As many of you are well aware, there was a great victory for social justice on Friday, June 26, 2015, when the Supreme Court of the United States declared any law banning gay marriage unconstitutional. Millions of gay, white, cisgender men were liberated from the violent oppression of the State, as Equality finally arrived in his beautiful, TD Bank sponsored rainbow carriage to spread happiness across the land. It was a day filled with much joy and laughter as the rainbow was declared the national bird of the United States of America and everyone was invited to join in on the fun and celebrate Pride ™.

The White House proudly comes out as a homosexual man following the SCOTUS decision in favor of marriage equality on June 26, 2015.

All joking(?) aside, it really was an incredible sight to behold. I honestly never imagined that such an overwhelming public display of support for LGBT rights could even be possible 10 years ago. I was even blown away by the thousands of brands and corporations who adopted the rainbow colors into their logos, regardless of opportunistic intentions. And that was nothing compared to the all-powerful Facebook releasing a rainbow filter for your profile picture, which over 26 million Facebook users all over the world happily participated in. 26 million. Believe it or not, that matters.

As it turns out, people tend to learn from and emulate other people they relate to. Facebook users are no different, and they even have a nice, convenient “friends list” of some of those people right in front of them! Wow! It’s just simple human nature — in general, people are more likely to support something or someone if they see other people they relate to doing it as well. LGBT rights in particular have always been one of those extremely controversial issues, but when the rainbows took over that Friday, I noticed a beautiful thing. People I never would have expected to change their photos with the rainbow filter did. Some people came out as LGBT. And I’m sure countless others have learned a thing or two and changed their minds about some irrational beliefs they had once held the day before. It happens time and time again: anyone who is against civil rights for everyone ends up on the wrong side of history.

I created the transgender flag photo filter in response to this. It’s a very simple web app which takes an uploaded image and overlays a semi-transparent transgender flag over it. The effect is neat if you’re into that sort of thing, however I have found that the overall impact it has had over the last few weeks is much more interesting. I wrote some very brief, sloppy posts about it on Facebook and Tumblr not too long ago, but this seems like a more appropriate venue to answer a few of the questions I’ve received since the moment it went public. This should also shed some light as to why it was created and the incredible impact it has had since.

Question 1:

Why the trans flag? Can you do other flags? What about the bisexual flag? What about the pansexual flag? How about an autism filter?

Despite all of the love the “LGBT” community has received lately, many of these supporters are blissfully unaware of any actual LGBT issues besides marriage equality. The ugly truth is that we have a very, very long way to go still. Many people who claim LGBT allyship will throw a transgender person under the bus the first chance they get, and sadly this is exactly what much of the history of the LGBT movement is. For those who don’t know, it was started by transgender women of color, who have continually been squeezed out of the discussion to make room for straight assimilationist values like marriage equality and inclusion in the military since. There is even a major full-length feature film coming out about Stonewall which does not even prominently feature any transgender women of color characters. (If you are going to see it, please support MAJOR! and Happy Birthday, Marsha! too.) And while marriage equality sweeps the nation, transgender women of color are being slaughtered at higher rates than ever before. The transgender community has been screaming for basic human rights for decades, only to be silenced as quickly as possible.

If you truly want equality, intersectionality is crucial. The simple reality is that transgender people are by far the most marginalized group of the LGBT family and the most likely to be discriminated against, harassed, bullied, attacked, and killed. Things are definitely changing though, as evidenced by the phenomenal popularity of Caitlyn Jenner.

There was even a great segment on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about transgender rights in America (which everyone should probably watch), but it still somehow fell short of discussing the alarming rates of violence against transgender people, and transgender women of color especially. Personally, it actually came off to me like the worst things we face as transgender people are income inequality, being misgendered, annoying bathroom laws, and inclusion in the military. Don’t get me wrong — these are all very important, but the ones who are going to be affected by these laws and issues the most are also the ones who’s deaths are constantly being ignored or maliciously misrepresented. Somehow we all forgot about racism, even as black churches continued to go up in flames in the South.

We need to lift these voices up, so I created the filter to help in any tiny way that it could. Besides, there are already tools for all of those other flags. I would probably do one for the intersex community first, if anything.

Sorry, but you cannot erase racism by replacing one symbol for cis white men with another symbol for cis white men!

Question 2:

What if I’m cisgender (not transgender)? Can allies use it too if they’re not trans? A trans person told me not to use it!

I don’t care what they told you, use it! Despite revising the website a few times, this still comes up and I want to make this absolutely clear:. This is not just about pride, it is about showing support and changing public opinion. That is why it is absolutely crucial for cis allies to share it and participate as well as the transgender community. In fact, visibility can be extremely dangerous for transgender people and Facebook loves to target transgender people under their “real” name policy, so i am not definitely not asking any transgender people to out themselves. If transgender people were the only ones who used it, what would be the point? It’d be like a big sign saying “Here! Report me!” to all of the transphobic users on Facebook.

Simply put, if you are one of the 26 million Facebook users who used the rainbow filter on your profile to support LGBT rights, you should already be supporting the “T”. If you don’t support transgender people, I ask that you get rid of your rainbow profile picture and educate yourself about the history of the LGBT movement. (And it isn’t our job to do that either — please do some research, it’s not that hard.) Then maybe switch to the transgender flag filter instead, because sometimes it spreads and things like this happen…