Spare a thought for the poor heterosexual: a wretched creature, shunned and marginalised despite living in a world built around their lifestyle choices. This oppressed majority has, finally, found an ally in the form of a bar in Idaho called Old State Saloon, which recently went viral for celebrating “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month”. On Mondays in June, “any heterosexual male dressed like a heterosexual male will receive a free draft beer” and on Wednesdays heterosexual couples get “15% off their bill”.
If this exhausting joke sounds a little familiar, it’s because these sorts of shenanigans happen every single Pride month. Some wag with a chip on their shoulder will decide that it’s unfair that the gays get a whole month to themselves and will launch something to increase awareness of heterosexual people. In 2011, for example, a Brazilian politician tried to get the city of São Paulo to establish a Heterosexual Pride Day. That didn’t end up passing but, in 2019, Boston held a Straight Pride Parade. A few hundred Trump supporters marched with signs bearing slogans such as “Straight lives matter”.
It’s not just Pride month that gets reactionaries hot under the collar. Whenever there is a holiday for women or a minority, a certain subset of people like to yell: “WHAT ABOUT US? Why isn’t there a Men’s History Month? Why isn’t there a White History Month? Why isn’t there a Cisgender Day of Visibility?”
These questions aren’t asked in good faith, of course. If these people rubbed their two brain cells together for a minute and had a little think about what they were asking, they could easily come up with the answer. After all, I can’t think of many places in the world where being heterosexual is criminalised or where there are government buildings full of women trying to take away men’s reproductive rights. Nor can I think of any examples of people being targeted for abuse or violence because they are gender-conforming. When you are accustomed to privilege, the saying goes, then equality feels like oppression. This Pride month, spare a thought for all the disgruntled straights who suddenly feel oppressed.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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