Cute couple.
“So which one of you is the ‘girl’?”
The one on the right, don’t you see the flag?
My right or your right?
The far right
You’re both right!
They’re both right.
If I saw this, I’d immediately assume it’s a variation on the bi pride flag.
“Nice flag. So you fellas go both ways?”
Missing the purple, though.
Having only two colors, clearly delineated, makes the flag worthless as a means of conveying anything, so they had to broadcast what it means with big, braindead-obvious symbols.
Frankly, that definitely looks like a straight pride flag, in that it’s boring, binary, with absolutely zero sense of style, subtlety, or iconography.
It looks like a flag for transphobic bisexuals who only date cis people who fall firmly within the gender binary.
They don’t look very proud.
The two guys holding up the straight pride flag look like they unhappily fuck their wives at home once every quarter to prove that they don’t love the cocks that they shamefully suck every weekend.
They both look like they really hate this flag.
Isn’t being proud of your sexuality mostly a response to being shamed by bigots for your sexuality? Like: parts of society look down on my sexuality? Well fuck you, I’m proud of it! If you’re not being shamed at all, isn’t a bit weird to be proud of such things? As if you did anything to become a heterosexual. No one cares, nor should they.
Yeah, that is the whole point. The whole point is not “I am proud of who I am attracted to”, the point is “I am proud of being open about who I am attracted to despite the bigots and social challenges”.
Which is why there is no “straight pride”, “blond pride”, or “high school student pride”. There is no glory in doing something that is statistically speaking, completely devoid of interest…
Yeah, but the more we demonize normal people, the more interesting they become.
There is no glory in doing something that is statistically speaking, devoid of interest…
Wait, I thought this was about being proud of standing up to bigots?
Is it about being a statistical anomaly and special, or about being a progressive activist?
Cuz I’ll tell you what pride month is to me, as a straight man. Pride month is one of many placative gestures performed by corporations in order to manipulate my empathy into buying their products. It’s a nice set of makeup that corporations get to wear while you go out and suffer the consequences. You, as someone who is a part of the LGBTQ+ community, should be painfully aware of the damaging effects that corporate usage of the pride month aesthetic has had on public perception of the people in that group.
Yet, here you are. Concerned about establishing why you’re more fucking special than straight people.
No no, pride is not about being “special”. Nobody is special. It’s about people embracing who they are, despite having a tougher going than others.
It’s about not staying in the closet in a country with bigots. It’s about being a woman in a working culture that favours men. It’s about going to university in a country that favours manual labour. It’s about being trans… and daring to say out loud “this is not my gender”.
Being a white, straight, cis man is not very difficult. Being a non-white, straight, cis woman is statistically more common, but harder. Normally, “statistical anomalies” have a harder going, but this is definitely not about being special. It’s about being whoever you are, despite the adversity.
Also, to clarify - I haven’t mentioned anything about not being straight. My sexual orientation has nothing to do with my response.
Everything you’ve said I appreciate, I fully recognize that the LGTBQ+ community should be proud of itself for the reasons you’ve listed.
I also maintain that pride month has been perverted into something else by corporate interests. Mark my words, the longer the LGBTQ+ community adheres itself to corporations; the worse the inevitable damage will be. I have nothing else to add.
Corporations leech off cultures and communities, sure. but that doesnt have to devalue them. Its a separate issue entirely.
I disagree, when corporations have infinitely more reach and influence you have no hope of controlling any narrative they’re a part of.
They own pride month. The LGBTQ+ community does not.
Fundementally as long as pride month’s story is linked to stonewall and that story is always told, pride month will always have a bigger symbolism with the counterculture than any corporate influence.
There’s a reason American labor day explicitly does not happen in May.
Yup. This is essentially the same as people suddenly screaming about “WHITE PRIDE!!!” in response to things like Black Live Matter.
The entire point is a minority not letting the majority shame or otherize them. The the majority freaks out and responses with “ME TO BUT BETTER THAN YOU DID IT!”.
It’s pathetic.
So your saying I can be proud to be white then?
You can be proud about anything.
Most people are proud to be useful idiots, for example.
Ahh that’s me then!
I agree with your statement, but I would like to point out that “as if you did anything to become a heterosexual” is… yikes. That implies the LGBTQ+ community is not born how they are and have to do work to become lesbian, gay, bi, etc.
Diction is important; while that doesn’t ruin the overall argument for me because I am an ally, I don’t think that’s something to say going forward because it’s very easy to latch onto and discredit the argument as a whole.
You’re not wrong but all the gays I know have way better taste than that abomination.
So, I have a few issues with the design.
Setting aside for a second how dumb this shit is, the design has some very questionable decisions.
First I couldn’t care less about the “man” and “woman” signs, they’re linked, and gold, which I assume is some reference to marriage? I’ve never understood the symbology of those symbols. I think they’re tacky and archaic. I don’t inherently have an issue with their use in the design. My main issues with the design are with the colors. That’s not a super great shade of blue or pink. On top of that, the “man” symbol is almost entirely on the pink side, and the woman symbol is almost entirely on the blue side. Additionally, representing a boy as blue and girl as pink is pretty questionable as well. I would have expected something like this in the 80’s or 90’s, but today? What? It’s just strange.
Why a slash? Why is it going from top left to bottom right? I have to many questions. It’s like there was no thought in the brain of whomever put this together, and they didn’t ask anyone to review it before having it made.
