there’s a reason that whenever there’s a “straight pride” the only people who attend in earnest are nazis and it’s not a coincidence, it’s because the entire concept of a pride event for an oppressive class is a deliberate effort to terrorize marginalized communities
I can’t stress enough that it’s not just that these types of events draw nazis, but that they are planned out months in advance for specific goals by established fascist groups. the organizers of the “straight pride” event in boston have organized multiple fascist rallies in boston before, changing the name of the rally each time to escape mainstream media accountability (if it looks like a new thing, most won’t notice that it’s the same template over and over and over with different packaging).
the only capacity they have to “terrorize marginalized communities” is the power YOU KEEP GIVING THEM. you keep giving them power and authenticity by trying to suppress them.
When Nazis come out and march as being Nazis for doing Nazi things, people do not like that. They don’t come out and help the Nazis and sing along. The nation is overwhelmingly anti-Nazi.
But when you are so terrified of them, these people who cannot obtain power unless it is given to them by you, that you have to suppress every attempt they make to get out their stupid message everyone hates, that you have to suppress anything that might be close to it, then you are making them powerful. You, the side who unquestionably controls American cultural discourse and has for fifty years, the side who suppresses anyone asking any ideologically inconvenient question and act like complete assholes to the majority of the country, gloating about their pain and obsolescence. You are saying that Nazis are so powerful and so obviously right that you are TERRIFIED of people hearing what they have to say. You think that Nazis are so powerful and so obviously right that you simply cannot defeat their ideas, and have to suppress them from ever being heard because if they are heard there’s no way you could ever talk these people back into your way of thinking.
The less you suppress Nazi ideas, the more obviously idiotic and insane they are exposed as being. Nazi ideas are not just evil. Nazi ideas are fucking stupid. They fucking implode the moment they contact reality. That is why every time Nazis debate someone, they fucking LOSE, and they lose HARD. Nazis thrive, Nazis are sustained by your refusal to debate them, by your instance that they must be met with suppression and violence. You are recruiting people for the Nazis because your political faction is the one who controls our national discourse, they cannot stop being cruel to people, and they are very very very afraid of what this ideological minority has to say.
People go “Hey, it’s not fair that we’re all supposed to be equal and shit, but these people get to have a parade about being proud of who they are where a lot of it is specifically about pissing me off, but I don’t get to be proud of who I am”. You know what? They are right. It is not fair. They don’t really need it, but we shouldn’t be handing out the right to be proud based on who someone decides “really needs it.”
This is an opportunity to say “Yeah, you know, that’s not fair. It would be great if everyone got to be proud of who they are, and being gay and being straight were just completely morally equal. And if you think that’s the word we should live in, that’s great! We don’t think you really NEED your parade right now as much as gay people do, but, like, if you really want it, if you help us out with your thing we can help with yours, because we believe in a world where everyone can be proud of who they are and being gay and being straight are completely morally equal.” The left doesn’t do this. The left, instead, screams at them and says they are evil bigots. It demands they put up with unfair treatment because the Left has decided they deserve unfair treatment for who they are. It doesn’t matter that the Left claims it doesn’t count because they have so much nebulous power – the Left is obviously breaking the rules they enforce on others. People dislike that. They are right to do so.
So now you’re screaming at people who notice this unfairness because your idea of what to do when someone notices an unfairness you think is too small, is to make a giant fucking deal about it and make it worse. And who is it that comes in and says “Hey, WE think it’s unfair too, and WE think you should ignore the moral guardians of the left who scream about bigotry and have your own event”? The people who literally cannot be made to care about what the Left screams is bigoted – the people who love and exalt bigotry. Over this tiny, innocuous thing, you drive normies away from you and into the arms of evil people, because those evil people don’t blatantly, openly hate them.
And what if you never did that? What if you said “as part of our commitment to a world where homosexuality and heterosexuality are on equal footing, we’re happy to help your straight pride parade if you’re happy to help our gay pride parade”, or forget all that, what if you just said “We don’t really see the point but we ain’t gonna stop you”? Who would go to such a pride parade? Heterosexuality is the norm and every national culture is steeped in it. You could rightly say there’s nothing they could call attention to that isn’t already in our culture normally.
