cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16157729
Idaho bar celebrates “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” with free beer for straight men
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16157729
Idaho bar celebrates “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” with free beer for straight men
Honestly, I’d love to have more healthy representation of straights.
We never went anywhere, we are the majority, and most of us here in Gen X and Gen Z have nothing against LGBTQ+ people.
Yet when we see any hetero activism, it’s mostly about screwing LGBTQ+ people over, not showing the beauty and variety of hetero relationships, which is not only the traditional nuclear family.
This skews many people’s perception of what hetero relationships are and/or allowed to be. There is so much in there, all sorts of dynamics, all sorts of approaches, a beautiful spectre of whatever it can be.
And this is something to be celebrated - along with the beauty and awesomeness of LGBTQ+, not as an opposition.
As a straight man, I feel like I’ve been represented plenty and still am in media. What exactly are you looking for that you aren’t seeing? There are thousands of years of representation, still continuing to this day. Don’t get me wrong, free beer is awesome but not sure why anyone feels unrepresented as a straight person.
The answer is the old chestnut,
People like those you’re responding to often see the world as a zero-sum game. If LGBTQ+ people carve out – or in this case, demand – representation for themselves, they believe that representation must take away “representation points” or whatever from some other group.
Frankly, Pride is the one time of year it’s okay to tell these people to shut the fuck up and sit down.
Uh, no. I think I’ve been super clear in my support for LGBTQ+ community and their representation.
I meant that many kinds of heterosexual couples are barely covered by modern culture, and it’s important to show that hetero couples can be very different and still amazing.
Because what I see on hetero couples on the media is just one, very traditional, kind of relationship. That’s not how all heterosexual relationships look, and it’s important to show that so that people would be more free to be themselves and build their futures in freedom. Freedom to be the kind of heterosexuals they want to be, if they are hetero to begin with.
Same. We hetero people are still by far the majority. I don’t think it would be possible for me to feel unrepresented, unless I walked into a gay orgy.
Straight pride is just anti-LGBTQ under a different name.
What is represented is a traditional family. This is not the only way things can happen in a heterosexual relationship.
There are amazing couples with changed or reversed gender roles, plenty of happy child free couples, there are heterosexual people entering polyamorous relationships with bi-s/pan-s, there are heterosexual couples with trans people, etc. etc.
All of those are under- or misrepresented, and all of them are very much heterosexual. We need to praise this variety, to show that heterosexual relationships can be unique and different from what we normally see.
You seem to be under the impression that straight couples in media are only ever married with 2.5 kids with a working father and stay at home mom but that really doesn’t seem like it’s been the case for a while.
While polyamory is probably still underrepresented, I’m not sure about your other examples. Also polyamory often includes at least one LGBTQ+ relationship so I’m not sure it makes your point. And a trans person in a heterosexual relationship falls at least half into LGBTQ+ by definition.
Most rom coms aren’t about married couples with kids. Most sit coms show relationships where both partners work. The old trope of the dad who knows nothing about his kids is pretty dead at this point. Divorced and widowed couples show up a lot, too.
I don’t think you’re wrong that all kinds of relationships and gender expressions should be represented, but comparing it to the overall lack of LGBTQ+ rep out there… Well, one of these things is not like the other.
Also, my sister works and her husband is a stay at home dad. When people hear this they say “oh” and move on. When I mention my nephew is trans… Well the reaction is different. Very different. As stupid as it sounds, media representation plays a huge role in exposing people to things they don’t get the chance to see often in their own lives (especially if you’re from a small town). It’s good for people to see trans characters they like and relate to before they find out about my nephew. I actually use it as a gauge to decide if I should tell people at all.
So long as straight is the assumption (or default), we are gonna need these kinds of spaces.
Heterosexual relationships might absolutely intersect with LGBTQ+ - for example, because one or some of the partners are trans or bi/pan.
I might have created a wrong impression that I aim to compare the struggles of LGBTQ+ people to someone else’s. I never meant that. I just said that even in heterosexual relationships, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and both acceptance and representation of various forms of heterosexual relationships also differ wildly between cultures.
And I wish we could have a higher share of positive and kind representation of all kinds of relationships, including different forms of heterosexual ones.
As a straight man, I would actually prefer less representation in music. More song topic variety thank you earth.
While I don’t disagree with what you said in theory, what’s stopping you from having these conversations? Is there a fear of losing your friends if you talk about these issues? What about your job, house, family, or even your life? These are real fears for a lot of queer people, still to this day, even in places like the UK and USA.
There’s plenty of media out there that discusses non nuclear relationships for straight people. It’s not always mainstream, but it exists. There’s still very little for queer people that doesn’t have to also tell the story of the bigotry and fear we face on the regular.
Please have your discussions, but rather than not having anything against us, have our backs when our rights and our lives are in jeopardy.
That’s what I meant - I do support LGBTQ+ people, that’s a no-brainer, and I welcome LGBTQ+ rights and strictly oppose conservative bills trying to take us back into the stone age.
As per conversations - yes, conversations on many kinds of heterosexual relationships are still complicated, and there is a very high chance to be misunderstood, shunned, shamed or attacked, mostly by the very same conservative crowd that makes life harder for LGBTQ+ people.
