Twitter selfies taken before heading out the door on Saturday (5/7) & Sunday (5/8). wearing recycled shirts from previous Prides along with some of my newly acquired flags. sucks that i only really get to sport this stuff once a year, but oh well. actual non-binary (maverique) pan / bi asexual pride is year-round. 🙂
…and with that, Tokyo Rainbow Pride has come and gone once again. to everyone who came out and i was able to meet (the majority of whom don’t even use Tumblr and will never see this, but whatever) お疲れ！ it was great seeing you! the past two days have seriously gone by in a whirlwind. so much happened, met so many people, got so little sleep, took way too may photos. perhaps most importantly, this year was the third year that i, along with other aces, went to TRP & walked in the parade and i think this year was definitely the best yet! we even had a really great meetup afterwards. 🙂 i really want to hibernate for a few days to recover from the awesomeness, but alas i have to drag my ass to work and get mauled by kids tomorrow. and for days after that. ugh. lots…
Nijiiro Komachi kicking ass again, handmaking flags on the spot to meet demand in their booth– GAH! why are you so amazing, Nijiiro Komachi?!?! i might as well be throwing money at you. ugh, 明日はホンマに大変になってしまったね。 tomorrow’s parade is going to be crazy. hopefully in a good way.
…annnd it’s finished! it’s not perfect, but whatever. it’ll do. tomorrow is the start of Tokyo Rainbow Pride and thanks to this flag, there’ll be even more ace visibility in the parade this year. 🙂 the flag was made using the fabric that i found at Yokohama Pride last year and i still have enough leftover to make two more flags if i wanted to. the long-since-retired ‘born this way’ flag that i got at Las Vegas Pride years ago was only used to check proportions. next year’s mission: find or make a non-binary flag because apparently flag manufactures do not know or care that the non-binary flag is not the same as the genderqueer flag and i want a non-binary flag goddamnit.
Tokyo Rainbow Pride 2016 is just under a week away, so i’m going to take this opportunity to throw out some random info for anyone in the Tokyo / Kanto who’s going this year. just like every year, there’s a lot of stuff going on during “Rainbow Week”, the week leading up to the main events which are the Festa on Saturday, May 7th and the Festa + Parade on Sunday, May 8th. see the TRP website for details on all the events going on. Sat. May 7th 10:00am ~ ??? – Tokyo Rainbow Pride FESTA lots of booths, food, music & performances in Yoyogi Park. 12:00pm ~ 2:00pm – huge annual LGBTQIA (gaijin) picnic Stonewall Japan & the Tokyo LGBTQIAP+ Meetup Group will be hosting another joint picnic. if you aren’t a member of either of these groups, contact me for more information. 7:00pm ~ 11:00pm – “Critical Compassion: Using our Stories…
my ace friends and i had a great time again this year at TRP! photo notes: the black & white photo is from the “OUT IN JAPAN” photo exhibition by Leslie Kee inside Harajuku GAP, which was also running a #rainbowgap photo booth campaign. the writing on the trans flag says 「色んな性の在り方を認め合おう！」/ “Let’s acknowledge the existence of various sexes/genders!” (in Japanese the same word is used to refer to both sex & gender) the meerkat, its human and its friend on the human’s shoulder deserve to be included for showing up to both last year’s and this year’s TRP in style. and yes, meerkats, among numerous other wild animals, are imported and sold as pets in Japan. i hope you are as outraged about that as i am, even if this meerkat is cute. ;(
like last year, a handful of us gaijin aces went to Tokyo Rainbow Pride and walked in the parade with Stonewall Japan. this year, i personally decided to raise non-binary / Xジェンダー awareness at the same time. 🙂 also like last year, we started out small with there being only three of us, then we ran into an old friend from last year, becoming four. THEN while lounging around someone on Tumblr messaged me that they were there and had seen us walking in the parade, so we meetup with that person and became five! w00t! we even ran into the-shynamites again this year, but i wasn’t able to get a photo of their awesome ace pride sign. ;( i even ran into the author of the forthcoming, crowd-funded book about Xジェンダー / non-binary people in Japan!! D; the asshat that we ran into later aside, we had a great…
today some ace friends and i went to Tokyo Rainbow Pride where we were approached by a smug as fuck acephobic asshat. this video is dedicated to those who do not believe that acephobia and/or asexual erasure are a thing and to those who struggle dealing with people belittling the shit you deal with. let there be video of acephobia & asexual erasure in action for the world to see. content warning: misogyny, asexual erasure, acephobia, offensive-level ignorance, etc etc ※ what is acephobia? fear, prejudice or discrimination against people within the asexual (ace) spectrum; the belief that asexuality is “unnatural”, “wrong” and/or a health issue that needs “correcting”. ※ what is asexual erasure? denying the existence of asexuality, asexuals and/or other sexualities and people within the asexual spectrum; the lack of representation and misrepresentation of asexual spectrum people in the media. edit: later we came across Mr. Asshat again interviewing people…
just finished walking with Stonewall Japan in the Tokyo Pride Parade! みんな、お疲れ様です！ having a great time, although i want to smack people upside the head every time they refer to this event as “gay pride”. way to erase everyone else, guys (*｀Д´)ノ！！！ edit: …so like 15 minutes of the most acephobic shit just happened while we were sitting here with our ace pride sign. like HOLY SHIT, that was the most awkward, offensive 15 minutes (that felt like 30) in my life. and i got 10minsish of it on video. will post it soon. UGH.
just about ready for Tokyo Rainbow Pride tomorrow! last year i wore my ace pride shirt, but this time around it’s time for some non-binary / Xジェンダー pride and visibility! thankfully the shirt i made arrived just in time. 🙂 i’ll still be hanging out with my ace friends helping with asexual awareness & visibility, but my gender is just as important as my sexuality. in case you’re wondering, Xジェンダー / X-gender is the Japanese equivalent of genderqueer and/or non-binary in English.
