stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2025-06-22 02:56 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2025-06-22 02:56 pm
Straight Pride
Whenever someone says to me, "Why isn't there a straight pride parade?", I always respond, "So organize one. What's stopping you?" Now this event was announced:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dozens-attend-hetero-awesome-fest-in-idaho/ar-AA1Hafxf
Make no mistake, though: this event isn't a celebration of heterosexuality ; it's a denigration of the queer community. The tone is not, "Heterosexuality is awesome! We're happy to be straight, and we're celebrating it!" Not at all. The tone is, "Thank god we're straight, because queer people are perverts and pedophiles who want mutilate children's body parts."
The festival organizer reached out to companies to sponsor the festival, and each company gave him some version of, "We only sponsor 501-3C charity groups." So he registered his group as a 501-3C. The result? He got three or four small sponsors.
On the day of the festival, this happened: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dozens-attend-hetero-awesome-fest-in-idaho/ar-AA1Hafxf
You read that right. "Dozens" of people attended. The bands played to a mostly-empty park of dully-dressed white people, many of them openly carrying. (Side note: if I were a woman, I'd be seriously wary of attending a festival that celebrates heterosexuality with a bunch of armed men standing around.) The festival was a dud.
When it ended, the organizers set up a GoFundMe page. Why? Because the festival was figuring on ticket sales for most of its budget. Few people showed up, so the festival owes $18,000 in various bills.
This guy is not only a homophobe, he's an idiot. You don't organize a festival this way. You start small, with eight or ten booths from local businesses and artists and a couple of rented rides for kids in a local park. You only pay the park fee and the ride rentals. You hope to make some money back by selling concessions and asking for donations, but you figure you'll be out of pocket for a while.
Publicity consists of flyers and posters around town (another OOP expense) and social media. If you don't have a robust social media following, that's an indicator that few people are interested in your event, by the way.
If the event draws a decent crowd, celebrate it and do it again. If the event draws more people than you anticipated, cheer and use the momentum to expand the festival next year. And the next, and the next, until you have a large thing going.
If the festival sputters, you try again next year. If it still sputters, it's clear that 1) the only person interested in your event is you; or 2) you suck at organizing events; or 3) both.
This guy is so self-centered that he missed the key idea: Gay Pride caught on because an entire community of people had been beaten down and made invisible for generations. The sense of anger and outrage that every single LGBT person has felt bonded the community together. Pride is a way to fight back.
Heterosexuals don't have this feeling of community. Straight people haven't been downtrodden, beaten, burned, or murdered for being straight. There's no sense of community in this arena to bring people together. When the only thing you have in common is that you're straight, it's hard to find anything to bond over.
Anyway, this guy is an idiot.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dozens-attend-hetero-awesome-fest-in-idaho/ar-AA1Hafxf
Make no mistake, though: this event isn't a celebration of heterosexuality ; it's a denigration of the queer community. The tone is not, "Heterosexuality is awesome! We're happy to be straight, and we're celebrating it!" Not at all. The tone is, "Thank god we're straight, because queer people are perverts and pedophiles who want mutilate children's body parts."
The festival organizer reached out to companies to sponsor the festival, and each company gave him some version of, "We only sponsor 501-3C charity groups." So he registered his group as a 501-3C. The result? He got three or four small sponsors.
On the day of the festival, this happened: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dozens-attend-hetero-awesome-fest-in-idaho/ar-AA1Hafxf
You read that right. "Dozens" of people attended. The bands played to a mostly-empty park of dully-dressed white people, many of them openly carrying. (Side note: if I were a woman, I'd be seriously wary of attending a festival that celebrates heterosexuality with a bunch of armed men standing around.) The festival was a dud.
When it ended, the organizers set up a GoFundMe page. Why? Because the festival was figuring on ticket sales for most of its budget. Few people showed up, so the festival owes $18,000 in various bills.
