Isn't being proud of your sexuality mostly a response to being shamed by bigots for your sexuality? Like: parts of society look down on my sexuality? Well fuck you, I'm proud of it! If you're not being shamed at all, isn't a bit weird to be proud of such things? As if you did anything to become a heterosexual. No one cares, nor should they.
Yeah, that is the whole point. The whole point is not "I am proud of who I am attracted to", the point is "I am proud of being open about who I am attracted to despite the bigots and social challenges".
Which is why there is no "straight pride", "blond pride", or "high school student pride". There is no glory in doing something that is statistically speaking, completely devoid of interest...
There is no glory in doing something that is statistically speaking, devoid of interest...
Wait, I thought this was about being proud of standing up to bigots?
Is it about being a statistical anomaly and special, or about being a progressive activist?
Cuz I'll tell you what pride month is to me, as a straight man. Pride month is one of many placative gestures performed by corporations in order to manipulate my empathy into buying their products. It's a nice set of makeup that corporations get to wear while you go out and suffer the consequences. You, as someone who is a part of the LGBTQ+ community, should be painfully aware of the damaging effects that corporate usage of the pride month aesthetic has had on public perception of the people in that group.
Yet, here you are. Concerned about establishing why you're more fucking special than straight people.
No no, pride is not about being "special". Nobody is special. It's about people embracing who they are, despite having a tougher going than others.
It's about not staying in the closet in a country with bigots.
It's about being a woman in a working culture that favours men.
It's about going to university in a country that favours manual labour.
It's about being trans... and daring to say out loud "this is not my gender".
Being a white, straight, cis man is not very difficult. Being a non-white, straight, cis woman is statistically more common, but harder. Normally, "statistical anomalies" have a harder going, but this is definitely not about being special. It's about being whoever you are, despite the adversity.
Also, to clarify - I haven't mentioned anything about not being straight. My sexual orientation has nothing to do with my response.
Everything you've said I appreciate, I fully recognize that the LGTBQ+ community should be proud of itself for the reasons you've listed.
I also maintain that pride month has been perverted into something else by corporate interests. Mark my words, the longer the LGBTQ+ community adheres itself to corporations; the worse the inevitable damage will be. I have nothing else to add.
Fundementally as long as pride month's story is linked to stonewall and that story is always told, pride month will always have a bigger symbolism with the counterculture than any corporate influence.
There's a reason American labor day explicitly does not happen in May.
Corporate influence isn't counterculture. In fact it's pride month that is actually counterculture.
I find it amusing that you're using labor day as an example of the "control" you or anyone has over corporate narratives.
Your money has less purchasing power than it ever has, but we really showed them on Labor Day huh? That day that's so important we shift the date to whenever we feel like.
I think you've completely missed my point. The American labor day was chosen to have a no symbolic date specifically because of the power that the 8 hour work week protests and the haymarket affair in the month of may. It's the definition of a co-opted holiday. It's essentially the Tienanmen Incident for America.
And my point is that it's a paltry concession and ultimately meaningless, as evidenced by the current state of affairs for the average person (in the U.S.).
I fully understood when I wrote that comment that there wasn't a specific "Labor Day", my question was rhetorical.
... Perhaps if I spell it out you'll get it. Pride is important because of the stonewall riots and the sociological symbolism that accompanies those riots which encourages sometimes violent resistance to those that impede on your rights. Similarly international labor day (may day) was rejected by the US as a holiday because it involved riots that resulted in positive change(the 8 hour work day). I was contrasting them. I was not using US labor day as a reason why pride is important. I was explaining that the avoidance of that symbolism by those in power is what explicitly makes pride important.
You don't seem to understand what I'm saying, despite your inability to remain respectful.
Pride month isn't voluntary for many people that experience it. They are just subjected to it by corporations. Do you know how simple it is for an idiot to make a false correlation between increased pushes for inclusivity and a decline in quality of whatever good or service they're receiving? Because people blamed Biden for the inflation at the beginning of his term.
Spare me the third lecture, if what I'm saying isn't making sense then I'm writing you off as a corporate shill.
Yup. This is essentially the same as people suddenly screaming about "WHITE PRIDE!!!!" in response to things like Black Live Matter.
The entire point is a minority not letting the majority shame or otherize them. The the majority freaks out and responses with "ME TO BUT BETTER THAN YOU DID IT!".
I agree with your statement, but I would like to point out that "as if you did anything to become a heterosexual" is... Yikes. That implies the LGBTQ+ community is not born how they are and have to do work to become lesbian, gay, bi, etc.
Diction is important; while that doesn't ruin the overall argument for me because I am an ally, I don't think that's something to say going forward because it's very easy to latch onto and discredit the argument as a whole.
That's not a "straight pride" flag, that's a "doubling down on our anti-LGBTQ+ agenda because they dare to defy us with their own flag" flag. I'm straight, that flag does not represent me, it represents bigoted fucks. There are already several flags for that.
When I learned about that one is when I figured out all symbolism of anything good is doomed to stray from it's original meaning. Fools and assholes will ultimately adopt them in an attempt to appear more credible on the surface, when people start figuring them out, they associate that symbol with that behavior, and it's game over. They do it to flags, religious totems, words, anything that might be able to grant them a benefit-of-the-doubt buff for a while.
