Read any right-wing social-media feed (or don’t—not reading right-wing social media is truly self-care) and you’ll see manufactured outrage claiming that [these are all things I’ve repeatedly seen and no doubt there’s a lot more]: 1) white people have completely disappeared from advertising, 2) it’s soon going to be illegal to be straight, 3) the Left claims to be tolerant but it’s sure not tolerant of oppressive, discriminatory beliefs, 4) when is it going to be White History Month? 5) there’s an entire Pride month but we don’t have any days or months celebrating our soldiers [you’d think people who pretend to respect the military would know that November 11 is Veterans’ Day, May is Military Appreciation Month and Memorial Day honors fallen soldiers], and this perennial flavor of the month: 6) why isn’t there a Straight Pride month/day/parade?
Here’s my short, all-purpose response to people demanding some sort of Straight Pride nonsense (and feel free to copy, edit and paste it everywhere you deem necessary): “If it’s so important to you, make it happen instead of whining about it deep in the comments under an obscure Facebook post. The gays figured it out. Why can’t you?”
And if someone responds with more whining about a fear of woke backlash, say this: “You sure don’t sound very proud.”
This has never not shut down the discussion. Because their manufactured-oppression arguments are laughably inane.
Pride month celebrates the LGBTQ+ community’s incremental victories over legal and physical oppression. It was literally illegal to be or even seem gay in America for centuries. We were hunted, arrested, evicted, disowned, beaten and murdered for just being ourselves. But as early as the 1950s we started fighting back, changing perceptions, changing minds, changing laws and taking control of our narrative.
The battle will clearly never end, but we as a still-in-many-ways-oppressed minority have created a robust Pride movement that’s celebrated across many different months in many different cities and countries around the globe. The straight majority can’t even achieve an hour-long Straight Pride celebration. They’d rather appropriate our oppression than acknowledge their own privilege. And we will always have the moral, logical, humane, loving high ground.
THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.
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