The main argument you hear from people who oppose Gay Pride events is, “Well, then why don’t we have a hetero pride parade, huh? If other people have a right to be proud of the way they have sex, so should we, don’t you think?” A variation on this is, “What is there to be so proud about the way you fuck? I like doing it sitting in an armchair. Should I throw a parade to celebrate that?” And now, a city council in a fiercely homophobic Brazil has established a Heterosexual Pride Day.
The problem with this argument is that* it involves a (willful?) misunderstanding of how the term “pride” is being used in the context of gay rights movement. It isn’t about being proud in the sense of “I’m so better than you are, nyah, nyah, nyah!” It’s being proud in the sense of not being ashamed. Of accepting who you are and not hiding it from the world. It’s about pride as an absence of shame and self-hatred.
Of course, if you have spent years being ashamed of your heterosexuality (or preferring sex in an arm-chair) and have hated yourself for being the way you are and have been discriminated against for it, then go ahead, have a Hetero Pride Day or an armchair-fucking day.
*I’m not gay and I explain this the way I understand it. My queer readers should feel free to state their own perspectives.
Clarissa's Blog 
I personally don’t see anything wrong with anyone celebrating who they are with a parade, a festival, or wahtever. I cannot see why a heterosexual pride event would be construed as homophobic, any more than a Pagan Pride event is anti Xtian, anti Jewish, anti Moslem, anti Morman, etc.
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‘Mormon’ Sorry.
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Hmm, funny how you are sympathetic with gays feeling “ashamed” or experiencing self-hatred but recently ridiculed the idea that young girls would have internalized the same feelings.
If yo were consistent you would scoff at gay-pride parades and tell gays that only they are responsible for their shameful feelings:)
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Homophobia isn’t welcome on my blog. Especially in the form of projecting your own anti-gay sentiments on me and voicing them as if on my behalf.
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Homophobia? What are you talking about??
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I don’t know whether Isabel is a homophobe or not, but you don’t have to be homophobic to voice the objection that she did. It’s a perfectly valid point.
I really would like to know why you think it’s possible for gays to be victimized by society but not women.
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Please quote where exactly I said that ” it’s possible for gays to be victimized by society but not women”. If you can’t, then just accept that you are trolling.
To facilitate your search: women and gays can be victimized plenty. But not by people greeting them in the street. Women and gays are victimized by unfair laws. Gays are victimized by the absence of marriage equality, for example. And women are victimized by the erosion of abortion rights and absence of pay equity. Blabbering endlessly about how you are emotionally exhausted by hellos draws attention away from the true infringements on the women’s rights and trivializes the feminist movement.
In the future, please try to pay attention before you ascribe your own weird projections to me.
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“And women are victimized by the erosion of abortion rights and absence of pay equity. ”
Pay equity is enforced in Québec.
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There have been several posts where you mocked concern for young women. The post about their self image and how it is affected by the media. You were also very dismissive about young women’s vulnerability in the comments section of the post about rapes in Norway. In general mocking feminism lately. And you said to me recently that if people are speaking to me, in my personal space many times daily for obnoxious reasons and I have to go along or ignore them or possibly confront them each time, these are only awkward social encounters if I allow them to be, that no one can put me in an awkward social encounter.
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Will there be a follow-up post to this about how easy it is for parents of gay kids to inoculate them against the effects of the media, etc., on their self-image?
If you can’t picture yourself writing this, then just own up to your double standard instead of accusing others of trolling.
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It is easy for loving parents to inoculate their children from any kind of self-hatred. Which I have written about 100 times. Still, you pretend not to understand. Which, in my opinion, constitutes trolling
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Then why do gays need a parade to make themselves feel better? Is a parade going to get them closer to the right to marry? Why don’t gays stop wasting time with these “frivolous” things and concentrate on the really important stuff, the way you think feminists should?
Honestly, Clarissa, you’re the one that is trying to pretend like you just don’t get it. And you know, maybe you really don’t….
