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  • Cait the Proud Trans Womanoldladyplays@wargamers.social
    Nov 1, 2026, 1:05 PM

    @Natasha_Jay

    Yep. Same here. The only poppy I will wear is the one with rainbow colours I painted onto it, which is my way of honouring my fellow queer folk who were also (like me) purged from public service for the crime of being queer.

    This picture is from the front page of the local paper - showing my rainbow poppy.

    I wore it for the first time when I attended the cenotaph on Nov 11 some years back, and for the first time that I sat with other veterans.

    No one commented, though my face had literally been on the front page of the paper that morning.

    A fat old white woman with slightly greenish white hair, smiles at the camera while holding up a pinnable poppy-analogue, with a small rainbow section painted onto the poppy.
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  • Nαtαshα :mastodon:Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt
    Nov 1, 2026, 1:13 PM

    @oldladyplays
    That is very cool (well you are honestly!)

    If I wore one now, it would have to be something like this, but with a white poppy given the history with Ireland.

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  • Cait the Proud Trans Womanoldladyplays@wargamers.social
    Nov 1, 2026, 8:24 PM

    @John_Loader @Natasha_Jay

    Why? I am a veteran, same as any other. I signed up for the same risks as anyone else. Then I was put in jail, where I experienced repeated SA by the MPs "guarding" me.

    Then they tried to stick me with a dishonourable discharge, despite that my only "crime" was "serving my country while queer".

    So no. I am not a disgruntled former employee. I was a soldier, and the enemy turned out to be the organisation I served honourably. I am completely entitled to wear my poppy as I like it, _just as the rights I swore to protect say I can_.

    But thanks for popping up and telling me that all that was just an HR boo-boo. That's not demeaning or disrespectful at all.

    Hope your day goes better than mine now has.

    Asshole.

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  • GeofCoxGeofCox@climatejustice.social
    Nov 1, 2026, 1:06 PM

    @Natasha_Jay

    An interesting aspect of this coercive nationalism enveloping the red poppy now, is that it didn't exist when I was a kid in the UK, and most grown-ups had actually lived through the war.

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  • Nαtαshα :mastodon:Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt
    Nov 1, 2026, 1:15 PM

    @GeofCox
    Even the Mail and Telegraph back around then talked about being coerced to wear a poppy as 'Poppy Facism'. It seems to have turned on its head now.

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  • Ken Milmorekbm0@mastodon.social
    Nov 1, 2026, 1:50 PM

    @Natasha_Jay When I was a kid the poppies still had "Haig Fund" written on them in the centre. I guess Blackadder Goes Forth probably made them get rid of that sharpish.
    I still wear a poppy every year. My great grandfather died in Flanders Field just a week or two before the armistice. My grandfather survived North Africa in WWII; he didn't like to talk about it too much. It's as much to remember them as anything. But yeah I agree with the article: We need to check our motives.

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  • Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UKvfrmedia@social.tchncs.de
    Nov 1, 2026, 2:08 PM

    @kbm0 @Natasha_Jay

    as a brown person I always wore one as a kid - I also remember the Haig Fund poppies before the 1994 rebranding.

    I stopped wearing one some time in 1990s not for any political reason, I just didn''t see them being sold as often (this might simply be because of the odd hours I keep, and by the time I go to any supermarket the usually senior RBL volunteer has already packed up their stall).

    But by 2000s and the various Middle Eastern wars I did become more suspicious about the motives of at least some people wearing them (and especially those who keep the plastic poppies on their cars all year round, as unfortunately they do seem to have been appropriated to an extent by far right "patriots" and "new Crusader" types..

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  • HarriettMBHarriettMB@toot.wales
    Nov 1, 2026, 2:14 PM

    @Natasha_Jay The only one I will wear now is the Peace Poppy. I don’t want any truck with the red one, as it has been hijacked by the nazi adjacent fash, far right types.

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  • Stoneface Vimescapnthommo@c.im
    Nov 1, 2026, 4:14 PM

    @Natasha_Jay yes. Every autumn a combination of poppy-upmanship combined with a stick to beat anyone who they think isn't doing it quite right (in their opinion)

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  • Steve Woodswood5y
    Nov 1, 2026, 4:16 PM

    @capnthommo @Natasha_Jay "[The] politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder."

    Harry Patch (1898 - 2009)

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