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Outer Alliance Pride Day Success – A Huge Thanks to All! September 2, 2009

Posted by Natania in : Outer Alliance Pride Day, The Outer Alliance, events , 2comments

Over 80 posts.

Over 200 members.

Over 3,000 pageviews.

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What can I say? Gosh, I’m a bit speechless. I still haven’t completely caught up on the posts, but at last check we were at 81. Traffic to the site has exploded; we saw our numbers soar! Twitter was abuzz.

I don’t think I anticipated such an impressive response with our first event, figuring… well, it was a first event. But I like to be surprised!

All the success is due to the remarkable people that make up the Outer Alliance. Reading the posts from yesterday, I definitely got a little teary-eyed. Straight advocates posting thoughtful reflections, queer writers talking about the state of publication and their struggles, and, of course, some truly remarkable writing. Thanks to everyone who posted, to those who read, to those who spread the word, to those who happy danced along with me.

If you didn’t have a chance to post, it’s not too late. Just link to the post from yesterday here. There are over eighty voices that can speak for you. Or with you. I suppose “with you” is really more of the idea.

At any rate, there are more things to come! Look for more announcements in the weeks to follow. We’ve done a mighty thing, friends. Instead of sowing discord, we’ve raised our hands in celebration of what we are, who we support, and what we believe.

Bravo!

Outer Alliance Pride Day Posts Begin! September 1, 2009

Posted by Natania in : Outer Alliance Pride Day, The Outer Alliance, membership , 39comments

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Outer Alliance Pride Day has officially begun around the world! We’ll be updating the post here as more appear. Thanks to everyone for contributing, and for those who’d like to join along, it’s never too late. Just link to this post, and your pingback will appear in our comments. Keep in mind that many of these links will go live during the day (as noted).

As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity.  I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.

Posts:

Outer Alliance Pride Day 9/1/09 August 25, 2009

Posted by mbranesf in : Outer Alliance Pride Day , 22comments

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This is a point that probably does not need to be reiterated too often among our group, but one that never quits being useful: when they (the members of the majority culture, or whatever you want to call them) know personally even one of us, then they tend to be more open-minded about who we are, more ready to give up those prejudices based on what we are not.  This fact, more than any other, is why we are winning what American right-wingers like to call “the culture war” in spite of our vast numerical disadvantage. Every single time a queer comes out or a straight ally speaks up in favor equality of human dignity, at least one, and usually more, of our opponents fall back and retrench or just give up. The John C. Right Affair is good example of it.

On September 1, the Outer Alliance will conduct its first major public action, our “coming out,” so to speak. Please read below the text of Natania’s post in the Google Group discussion from earlier today. Consider recruiting and inviting new members to participate, or even enlisting non-members who may wish to speak up. The idea is to see many, many sites all doing the same basic thing at the same time:

“So, we’ve been thinking of an inaugural event to coincide with our newly minted Outer Alliance badges, and in concert with the revamped mission statement. Right now our greatest strength is not (yet!) in our web presence (as an organization) or a resource (as a blog), but simply in our numbers:

The idea is this: on Tuesday September 1st, 2009 we’re asking our members to post our mission statement on their blogs/sites, which reads*:

As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity.  I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.

Then below, a short example of queer speculative fiction. It can be something you’re working on now, an excerpt from something you’ve already published, a piece of fanfic, an image; or, for those who might not have any of those on handy, a short piece talking about how queer speculative fiction came to your attention, a biography of a writer you admire, or a review.

We’ll provide a handy little graphic banner to include in the post, and link back to all the posts on our main page. It doesn’t have to be long** or time-consuming. The idea is to make this easy but effective. Now for some of you, this might be old hat; for others, it might be the first time you’ve been open about your support (since we are made up of all sorts of different people with various experiences in the LGBT community). It’s all up to you if you want to contribute. The good part is that it will bring traffic to your site, as well as the OA site, and get our shiny new mission statement there.”

We know we are not giving people much time to plan for this, but we hope that everyone will find a few minutes to participate. Also, PLEASE reply to the Outer Alliance Pride Day discussion or to this post with the link to your Pride Day post so that we can get them all compiled onto a page on this site for easy reference. Depending on your particular computing system, you should be able to copy the logo image directly from this post and use it as an image with yours (and please make a link back here, too, of course). Also, Mari Kurisato has made available a directory of Outer Alliance graphics for your use. (If you have trouble obtaining a banner image, yell, and someone will help).