The heroes no one needed
By Matthew Fraser, Opinions Editor
The heterosexual rights umbrella fails to point out the rights it fights to receive.
Everyone wants to feel as if they are a part of a culture or movement that represents them. It’s likely that as people grow and further solidify the series of “I am” statements they used to undergird their self image, more and more movements and groups will emerge to determine and represent various peoples.
In early March, rapper Lil Mama decided she needed to start a “heterosexual rights movement.” It seems she felt that some (but not all) members of the LGBTQ+ community engage in bullying and discrimination against the straight community. She seems to feel that straight people need a champion.
But this view and idea is not new. In 2019, Vox reported on a group called the National Straight Pride Coalition (NSPC) leading a straight pride parade in Boston. Their opinion was largely the same: straight people are discriminated against and belittled by a hostile or offensive gay community. It seems to some that homosexuality and queer acceptance has usurped the hegemonic reign of heterosexuality. These views are so seductive that a new “sexual identity” has emerged called Super Straight. As defined by some, Super Straights are heterosexual cisgender people who are only attracted to opposite sex cisgender people. In many ways, super straight is just the heterosexual rival to the Gold Star Gay/Lesbian (a homosexual person who has never had sexual contact with someone of the opposite gender). As the Super Straight movement has grown, produced its own flag, and been banned from TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit, it may have garnered some of the persecution it so thoroughly craves.
An argument and theme that stood out to me as I read more and more of the straight pride motif was that of a new sexuality being just as necessary and acceptable as any other. Proponents seem interested in using “inclusivity” and “diversity” to coach their victim narrative as legitimate. The straight pride narrative seems trapped between the NSPC advocating the “God ordained natural nuclear family” and arguing that their preferences are just as valid as asexuals, sapiosexuals, and others. Thusly, we get to the obsessive and largely useless identity victimhood argument.
According to a recent Vice article, the straight pride movement spans America, includes Germany and other European countries, and has seen a burgeoning population in India; surely there would be a news report of this “heterophobia” they protest? In the process of writing this I looked hard to find an instance of a straight couple being attacked for holding hands and walking down the street. Instead, I saw repeated mentions of a lesbian couple that was beaten during a shocking attack on a London bus. I thought then that there would be at least a portion of discrimination directed at straight people through the medical and legal systems. Alas, I could only find a recent Arkansas law that would permit medical professionals to deny homosexual and transgender people medical services based on “conscious rights” to protect religious and moral freedoms. In a last-ditch effort, I thought that maybe I could turn up a few murders where people were killed specifically because they were straight. Instead, I was reminded of the record-breaking number of murders committed against transgender people that occurred last year.
Straight pride, heterosexual rights, and Super Straights are just some of the many horrid mutations that arise from identity politics. I think it is just another malignant tumor that comes when swaths of the population reduce themselves only to a narrow combination of immutable characteristics. Setting aside the links both the Vox and Vice articles made between the alt-right and heterosexual martyrdom, I think Super Straight and its flag represent a strange and uninspired effort to make heterophobia a thing. For some reason, a small section of the heterosexual world wants a piece of the victim cake so that their identity can be front and center once again.
Neither Lil Mama nor the Super Straight crusaders gain anything from their protestations. Not the ability to marry who they choose, not protection from workplace discrimination, not the right to adopt children, not even to extend coverage of existing laws. The heterosexual rights umbrella fails to point out the rights it fights to receive. The preachers who stand on street corners hollering damnation and eternal suffering upon the unrepentant passerby represent the most toxic version of a hatred that necessitates solidarity amongst the queer community. Which church has spat the vitriol of Westboro Baptist church for the straight world to feel such fear? Never have I heard of someone implementing a “straight panic defense” to get out of a murder charge.
It might be time then to say that crocodile tears and faux freak outs protect nothing and advance foolhardiness. It may be in our best interest to simply let Super Straight thrive in some weird dusty corner of the internet that no one cares about. We only help them by giving more attention.