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So you really don’t know that different political movements have different trajectories of development that don’t coincide in time minute by minute? You have no idea that the feminist movement did go through the parade, the protest, the carnival stage? You are really that dense?
It’s OK to be ignorant. What is not OK is to troll people’s blogs making idiotic comments when you can fidn everything you want about the history of feminism and the history of gay rights from books. If books are too hard for you, try Wikipedia, or something.
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Let me put it this way: The day that straight people have to second-guess whether it’s okay to put a picture of their spouse/partner on their desk at work, carefully watch the faces of every unfamiliar person they talk to when saying,”My girlfriend/boyfriend and I….” wonder if a bridal salon will turn them down because they don’t agree with “their kind” getting married, think through whether they will be murdered,harassed, or assaulted if they’re seen walking down the street holding hands or with their partner or kissing them on the cheek, or have to think about if their families will ever speak to them again if they bring home their partner, that’s the day they can have straight pride. Hell, I’ll even be their ally and march proudly with them.
Until then, I know what malice looks like, no matter how you disguise it, and straight pride is pure and simple malice.
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For many years, people all around me have tried to make me feel desperately guilty about being white, about being heterosexual, about being male, and about being well-educated. Somewhere around age 40, I stopped buying into these attacks.
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The goal of my post was absolutely not to make you feel guilty about anything. I don’t think anybody should feel guilty about the things you listed.
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It never occurred to me to interpret your post that way, Clarissa. I do interpret nominatissima’s comment that way.
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This is a problem with WordPress commenting system. It always looks to me like people address their comments at me instead of at other commenters. Especially when I receive them by email or on the phone , like right now. I need to find a way to figure this out.
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I fail to see how I was trying to make you feel “guilty”. I was pointing out that straight pride strikes me as nothing more than a malicious attempt to undermine pride events which mean so much to us queer folk, because it is one of the few times we don’t have to be afraid of being ourselves or look over our shoulders to make sure we’re not being harassed or judged.
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Straight pride does not undermine gay pride. Nor does same sex marriage undermine “traditional” marriage. The logic of these two statements is mathematically identical. As far as I can see, it is not possible for an intellectually honest person to believe either one but not the other.
I almost certainly would not attend a straight pride event, but I think that when it comes to rights, they are identical to gay pride events, unless the First Amendment applies only to people toward whom you are sympathetic. The only events of this sort I have ever attended are Pagan Pride events. They provide a venue where it is possible to meet other Pagans. Some Christians and some Jews also attend. I have never met any Moslems or Mormons at Pagan Pride events, but they may well attend sometimes, too.
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And I assume you think those who organize white pride events have the same good intentions as those behind Kwanzaa and multiculturalism festivals? 🙂
There are absolutely no good intentions in what was established in Brazil. It’s a seriously homophobic piece of garbage that was designed on the laughable fantasy of being “a protest against the privileges the gay community enjoys.” Privileges? Brazil has one of the highest rates of gay/trans murders in the entire world!
The author of the garbage even goes as far as to say that he doesn’t “mind” gays as long as we are normal. Interestingly, what is expected by these apes to be “normal” for queers like me seems to always be much more puritanical and Victorian than what is “normal” for hetero folks.
How is that for good intentions and equality?
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“And I assume you think those who organize white pride events have the same good intentions as those behind Kwanzaa and multiculturalism festivals?”
Why not?
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We celebrates heterosexual pride 364 days a year 365? Where’s the need unless you’re an homophobic faggot?
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We celebrate heterosexual pride 364 days a year? Where’s the need unless you’re an homophobic faggot?
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Any group can turn to negative approaches..”The Dark Side” to quote Star Wars. I stipulate that white power groups do this. They are evil, at least as evil as child molesters, as far as I am concerned. But they still have the right to organize in pride or protest. Legally suppressing them is far more dangerous.
