ever counted up and somebody was left out, you started counting again, from the very beginning. Why? Because somebody was left out.
And that’s not acceptable, because exclusivism destroys community. It’s the first and best way to destroy community. Inclusivism, on the other hand, is very important to creating community; it hears absolutely every comment, it hears everything that’s going on, and it hears it in the voices that raised the issue. That’s pretty important.
“that’s just the way the world works” it literally doesn’t have to be but okay
if anyone ever tells you “humans are just selfish / life is cruel / that’s just how the world is, get over it” be critical of them bc there’s a 75% chance they’re just using that as an excuse for their own shitty behavior so that they don’t have to put an effort into being better, kinder people
But they’re totally dislocated spiritually by the discovery that institutions are just human-made. They’re just people-made. People made them, and people can unmake them, and people can remake them, people can retool them anytime they like.
If things are unfair, all of a sudden they start realizing, as you said [gestures to someone in audience], if somebody’s rich over here it’s because somebody’s poor over there–if things are unfair, it’s because the unfairness benefits somebody powerful. And people just don’t want to change the unfairness. There’s nothing God-given or God-driven about that unfairness, it’s a totally created situation.
Every queer person I know over the age of 30 is fucking appalled by the state of the queer community, and I have heard some absolutely stellar anti-gatekeeping tirades from queer grandparents. I had a long conversation with a 43 year old pansexual who told me the infighting is almost certainly because we’ve collectively forgotten our joint history and have become more interested in individual social clout than actually advancing the movement for across the board queer equality.
So this is a reminder, I guess, that our elders are on our side. The gatekeeping and the exclusionary behavior is crap.
Skimmed through the “comment” section of this post. Wish I hadn’t. The people in that section are the reasons I’m not anywhere near this god damn community.. y’all are acting just as bad a cishet people who deny our existence and our rights to be who we are.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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