Aside from that, culture still imposes certain roles in heterosexual relationships, which leads to many young people thinking there’s something wrong with them for thinking different, which causes a lot of struggle in itself.
I do not mean it as a competition on who is in more trouble. I just say there’s not enough talk about what various struggles heterosexual people might face as well, without trying to take focus away from LGBTQ+ issues.
Attacked for being the “wrong kind of straight couple”? I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but I don’t know that I’ve seen any actual attacks for that. Plenty of people preaching that women should stay home in the kitchen or whatever, but on average, social media alone has tipped that scale, I think.
On that particular scale, there are heterosexual relationships in which women are not just fully emancipated, but actually leading the relationship, serving the role of a main provider etc. Those are often referred to as either female-led relationships (FLR) or gender role reversal.
Women in such relationships are often mistreated and misunderstood, and men are outright harrassed and attacked for their choice to take a “weaker” side, for their “feminity”, they are, at best, seen like a burden, and at worst, seen as a punchbag for “not being a man”. I’ve very much seen both in my culture, and for all I know, in other places there are signs of something similar.
In media, at least from what I’ve seen, such relationships are almost universally portrayed as an unhappy woman and a broken, emasculated, capricious man, as something unhappy and dysfunctional.
I have to agree. There are proportionally fewer representations of healthy “straight” relationships. Basically identifying as straight restricts you to a narrow spectrum of toxic or abusive relationships.
Most people who actually like eachother don’t put much emphasis on identifying as straight. They just like the person they are with.
I propose a new category: non-straight hetero. You are attracted to the opposite sex, but not in a straight way.
The word “straight” is pretty blurry to begin with.
Does it refer to the highly traditional hetero relationships? Is it trans-exclusive? Can the female-led relationship be straight? Is polygamy straight? I feel like the answer will depend on the person.
The word is often used and abused by the conservatives, which may alter its perception. The word “heterosexual”, on its hand, is pretty strictly defined.
As such, the meaning of “non-straight heterosexual” also alters depending on context, which adds to the confusion. It’s a bit of a mess.
Personally, I refer to myself as “straight” simply for the sake of brevity, even though I am a trans-inclusive heterosexual male into FLR, which many wouldn’t define as “straight”.
Yeah because as a group, us straight people are REALLY underrepresented! 🙄
There might be a lot of unhealthy representation of the worst straight people, but by pure amount there’s MUCH more healthy representation of straight people than everyone else because there’s just so many times more of ALL kinds of representation!
And are extremely privileged.
What’s up with the millennial erasure? If anything, our ratio of allies to bigots is better than that of Gen X
Because we don’t need any hetero activism. We’re already extremely privileged compared to everyone else. The ones that think hetero activism is necessary are mostly homophobes with a victim complex who think that “the gays are taking over” or some such bullshit.
Again, just watch the vast majority of depictions of relationships. The representation is not just there, it’s overabundant to the point of exclusion and othering of LGBTQ+ people. That’s the norm.
Bullshit. There’s tons of representation of every type of hetero relationship in the world. It’s not all either married people with 2.4 children and a golden retriever or LGBTQ+ people.
All of which is receiving much more representation than LGBTQ+ people are, without bigoted LGBTQ+ people complaining every time.
Again, it is. Constantly. It’s effectively Straight Pride month 11 months of the year everywhere. Us straight people are NOT being deprived.
I’m talking exactly about increasing the share of healthy hetero representation - as opposed to unhealthy hetero representation and not to LGBTQ+ representation.
Again, this is not a competition, and I do not mean to eat out anything from the LGBTQ+ representation. Supporting one doesn’t mean not supporting the other.
It might be the time to make the world better for everyone - while still aware that some people have it worse.
Wow. This is… wow. OK, look… I like the sentiment, the idea that healthy relationships in general should be depicted more often, but can you name the last ten shows or movies you watched that feature healthy depictions of LGBTQ+ relationships? I can, because those depictions are so rare they stand out. I can’t name the last ten shows or movies I watched with straight relationships in them, because that’s literally all of them. Yes, including the ones that also depicted LGBTQ+ relationships.
There needs to be more healthy representation of relationships. But specifically straight ones? Nah… We’re saturated with those enough already.
They should make up 7% - 10% of all such representations, right? I think I have seen that many, but I mostly watch nerdy youtube stuff, where the presenter’s sexuality is either not mentioned or several instances of them undergoing a gender transition, which is noticeable.
That’s a good take; I’m just not always competent enough to see similar flaws in depictions of LGBTQ+ relationships, but I can absolutely imagine it is true.
Let’s put it this way: all relationship depictions, straight or gay, should stop pushing a certain model or expectation.
I just know and see it firsthand from the side of straights, which is why I focus on it so much, but I’m open to discussions on how it is on the LGBTQ+ camp.
Healthy representation matters a lot to shape societies we all want to live in.
They don’t need to be represented, that’s the point. That’s why white pride events are automatically racist. Heterosexual is the default and already exists in every single culture and is extremely celebrated. What do you think every single love/romance media is about? This is so dumb lol.
You might wanna read something again before claiming that.
The text contains an answer - because heterosexual relationships, like any other ones, are very different from each other, and we should represent more than a traditional nuclear family.
Though, judging by your nickname, it’s a low-effort troll commentary anyway, so I’ll cut it at that.