The one from decades ago was fine and kind of funny actually - it was the gay one but grayscale. This one is shoplifting the trans colors. Also only chuds will ever fly this, so at least it functions as a do-not-interact signifier.
Setting aside for a second how dumb this shit is, the design has some very questionable decisions.
First I couldn't care less about the "man" and "woman" signs, they're linked, and gold, which I assume is some reference to marriage? I've never understood the symbology of those symbols. I think they're tacky and archaic. I don't inherently have an issue with their use in the design. My main issues with the design are with the colors. That's not a super great shade of blue or pink. On top of that, the "man" symbol is almost entirely on the pink side, and the woman symbol is almost entirely on the blue side.
Additionally, representing a boy as blue and girl as pink is pretty questionable as well. I would have expected something like this in the 80's or 90's, but today? What? It's just strange.
Why a slash? Why is it going from top left to bottom right? I have to many questions. It's like there was no thought in the brain of whomever put this together, and they didn't ask anyone to review it before having it made.
Now, flipping the coin here, what exactly do straight people have to be proud of? I'm straight, and I don't know. Is it pride in the decisions that we've made which facilitate the perpetration of humanity? Is humanity really something we should be proud of and continue to perpetuate? We've committed an untold number of unspeakable horrors to eachother, animals, and nature. Are we perpetuating the species so we can continue to rape and kill the planet and eachother? Either figuratively or literally? Don't get me wrong, humans have achieved some remarkable things despite our obvious issues; but still, does any of that outweigh the horrors we've inflicted? I'm not so sure that perpetuating humanity is anything to be proud of.
Are we proud of our heritage? Our lineage? The long genetic lines of aforementioned horrible people? Who enslaved others and called it progress? Who committed all those previously mentioned terrible things?
So historical pride is questionable, and pride of purpose is questionable.... What's left? Just being proud of who you are? Pride in being a human who is straight? What for?
I don't understand. I have no pride for who I am naturally, and who I am attracted to. I have no pride in the things my race, gender, or sexual orientation has done. The straights have been responsible for pretty much all the pain and suffering of everyone who is "deviant".
Fundamentally, we agree. Today we have reached the deepest pit of cringe.
But your initial criticism of the design undercuts what might've been the only progressive aspect of the design: the fact that the male is on the pink side upsets foundational sexism: guys can be pink, and girls can be blue.
I think people like this believe that non-straight folks have an agenda to make straight folks* feel ashamed of being straight. As in - if you're proud of being gay, that means you must think being not-gay is a bad thing. And so they feel attacked. It's so brainless and reactionary.
* Or white, or Christian, or insert whatever not-really-persecuted-but-thinks-they-are group here
My theory is that they are not actually straight. They actively decided to be straight against their true interests due to social pressures. They in turn feel that sexual preference for everybody is an active decision. Due to their constant battle with that they feel some level of acknowledgement is in order for them similar to the lgbtq community. Those people chose to be gay and get pride parades while I chose to be straight and get nothing energy.
Yeah I think that is the bottom line. I am straight as a ruler and absolutely do not give a flying fuck who has sex with who, it's not my business and I cannot imagine being threatened by it, as long as it's not me why would I care? If you are threatened by the existence of people who love other people there is something deeply wrong.
Pride is literally one of the seven deadly sins, I'd think Christians would want to avoid it.
On the flag design, I think it makes sense, designed by straight guys and looks like it was designed by straight guys. People would get suspicious if it looked fabulous. I do actually kinda like those symbols - they are old, from the 1700s, used originally for describing plants so there is one for hermaphrodite as well. One of my kids is a geneticist and their charts use a triangle for men & circle for women, the arrow and cross ones are better designs IMO.
We do, however, need to remind some of the less intellectually developed people that black lives, do indeed, matter. Which they do, they always have, and always will. While this is a subset of everyone's life mattering, it does not and should not imply that the lives of non-black persons do not matter, it should only serve as a reminder that black lives do matter.
The problem is that people get so fragile about being left out that excluding them from a movement because nobody ever needed reminding that their lives "matter", causes them to get offended that someone else is getting special attention that they do not deserve, and have no right to impose themselves upon. Saying "all lives matter" in response to the BLM movement is, in my mind, a form of what aboutisms which is toxic and diminishes the point of BLM. It's ignorant and short sighted.
I assume this is some sort of mockup. I don't mean to be judgemental based on a picture, but those guys both 100% love dick. Sometimes it's just obvious.
I though the official Straight Pride flag was in black and white (no grey areas or ambiguity), with a male symbol on top of a female symbol (depicting the hierarchy of dominance the sorts of people who would have such a flag consider the only acceptable order)
As the interim CEO of Straight I can assure you that no such thing exists because having a flag is, according to the board of directors, "pretty gay". I refer you to the OP should you require further proof.
NEWSFLASH!!! People scared of homosexuality are actually scared that they'll become homosexuals. That's right, they're so insecure with their own sexuality, they're concerned that by allowing homosexuality, they'll be the first to succumb to gayness.
