Fuck It, Before It Fucks You #28 (So good, so good, so fuckin' real)

Hey everybody! It’s a lovely Friday evening here in the great Pacific Northwest. Perfect for Pride weekend! It’s Pride weekend here in Seattle and evrrywhere LGBTQ people live. (Love y’all. Hate all the letters). And of course they live everywhere, but it’s easier in some places for them to express their pride than in others. Which is of course why Pride is a thing in the first place. I heard there’s a straight pride march happening somewhere. Maybe it happened already, I don’t know, I haven’t given it much attention except to say “Why?” Honestly what do straight people need their own Pride march for? They’re the majority pretty much everywhere. They’ve got all their rights. They’ve always been able to serve in the military. They’ve always been able to get married. And they’ve always had the same general rights to exist that LGBTQ folk have had to fight and die for. But apparently there’s a lot of people who can’t seem to see that part of it. So they go about saying dumb shit like “Why can’t straight people have pride? What’s wrong with that?” Well of course we can have pride. We’ve always been able to. That’s kind of the point! I guess I can’t speak for anyone else, but nobody has ever even attempted to make me feel ashamed of being straight to my knowledge. Yet many gay people are still made to be ashamed of who they are to this day. So, at best, the concept of straight pride is based in a kind of willful ignorance of your own privileged place in society. And I know now I’ve got some Alt-Right fuckhead all triggered now that I mentioned privilege. I know you like to think that having privilege means everything is easy for you and you have no hardship in life. And I get it. Being a straight white dude I’ve experienced some hardship myself. But I’ve never once felt like I was having a hard time because of my race, gender or sexuality. I may have had a hard time because I look like a homeless crackhead, but it’s not like there’s not anything I can do to change that which I’ve thus far just chosen not to. On the other hand, if I was gay the closest I could get to changing that is to stay in the closet, live a lie and probably hate myself. Maybe then I’d join the Proud Boys and go crash all the Pride parades. The one’s for people who have the courage to be who they are instead of fighting so hard to suppress it that they have to ruin it for other people. . Because that’s what Pride is about. It’s about historically oppressed people coming together and standing up for their rights and for each other. Straight Pride is basically just waving your own privilege in everyone’s face and saying “Hey everyone! Look how normal I am!”

Of course, like everything else, Pride has changed over the decades. For one thing, I remember it being called Gay Pride in the past. Now it’s just called Pride. Probably to be more inclusive of all the other LGBTQIA+ folk without having to say half of the alphabet every time. Aside from that, it’s a lot more commercialized these days. Especially for being a celebration of the anniversary of an anti-police riot. Now the police are marching in the parade! And the rest of it is a festival of corporate virtue signalling where all these multinational conglomerates come out to show everyone how much they support gay rights. Of course, most of them only started supporting gay rights when it became safe to do so. That is, once it was clear that it was better for their bottom line to support it than to not. Not that any of them actually do much to support gay rights, they just express their support. In fact, at least 9 Pride celebrating companies donate to anti-gay politicians. I’m sure they’re not donating to them specifically because of their anti-gay agenda, of course. It just doesn’t seem to be a deterrent to them. Which is proof enough for me that they don’t really care about gay rights, they just see everything as an investment and invest in things they expect to get a good return on. Whether that’s gay rights or a politician who actively works against them. And I’m sure even some of these politicians are doing their own brand of virtue signalling because they need the homophobe vote. However I’d like to think that if I was in that position I’d rather quit politics and get a real job. Maybe not. Maybe I’d be a piece of shit too. We will never know.

So personally, I’m not all that enthused about Pride anymore. I’ve enjoyed attending Pride events and showing my support for all my gay friends, but the whole thing just kind of feels like being trapped in a giant commercial, far removed from the struggles of the people who got it started. That being said, I certainly wish a happy Pride to all the LGBTQ folk out there. As for you “Straight Pride” idiots and “Proud Boy” fucks, just stop. You’re embarrassing yourselves and all us other straight people who are looking for better shit to be proud of. Put your signs down, go home, put your feet up and say Fuck it! Before it fucks you.