Nobody likes to feel left out. But sometimes, things are just not right for us. I wouldn’t attend a meeting for Black and minority ethnic adults, and I wouldn’t expect a non-disabled person to try to join in a disabled people’s group. I wouldn’t go to an evening class for parents, and I would hope that a parent wouldn’t join in a childfree one.
But some fragile men in Boston have decided that gay people shouldn’t keep all of our oppression to ourselves; instead, the city should celebrate a Straight Pride day alongside the LGBT+ one.
Oh, hold on. They don’t want to share our oppression, they just want the party. Feeling sidelined by our array of colourful flags and sequins, the group Super Happy Fun America wants its own celebration because there are people who *checks notes* are attracted to people of the opposite sex. Yay?
Speaking on their website of the Boston Straight Pride Parade, they cry out “finally straight people will have their voices heard” like the vast majority of all Presidents, Prime Ministers, prominent journalists and company bosses aren’t already straight. They invite readers to “celebrate the diverse history, culture, and contributions of the straight community” and explain that “The Straight Pride Event will be held to achieve inclusivity and spread awareness of issues impacting straights in Greater Boston and beyond. It will be a one-day event consisting of a parade followed by a flag raising ceremony”.
Depressingly, Super Happy Fun America has a Gay Ambassador, who “uses his status in the LGBTQ community to challenge heterophobia wherever it exists. He became involved in the straight pride movement after being ostracized from established advocacy groups for merely suggesting that straight people be afforded equal rights”.
Dylan Marron had some sensible stuff to say.
happy heterosexual pride day pic.twitter.com/PCGKNnhu76
— Dylan Marron (@dylanmarron) June 5, 2019
Because what would a Straight Pride parade look like? It would look like the whole world around it already looks but without the enclaves of LGBT folks who would normally be trying to be seen. Doing away with those oppressive gays and the culturally dominant trans folks… would be a nonsense because LGBT people are oppressed and trodden down at every opportunity. We wouldn’t attend a Straight Pride parade, except perhaps to protest it or to point and laugh, and that would make it a tropical island of delicious heterosexism for those who hate us.
Now I can see why they want it to take place.
There is no need to celebrate or highlight heterosexuality because all societies in the world are already drowning in it. There is nothing challenging about a man being with a woman, nothing that makes people’s curtains twitch when they move in as neighbours or that makes a parent grasp their child close when they walk by. There is nothing about heterosexuality that gets a straight man beaten up (though, for straight women, those straight men carry out a lot of beatings themselves), and there are no laws that say straight people must die for their sexuality or are simply not allowed to have a relationship.
Straight people can be oppressed, but they are not oppressed because of their heterosexuality.
The proliferation of rainbows in Pride month these days does cheer my soul, though with a skepticism and cynical outlook when I see that homophobic organisations and massive corporations who do not give a shit are promoting themselves using the flag that was so hard fought-for. But the straight pride flag – and yes, there is one – is meaningless because it just denotes the whole bloody world.
Eva Victor carried on the ‘spot-on videos about Straight Pride’ trend.
me explaining to my boyfriend why we’re going to straight pride pic.twitter.com/ZtXpLaV05s
— Eva Victor (@evaandheriud) June 4, 2019
Just like men spend International Women’s Day asking when International Men’s Day is every year, so LGBT+ folks spend June answering questions about Straight Pride. When I was at uni in the 90s and on the (then) LGB committee, a group was keen to set up a Heterosexuality Society in the students’ union. I don’t know whether they just ran out of steam or couldn’t come up with any valid reasons for their existence but it never came about.
But this argument arises all the time and, just because we’re only now being faced with an actual potential Straight Pride parade, this does not mean this is a new scenario.
Straight people ask without even a hint of irony why there aren’t straight nightclubs when we have gay ones. They demand to know where the “straight quarter” is in cities with a gay quarter. They want to celebrate themselves and they can’t even see that the entire world is set up to celebrate them already.
I hope it ends up like one of those neo-nazi demos that ends up with 12 marchers, 150 anti-fascists there to protest and a line of police who don’t know what to do with themselves. I hope it is a massive flop with 12 Republicans, 1500 fabulous LGBTQ activists and no police in sight. I hope the Super Happy Whatever They’re Calling Themselves are humiliated on an international scale and never attempt such foolishness again.
But then, next year, someone else will suggest a Straight Pride parade and we will be right back where we started.
Photo: Elke Hautala