“Remember that being straight isn’t an inferior way of being” straight pride ftw

Uuhhhhhh what now???

If you’re a “straight pride” person who thinks I’m on your side, you are sadly mistaken. Straight pride is not a thing that should or needs to exist. Because straight people haven’t grown up at risk of alienation or abuse because of how they love. They haven’t struggled with issues of identity or feeling broken or alone because of their sexual identity. We need a straight pride movement like we need hospitals for healthy people. Straight people can and do have difficulties, but it’s not because they’re straight.

It’s one thing to feel okay and secure in who you are. Everyone, gay or straight or ace or pansexual or any other sexuality, deserves to be proud of themselves. But “pride” in this context doesn’t mean that. It means (partly! pride is many things for many people!) pushing back against a culture, a media, a society, a set of oppressive structures that tries to tell a certain group of people that they are not or should not exist. It celebrates that which has been put down. Straight people don’t have that problem, so we don’t need that solution. Please educate yourself.

If you are someone accusing me of being a “straight pride” person and the ‘ftw’ is sarcastic, please please know that I didn’t mean to imply that, or to dogwhistle at the straight pride people, by saying that “being straight isn’t an inferior way of being.” If sexuality is something innate, something inherent, something that’s just true about who we are - which I believe it is - then no way of being is better or worse than another.

Heteronormativity sucks. Patriarchy is bullshit. Systems of privilege and oppression are the worst. But we can critique those things without putting down individual people, even if they do benefit socially, politically, and economically from those structures. There is something wrong with being violent, with keeping others down for your own advantage, with taking privilege for granted. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a woman who loves men or a man who loves women.