Ten Things To Say To A Straight Pride Supporter
First of all, what is straight pride?
Straight Pride supporters would have you believe straight pride is an opportunity to demonstrate their own overflowing pride for being brave enough to be straight in today’s gay-agenda-driven society – where they feel heterosexual people are getting less and less of a voice.
What it really is:
It is a fear-mongering reaction driven by maliciously clever homophobes who are preying on the current climate of straight-white fragility/pride in order to gather even more attention to their gross ideas.
It’s putting, “It’s annoying that I have to think about people other than myself and give up a little of the unlimited power I’ve held until now,” on the same level as the Stonewall Riots, Civil Rights and Suffrage movements. These were all movements where people were literally fighting for the right to be who they were, and not be assaulted in the street or discriminated against in work, education and wider society (and are still fighting for – which is what Straight Priders intentionally forget).
Let us be clear – we are not against straight people. The opposition to ‘straight pride’ you’re seeing globally, is not an opposition to heterosexuality – it’s opposing the thinly veiled homophobia beneath the movement and what we know this movement could mean for the safety and wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ people around the world.
Ten things to say to a Straight Pride supporter:
- Don’t straight people have 364 days a year of unopposed privilege? And now, on the 365th day, they’d like to celebrate having that privilege year-round (Eva Victor sums this one up perfectly).
- Fighting for rights you’ve always had is such a genius way to keep things as they’ve always been and to never have to feel uncomfortable or experience change. What a brilliant idea!
- Isn’t Straight Pride Parade just code for, ‘I’m too scared to openly say I hate gay people’?
- Where can I make a donation? You guys need all the help you can get with all the jobs, status, power and freedom to express your sexuality.
- Straight Pride Day is like celebrating your birthday every other day of the year as well as your actual birthday...
- Y’all think you’re clever and original – you tried this 'movement' in the 80s and we saw it for what it was then, too. Homo and FOMO phobia.
- Oh, Christians were also persecuted in the past, too? Yes, and literally thousands of years ago it was decided that killing Christians for being who they were wasn’t good. I mean Christians then immediately forgot that and there were the Crusades, the Holy Roman Empire and much of colonisation, but yes – it was really tough for you that one time.
- Homophobia directly impacts the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ people. Whether it be by you physically assaulting us in the street, or making some of us feel so worthless and wrong that we feel we can’t go on living, or by creating so much fear around what life will be like if we come out that we can't get appropriate physical and mental healthcare.
- If you want a straight pride parade, let’s have every one of you walk a mile in our heels first - try living in a world where:
- It was literally illegal to be who you were born to be
- You could be assaulted or murdered, literally hunted down by people who’ve never met you before but hate you just for being queer
- You could get spit on in public – then have no one lift a finger to help you
- You could be bullied in any situation your bullies saw fit – then have others say you just need to get over it because it’s easier to dismiss you than to show any human decency
- You could lose your job because of your sexuality
- You could be disowned by parents, friends and wider family
- You could get forced into conversion therapy, which has ranged from electric shock therapy to lobotomy. It doesn’t work – but that doesn’t stop people trying.
- You could get stepped on so many times that eventually you might just, throw a bottle in the Stonewall Riots of 1969, for example.
- Can you honestly say you feel discriminated against for being straight? Better yet, name one country where you can legally be murdered for being straight – we’ll wait.
If you’re still confused – take a final word from a fellow heterosexual, James Fell:
'There is nothing I have ever had to fight for, or struggle against because I’m straight. And therefore, there isn’t any reason to take pride in it. Grateful for the privileges, I get. But Pride? I don’t see it.”