There are pride shirts that say "love is love" in a pleasant font, and there are pride shirts that say what the rest of us are thinking. We make the second kind. Every design in our pride tees and trans pride tees collections started with one question: when someone sees this across a parking lot, what do they learn about the person wearing it? The answer we're after is that this one will not be moved, will not be quiet, and will not be mistaken for someone who asks permission to exist. If you've been searching for political pride shirts, defiant pride tees, anti-fascist pride shirts or a trans rights shirt that doesn't hedge, this is the store that makes them. Here's what the shirts say, and why.
Don't Tread On Me, pride edition
The Gadsden flag has been waved in our faces for years by people who'd like us back in the closet, or worse. We took it. Our Don't Tread On Me pride shirt runs the coiled snake in rainbow, and the trans pride edition in pink, white and blue, and the slogan reads exactly as it was written in 1775: step on us and find out what happens. There's a tank of each. Nobody who sees it needs it explained, and the people it's aimed at understand it fastest.
These Colors Don't Run
Another line taken off the back of a pickup truck. On a Progress Pride flag it says something the original never earned: these colors have been shot at, legislated against and preached against for fifty years, and they are still here, on your chest, in daylight, not going anywhere. These Colors Don't Run is the pride tee for the person who has never once crossed the street to avoid a stare and isn't about to start. It comes as a tank too.
TRANSALLY
TRANSALLY turns a cartoon-robot pun into an oath. The trans community is the front line right now, and this trans ally shirt says which side of it you're standing on. It's for the cis gay man who understands that nobody is coming for trans people alone, the sibling who's done staying out of it, and anyone else who knows that an ally who stays quiet at the dinner table is a spectator. Wear it to the places where it costs something. Tee or tank.
Fuck You, Find Out, and Choke
Some days you don't want a slogan. You want a gesture. The Fuck You! tee is a rainbow middle finger the size of your torso, and it says everything that needs saying to every bigot, preacher and politician with an opinion about your life. Find Out! The Unsubtle Edition is the same finger with the history of pride behind it: the half of "fuck around" they keep forgetting. Choke is our reply to anyone who complains that we're shoving it down their throats. These three LGBTQ protest shirts sell to people who have run out of patience, which is a large and growing market.
Radical Rainbow Rebellion
Look at the bars on Radical Rainbow Rebellion and you'll see a pride flag. Look again and you'll see a barcode. The camps tattooed numbers on forearms; the next round won't need ink, they'll scan us. The design holds both readings at once: the colors that only have power standing together, and the code a fascist state would use to sort us. The Blood On Our Hands edition adds a red handprint across the bars, because silence while it happens makes the silent complicit, and we'd rather wear that accusation than earn it. There is a tank of each. This is the most uncomfortable shirt we sell. That's the job.
Silence = Death, Again
The inverted pink triangle came out of the camps and was reclaimed by ACT UP when a government let a generation die rather than say the word AIDS. Silence = Death, Again adds one word to the original pink triangle shirt, because the conditions that made it necessary are back and the people responsible have names. Its sibling, Wake the Fuck Up, carries the same triangle for anyone who still thinks this is someone else's problem.
Respect My Existence or Expect My Resistance
The full line is on the shirt. Respect My Existence is the ultimatum version of a pride tee: an offer, with terms, and a consequence attached. Underestimate at Your Own Risk makes the same offer in fewer words. You Won't Erase Us, in both the pride and trans colorways, is the answer to every bill with "protection" in its title that exists to make us disappear. We read them. We're still here.
The trans pride line
Everything in trans pride carries the flag's colors and the same refusal to flinch. Trans Lives Over Your Feelings says where the priority sits when someone's discomfort meets someone else's survival. RESPECT TRANS Or I'll Identify As A Fucking Problem is the trans rights shirt people photograph at Pride, and the one that gets the most mail. We Are All Trans is for everyone who understands that the line being drawn around trans people today is the line that will be drawn around the rest of us tomorrow, and that holding it is self-defense, not charity. The Soul Has No Gender is the quiet one, and it is still a declaration.
Fifteen percent of the profit on every trans pride item goes to Trans Lifeline, the peer-run crisis line staffed by trans people. That's been true since the collection launched and it isn't changing.
For the allies and the ones who want to be
Safe With Me, in pride and trans editions, is a promise worn in public: whoever you are, you're safe standing next to the person in this shirt, and anyone who wants to test that can try. Stand United says why they work so hard to split us up. Won't Tolerate Hate draws the line. And Not a Fan of Your Lifestyle Either is for the family reunion.
The ones nobody else makes
Statement shirts are half of what we do. The other half is pride art you won't find on anyone else's rack. The Hunky Daddy Merman series, four designs so far, puts a crowned, trident-carrying, rainbow-scaled merman on a tee, the kind who'd swim up and take Triton's throne without asking. Bear pride gets its own shelf: the geometric Prism Bear and Bear Pride Grizzly, the Bear Brotherhood Flag Silhouette with the paw exactly where you'd want it, Bear Flag Heart, Big Boy Bear in his sunglasses, World of Bears, Bear Paw, Bear Butt and the unrepentant Bearbie. Leather Heart carries the leather pride flag for the men who were never going to wear a rainbow heart. And the Fantasy S&M series (Bound & Gagged, Spellbound, Bitten, Boned, Disembodied and the Omegaverse Knotted) is kink as illustration: mummies, vampires, skeletons and werewolves doing what the title says. All of it printed to order, all of it ours, none of it available at the mall.
If you want it quieter, we have that too
Not every day is a fight, and not everyone wants to carry one on their chest. The Pride Heart, Trans Heart, the Angels in Love series, the Gay Valentines watercolors and the bear pride designs are in the same collections, printed on the same tees, for the days you want to be seen without starting anything. We make both. But when you want the gay pride shirt that makes the room go quiet, this is the store that makes it.
Why we make them this way
Because polite didn't work. Because the people who want us gone are not confused about what they want, and matching their clarity is the least we owe ourselves. Because a shirt is the cheapest billboard there is and you carry it into rooms a protest sign can't enter: the grocery store, the school board meeting, the airport, the church parking lot, Thanksgiving. And because every one of these queer resistance tees is printed to order on a fitted Bella+Canvas or Next Level shirt in XS to 3XL that will survive a hundred washes and a great deal of eye contact.
We Threw The Brick
Everything above rests on one fact. Stonewall was a riot, not a parade, and the people who started it were trans women of color with nothing left to lose and no reason to be polite about it. We Threw The Brick says it in four words; the antiqued Stonewall tribute edition says it with the history worn in. Every right we have was taken, not granted. We make these Stonewall shirts so nobody forgets who did the taking, and so nobody mistakes us for people who've forgotten how.
Shop pride tees, trans pride tees, and the tanks and sweats that carry the same designs.
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