Reblog if you stand against order, civilization, and goodness itself
Homophobes making metal shit for the LGBTQ+ community again pt. ???
No, but let's unpack this a bit and get autistic all over it.
Because pirates honestly didn't really stand against order or civilization. They were criminals, yes, but they were often organized in their own ways. And they were actually pretty egalitarian-minded by the standards of their time.
Their ships were often run democratically, with captains elected by popular vote and the captain's power specifically limited.
They had early forms of worker's comp, so if you were injured in the line of duty, you would be paid a sum.
They would often share their takes equally.
There weren't exactly perfect, of course, a pirate ship would still be a hard place for a woman to live. Rather famously, we have Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who served aboard "Calico" Jack Rackham's ship and were two of only three pirates to defend it when the authorities finally came calling. (Fun fact, Bonny was romantically involved with Rackham and he was not one of the ones to defend the ship when it fell - her final words to him were "Had you fought like a man, you need not be hanged like a dog" - wish I'd dumped my ex with that kind of style). Bonny and Read though were very rare exceptions and have become near mythic figures in the time since with a lot of misinformation floating around about them, likely in part because they were such rare exceptions to the common rules.
But I digress.
Some facts about Jolly Rogers and how they were often used that I think are interesting and relevant.
Because the name "Jolly Roger" is often thought to derive from the term "Joli Rouge," which is French for "Pretty Red." "But the flags are black!" the hypothetical reader who knows just enough about the subject to make me sound smart says.
And yes, they were. Sometimes. The black flag on a pirate ship wouldn't usually come out until the ship was in range to actually attack, and it symbolized that there would be mercy shown to those who stood down and surrendered. Pirates often relied heavily on their reputation in these respects they specifically often did not want people fighting back and indeed avoided killing people if they could. And if a pirate ship was flying a black flag, they'd usually taken you by surprise, but they wouldn't hurt you if they didn't have a reason to. Red flags, just like on a dating app, were what you really had to be worried about. Those communicated that no quarter would be given in combat.
So let's look at this for a second.
The two big things we can take from this information about pirates is that though they aren't like movie pirates, obviously, they generally valued egalitarianism by the standards of the times. Likewise, they had a reputation for being far more harmful to polite society than they actually were as again, they wouldn't actually kill anyone in most cases and wouldn't hurt people who didn't give them a good reason to. They'd make a lot of noise to be intimidating (Blackbeard would attach candle wicks to his beard and light them when boarding enemy ships as an intimidation tactic), but that rarely translated into actual violence.
So, you have a group of people who think freedom is generally better whom a not insignificant portion of society thinks are more likely to harm them than they actually are.
Conclusion: this isn't a bad comparison, though not for the reasons this Twitter user thinks.