This guy is not only a homophobe, he's an idiot. You don't organize a festival this way. You start small, with eight or ten booths from local businesses and artists and a couple of rented rides for kids in a local park. You only pay the park fee and the ride rentals. You hope to make some money back by selling concessions and asking for donations, but you figure you'll be out of pocket for a while.
Publicity consists of flyers and posters around town (another OOP expense) and social media. If you don't have a robust social media following, that's an indicator that few people are interested in your event, by the way.
If the event draws a decent crowd, celebrate it and do it again. If the event draws more people than you anticipated, cheer and use the momentum to expand the festival next year. And the next, and the next, until you have a large thing going.
If the festival sputters, you try again next year. If it still sputters, it's clear that 1) the only person interested in your event is you; or 2) you suck at organizing events; or 3) both.
This guy is so self-centered that he missed the key idea: Gay Pride caught on because an entire community of people had been beaten down and made invisible for generations. The sense of anger and outrage that every single LGBT person has felt bonded the community together. Pride is a way to fight back.
Heterosexuals don't have this feeling of community. Straight people haven't been downtrodden, beaten, burned, or murdered for being straight. There's no sense of community in this arena to bring people together. When the only thing you have in common is that you're straight, it's hard to find anything to bond over.
Anyway, this guy is an idiot.
Thoughts
That would be Valentine's Day.
>> Make no mistake, though: this event isn't a celebration of heterosexuality ; it's a denigration of the queer community. <<
Disappointing. The occasions I've seen it come up were straight folks wanting a button or flag so they could join activities with their QUILTBAG friends without confusion. There's a rainbow flag that says "ally" and a pink-and-blue flag with a white heart that both serve this purpose.
>> This guy is not only a homophobe, he's an idiot. You don't organize a festival this way. You start small, with eight or ten booths from local businesses and artists and a couple of rented rides for kids in a local park. You only pay the park fee and the ride rentals. You hope to make some money back by selling concessions and asking for donations, but you figure you'll be out of pocket for a while.<<
Nailed it. But then, homophobia rarely attracts smart people.
I could see great use for straight pride, given the dilapidated condition of family skills today. Family-friendly and couples activities. A booth selling sex toys and fun condoms. The local clinic's sexual health display. A booth for parents' clubs advertising parenting classes. (Actually, Mothers Of Pre-Schoolers often puts out a booth at events in my area, trying to reach teen MOPS so they don't fall through the cracks.) A travel agent hawking couples' trips. Every wedding planner in town under a pop-up pavilion with flower bouquets and cake samples. A local bar and a local church teamed up to promote their singles events. The counselors offering prenuptial and couples' sessions, plus a listing of all their social-skill modules for singles. An ice-cream truck selling sundaes to share. The formerly-local-guy-turned-romance-model posing for pictures with local ladies, set up by the romance book club his mother runs. A college kid offering speed portraits of couples. And so on. It could be fun.
... I have at least two fantasy settings where this would totally fit.
>> Gay Pride caught on because an entire community of people had been beaten down and made invisible for generations. The sense of anger and outrage that every single LGBT person has felt bonded the community together. Pride is a way to fight back.<<
True.
>> Heterosexuals don't have this feeling of community.<<
Sometimes they do, but it's different because it's open rather than hidden. See above re: Valentine's Day, weddings, and singles events. Because they already have all that stuff, it's harder to pull together a straight pride event. But look at the appalling numbers for divorce and dropping marriage rates. Most humans don't do well living alone, but family structure has been falling apart for decades for a lot of reasons. Nagging people doesn't work. Support for healthy straight relationships would be useful, though, especially to young people who want a lasting relationship but don't know how to do that. Just not a lot of people are taking that angle. The places I've seen it have usually been piggybacked on an event by a less-popular group, like queer or kinky people, with a "something for everyone" approach. That can work too.
Just because that guy is an idiot, doesn't mean the whole concept is invalid.