So then you don’t stop the straight pride parade, and they put on a lame parade nobody really cares about or is interested in. Nothing happens. Nobody is put into terror who wouldn’t be terrorized by a hetero couple holding hands. People go “ha, that’s funny, we finally got our own parade”, and then they keep scrolling down on their Facebook feed. Nobody really cares about it enough to go to it, much less put in effort to making it. It fizzles out like the XFL.
Instead, you scream at them, and demand that since you don’t think they have a good reason to do it they aren’t allowed to do it because everyone’s lives have to meet your approval. So NOW backing the straight pride parade is about sticking it to these controlling assholes who think everyone’s lives have to meet their approval. People who they have every right to want to stick it to. And who else wants to stick it to them? Why, this nice fellow with the shaved head, who has answers to lots of questions that the controlling assholes don’t want you to hear! Hmm, he’s saying things that are racist, but then again, the people who say that these things are racism have just proven themselves to be controlling hypocritical assholes who hate me, so why should I care about what they don’t approve of?
Nazis have no power other than the power YOU ARE GIVING THEM. They recruit people by selling a narrative of the world that keys on your shitty, inexcusable behavior, and claims to be able to explain what you want suppressed and have the power to make you stop being inexcusably shitty. They are predicting that you will react like this and their plans literally cannot work if you stop behaving in the way they predicted. “It’s Okay To Be White” posters were put up by Nazis as a recruiting tactic – the only way they functioned as a recruiting tactic was because they know you would flip your shit and try to suppress them, proving that you do indeed think it is not okay to be white, and white people should notice that. If you’d shrugged and said “Of course it’s okay to be white, who was even talking about that?” then it would have had no persuasive or recruiting power whatsoever. But just like every other time, you see that something is a Nazi tactic, and you all decide to do the thing that makes that Nazi tactic work instead of letting it fail.
And you won’t stop, and you won’t be stopped, and all is lost.
@brazenautomaton knocking it out of the park.
hold a real straight pride parade and it would make sense for all the gay allies to show up in support, just like it would make sense for all the straight allies to support a gay pride parade.
Man, like a hundred people showed up to the rally. @brazenautomaton , you’re living in a bubble. I couldn’t find any polling on straight pride parades specifically, but this PPP poll found that a white history month commands about 35% support… from Trump voters.
So as far as “why don’t we, members of a majority group, get our own history month/parade/whatever special recognition” goes, it’s a small minority of a minority that seems bothered by it. And I think this is because most people are not as beholden to political correctness as BA is.
By “political correctness” I don’t mean progressive identity politics, of course, and I don’t mean the inverse conservative identity politics. I mean something closer to the original definition: the process by which people are made to ignore or not bring up what is obvious to them, because to do so would break a symmetry or equality upon which th epolitical system is based, or because acknowledging it would offend certain political constituencies.
In this case, I think I speak for most progressives when I say that in perfectly spherical cow world, a straight pride parade would be somewhere between unobjectionable and a waste of time, rather than a hate crime. But we don’t live in perfectly spherical cow world. In fact, we’re dealing with humans, most of whom are carrying a scarcely disguised knife behind their back, with an equally clumsily disguised intent to hurt me and the people I love. I notice the knife. Most of America notices the knife, hence the unpopularity of straight pride parades. The people carrying the knives certainly know they’re carrying them, and you can even see them practicing on their YouTube channels, if you care to look them up.
I’m pretty certain BrazenAutomoton sees the knives, too. But out of a surfeit of political correctness, he demands that we ignore them. To do otherwise would be to acknowledge a politically inconvenient asymmetry between the two “sides.”
But I don’t intend to ignore the testimony of my sense. And neither, thank goodness, does the rest of America.
In fact, we’re dealing with humans, most of whom are carrying a scarcely disguised knife behind their back, with an equally clumsily disguised intent to hurt me and the people I love. I notice the knife. Oh, hey, wow, that was beautiful… I noticed this buried in a long reblog chain and I just… god I was so grateful to see this generous and strong sentiment embedded in among all the splinters and damage? You notice the knife. Oh my god I’m so grateful for people like you, this was beautiful thank you.
