YES, IT’S REALLY A THING
Okay, not all my ideas land. But this is my attempt at branding what may be the dumbest event in human history.
The mere existence of queer-bi-trans folk apparently threaten the integrity and/or mental stability of a minority segment of the greater heterosexual community, specifically Christian Evangelicals. They don’t own the exclusive patent on religious homophobia. Later editions of human religiosity have authored equally virulent reactions to variations in human sexual orientations.
I think the boys and girls in this movement doth protest too much.
What’s really going on here? The need to gather and wave our colors, to express pride at all, is a reaction to having been shamed.
Are heterosexuals saying that they have been shamed for being straight? If ever there was a group that hasn’t been marginalized, right? Maybe.
When we think about it religion has been shaming us all for a long long time, especially where sex has been concerned. Shaming hasn’t been confined to sex but it has damn near dominated the thoughts and behaviors of the self-appointed gate keepers of self-regulation.
Sexual passion is demonized as one of the 7 Deadly Sins for Jews and Christians. Even the very evolved Sikh of the Punjab, the saintly gurus, have relegated intercourse to a procreative function only.
My high school bestie, a long, lanky brunette, can remember nuns in the classroom telling her to close the gates to hell because her legs were akimbo in her school desk.
Our collective response to the flesh seems schizophrenic, no? Some Muslim patriarchs enforce a dress code where women are cloaked in burkas, tied into black bags and punished for exposing their wrists. Yet neighboring Hindu Temples display erotic stone friezes and texts of the Kama Sutra illustrate infinite positions for heterosexual intercourse. Such extreme and contrary treatments. We are such a conflicted species.
Where most cultures agree, it seems, they establish a male-driven social order that canabalizes anyone falling short of a macho male ideal. Men who make the cut are rewarded with privileges and expected to denigrate and dominate all others.
Predictably enough the demonization of the fairer sex balances the equation. Ideal man = good. The ideal woman = bad.
The ideal female appears as a curvy and comely whore and temptress who will lure men to their doom.
What fun for us gals, right? The proper female prescription is even more daunting, one must be pure, virtuous, untouched yet sexually desirable and paralyzed into compliance when the hero draws his mini me.
For females, a butt load of mixed messages and the certainty that personhood and personal agency are out of reach. We are forever inferior, disposable, and what’s worse — our bodies can be annexed at any time by one of our betters and a fetus foisted upon us at any point we are fertile. The circumstances of impregnation, or our desire to be a host are deemed irrelevant.
So what’s this Hetero Hoedown going to look like? Will there be a float with a cowboy riding a huge mechanical uterus as it tries to buck him?
If women seem to be at the bottom of the patriarchal pecking order wouldn’t it is doubly so for, say... a black trans woman? It seems we’ve an infinitely descending caste system being enforced.
Let’s talk about shaming, its function: to punish, and to sow fear and self-doubt.
Ah shame, the malignant first cousin of guilt. Didn’t we all cringe as our common Freudian nightmare was captured on film. It was when Game of Thrones character, Cersei Lannister, did the long walk of shame? Who hasn’t had that dream, or some approximate humiliation while showering in the open and walking back to the high school locker room?
Were your breasts or johnson too small, pubic hair sparse or absent? Did the jocks and cheerleaders grade you, make fun of you?
The fearful tenuous-heir to patriarchal power, the guy with something to prove, and his minions, may do more than shame and torment those who deviate or don’t measure up.
There is self-punishment here too. The innate self destructive power of this competition for alpha male ascendancy has generated the INCEL movement.
The involuntary celebates are a cadre of aesthetically impaired and socially awkward young men who are flocking to the midwest for plastic surgery to become “Chads.” The chinless magically transformed, their 401Ks buying cheek bones and jaw-lines. — My heart breaks for them. Even though their manifesto includes repositioning themselves to be able to punish women for past rejection, i.e., make then fall in love with them and then dump them in the most heartless way possible — I still ache for them. — Boys, get the work done if it will make you happy looking in the mirror, but that’s a soul crushing revenge fantasy you got there. Your distortion, and the broken and misshapen parts of you, they are now spiritual.
Nope partner, this Happy Heterosexual Hoedown, the STRAIGHT PRIDE PARADE, is more likely to be populated by angry, horny, resentful straight men. Proud of all the shit the patriarchy has laid on all of us, themselves included. Really guys? It’s been a real shit show so far. Haven’t we all had enough of Us V Them?
So tell me again why your self esteem as a heterosexual is so bruised that you need a pride march?
Wasn’t it Colbert on the Late Show who said something like yeah right, you need to march, heterosexuals have only had 4,000 years of being out and free to express their sexuality.
My sainted mother actually taught human sexuality, back in the 70’s. When I was 15 she told me there are as many sexes as there are people.
Well that blew my adolescent mind. Just great mom, I’ll never find another whatever the hell it is that I am. Damn it! Spoiler alert, we finally found each other.
Bottom line, there is no ideal. It makes norming behavior a little more complicated. Here’s the best guideline I can offer. Get your head out of other people’s shorts. Let children evolve sexually without any adult interference. Do educate them in schools, and yourselves at home for that matter, about sex and the variety of ways people identify sexually. Sex isn’t a dirty word.
Straight Folk Marchers, maybe you could make this march about reclaiming your own sexuality. Maybe you could print Consenting Adult tee-shirts and just leave it at that. The only person who really needs to know your sexual orientation is the person you’re going to have sex with.
Rock on with your bad selves, boys and girls, bravely announce that you are straight (or trying to pass). We support you.
Let the world take notice. You’re still here, the queer vampires haven’t turned you yet (oh for pity sake, they don’t exist you silly rabbit!!!!).