my mom literally broadcasted our family fight to her entire corporate pride network by accident 💀 she’s obsessed with slapping a neat lgbtq label on me for her socials, but when i snapped her that i don’t want any label at all, she freaked out and called me cowardly. now her colleagues watched her roast me for not picking a flag. how do i get her to stop treating my life like her pr project?

First off: your identity is not a LinkedIn achievement badge, and you don’t owe anyone a branded hashtag. What’s happening here is performative allyship doing aggressive backflips. Your mom got so obsessed with winning gold in the Progressive Parenting Olympics that she looped right back around to policing who you are. The cosmic irony that her corporate Pride committee witnessed her scolding her own kid for refusing a neat little sticker? Pure poetic justice. Labels are supposed to be tools to help you understand yourself, not mandatory inventory tags to make your parents look enlightened at mixer events. Next time the topic flares up, keep it completely calm and hand her this reality check: "I appreciate that you want to be supportive, Mom, but right now you’re curating me, not listening to me. I’m comfortable in my own skin, and that should be enough for both of us." Let her stew in her own corporate awkwardness. You don’t need to wave a flag just to prove you’re allowed to exist.