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And nowhere in my comment did I suggest they should be suppressed (The first amendment has nothing to do with this, this is in Brazil) They have the right to organize this stupid, homophobic event, and I have the right to call them out on how illogical and inherently homophobic the idea that the poor widdle straight people are suffering at the sight of gay people holding hands and flying rainbow flags is.
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That’s exactly my position on the issue. I’m completely opposed to violation people’s freedom of assembly in any way. Let them get together and look like total fools defending their right to be hetero. However, I think it’s important to discuss why such parade is silly. Which is what I do in this post.
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“I stipulate that white power groups do this. They are evil, at least as evil as child molesters, as far as I am concerned.”
What?! What are white power groups anyway? Can you name one? There is a lot of interest in “white pride” lately and it is always considered by many bloggers (too many to name) as “white supremacy”. And considered “evil”; yet I have looked in to the situation and have come to believe that much of it is a defensive reaction to the anti-white sentiments you have already pointed out, David. I am not a member of those groups, but would not call them evil!
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“I am not a member of those groups, but would not call them evil!”
And what about the Tea Party Movement? What about Jan Brewer, the Arizona’a governor? This is not evil?
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Absolutely not. Not ‘evil’.
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Racism state violence is not “evil” for you?
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What about the KKK?
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…maybe not as child’s molesters, but they’re evil!
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The archetypical white power group is the Ku Klux Klan. You have the right not to consider them evil; I disagree. The Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by a person with such sensibilities, also
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I asked about groups in general, not the archetypical. And I am not sure I would use the word ‘evil’ even there. Is there something inherently wrong with white pride as a reaction to anti-white racism? Many seem to have the opinion that white people themselves are evil; and that communities can be “too white” etc. That America’s only chance for a future lies in the likelihood that white people will soon be a minority. Some pride groups are a reaction to this and don’t seem to be about oppressing others. I don’t consider that ‘evil’.
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Is there something inherently wrong with white pride as a reaction to anti-white racism?
I have not experienced anti-white racism. I doubt very much that it even exists.
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Malcolm X?
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“Should There Be a Heterosexual Pride Parade?”
There are many Heterosexual Pride Parades 364 days a year. Next question!
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and you know what, even in the other day…
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“And now, a city council in a fiercely homophobic Brazil has established a Heterosexual Pride Day.”
THIS is an homophobic parade.
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My favorite response to this issue is that every day is a heterosexual pride day. Heterosexual relationships are celebrated in movies, on TV, and in books, and heterosexual couples are always free to go anywhere in public without being harassed. Not to mention, they can get married anywhere.
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Superb! 🙂 🙂
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Why am I being moderated now?
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I’m on an airplane and I can’t approve comments while I’m in the air. I apologize for the inconvenience.
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Happy travels:)
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The idea that white people are inherently bad, evil, should become a minority for the sake of he country’s future, can be mocked and openly hated since they are the majority, etc etc are all racist ideas in my book. Lower class whites take the brunt of this prejudice which is why I am especially opposed to it. I also think these ideas can contribute to an atmosphere that encourages the very groups you are opposed to. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Labeling certain groups as ‘evil’ is something a crazy religious group would do isn’t it?
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At least you consider them as crazy, so it’s a semantic debate. Not a big deal.
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Not really. I was saying that somewhat ironically. I try to see things a little more dispassionately than most I think. Trying not to engage in ‘othering’.
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You know in a different sense I think there would be some valid use of some sort of Hetero Pride. (Before I continue let me say that NO I’m not trying to say that what I’m about to say is on the same level as homophobia, however I do think its a significant problem that needs to be addressed.)
For the most part I’ve spent most of my life with the run of the mill heterosexual thoughts. And I’m a guy. So you know what that means? Oh I must be predatory and have no respect for women and want to harm them so its best I not have contact with them. Given that (at least in the States) the vast majority of men are not sexual predators I’d like for society to finally recognize that.
And I’m betting that hetereosexual women have some things they’d like to shout from the mountain about over their sexuality.
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