Conference I'm going to gives out "ally" ribbons. They're free to take.

Queer scientists have raised issues with this in the past, especially with stories of people wearing the ribbons doing things like repeatedly misgendering a speaker they were introducing.

This year they sent us an e-mail saying that they were resolved to still hand out the ribbons, but just in case, they would also hand out a flyer WITH the ribbons with instructions of how to be respectful of queer people.

... SMH (literally)

the first year I saw them I thought they MUST have been leftover from a mixer I'd missed. NOPE.

There's a lot of problems with asking people to self-identify as allies (especially when the # of ribbons is FAR LESS than the # of attendees). Mostly, there's no guarantee those people are "safe" and it draws attention to how sparse they are - is everyone else willfully unsafe? It also basically identifies them as most likely not queer. All of this has been better said by other people, but I fundamentally agree.