Now, flipping the coin here, what exactly do straight people have to be proud of? I’m straight, and I don’t know. Is it pride in the decisions that we’ve made which facilitate the perpetration of humanity? Is humanity really something we should be proud of and continue to perpetuate? We’ve committed an untold number of unspeakable horrors to eachother, animals, and nature. Are we perpetuating the species so we can continue to rape and kill the planet and eachother? Either figuratively or literally? Don’t get me wrong, humans have achieved some remarkable things despite our obvious issues; but still, does any of that outweigh the horrors we’ve inflicted? I’m not so sure that perpetuating humanity is anything to be proud of.
Are we proud of our heritage? Our lineage? The long genetic lines of aforementioned horrible people? Who enslaved others and called it progress? Who committed all those previously mentioned terrible things?
So historical pride is questionable, and pride of purpose is questionable… What’s left? Just being proud of who you are? Pride in being a human who is straight? What for?
I don’t understand. I have no pride for who I am naturally, and who I am attracted to. I have no pride in the things my race, gender, or sexual orientation has done. The straights have been responsible for pretty much all the pain and suffering of everyone who is “deviant”.
I don’t know why anyone would be proud of that.
Fundamentally, we agree. Today we have reached the deepest pit of cringe.
But your initial criticism of the design undercuts what might’ve been the only progressive aspect of the design: the fact that the male is on the pink side upsets foundational sexism: guys can be pink, and girls can be blue.
I think people like this believe that non-straight folks have an agenda to make straight folks* feel ashamed of being straight. As in - if you’re proud of being gay, that means you must think being not-gay is a bad thing. And so they feel attacked. It’s so brainless and reactionary.
* Or white, or Christian, or insert whatever not-really-persecuted-but-thinks-they-are group here
Yeah I think that is the bottom line. I am straight as a ruler and absolutely do not give a flying fuck who has sex with who, it’s not my business and I cannot imagine being threatened by it, as long as it’s not me why would I care? If you are threatened by the existence of people who love other people there is something deeply wrong.
Pride is literally one of the seven deadly sins, I’d think Christians would want to avoid it.
On the flag design, I think it makes sense, designed by straight guys and looks like it was designed by straight guys. People would get suspicious if it looked fabulous. I do actually kinda like those symbols - they are old, from the 1700s, used originally for describing plants so there is one for hermaphrodite as well. One of my kids is a geneticist and their charts use a triangle for men & circle for women, the arrow and cross ones are better designs IMO.
Imagine being so fragile and insecure that when someone else expresses pride in themselves, you feel threatened.
My theory is that they are not actually straight. They actively decided to be straight against their true interests due to social pressures. They in turn feel that sexual preference for everybody is an active decision. Due to their constant battle with that they feel some level of acknowledgement is in order for them similar to the lgbtq community. Those people chose to be gay and get pride parades while I chose to be straight and get nothing energy.
I bet these are the same people that say “All lives matter” or “white lives matter”.
To be blunt:
- All lives do matter.
- Nobody needs to be reminded of that.
We do, however, need to remind some of the less intellectually developed people that black lives, do indeed, matter. Which they do, they always have, and always will. While this is a subset of everyone’s life mattering, it does not and should not imply that the lives of non-black persons do not matter, it should only serve as a reminder that black lives do matter.
The problem is that people get so fragile about being left out that excluding them from a movement because nobody ever needed reminding that their lives “matter”, causes them to get offended that someone else is getting special attention that they do not deserve, and have no right to impose themselves upon. Saying “all lives matter” in response to the BLM movement is, in my mind, a form of what aboutisms which is toxic and diminishes the point of BLM. It’s ignorant and short sighted.
One week of ultraviolet and it’ll look more like some trans-adjacent flag. Two souls or whatever.
They totally finger blasted each other after this
if you fuck under the straight flag it’s like super no homo
That’s where the no homo chant comes in.
I thought the chant was
“Bro job! Bro job! Bro job!”
That flag is a horrible design, but how does something “look gay?”
The gay community adopted and have used pastels in messaging for decades, and this flag has pastels in spades.
It’s not 100% of course; judging anything by sight alone is fraught*, but pastels in advertising is a pretty decent indicator.
(*) are you certain that’s a Nazi Swastika, or is that skinhead Hindu?
Thanks for putting exactly the nuance I was looking for! Symbols are important, but diversity disappears when we use symbols as a substitute for reality.
Things look gay by being well designed in my experience.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I like pink but I hate this flag! Straight guys don’t really need a flag, most of them advertise it enough. I’m straight and I find most the jokes distasteful.
Except for white its the same general colors as in the trans flag, maybe thats why people associate it with lgbt+ flags
There’s (unintentionally?) lots of symbolism here that reads as lgbtq. The male symbol being in the pink area, the female symbol being in the blue area, the male symbol has its erect phallus arrow pointing away from the female symbol, the parts of both symbols that are the same (the rings) are the only parts that touch each other, the overlapping rings create a shape that’s very evocative of a butt with an open anus, the background color field is at a steep angle making it very much not straight with the horizon of the flag and not straight with the orientation of the gendered symbols.
Plus in this particular photo it’s two men holding the same flag which is supposed to be representing a sexuality, and the phallus of the male symbol points right at one of the men, and the material of the flag looks very satiny which is considered a very effeminate look.
All in all, it’s harder to find symbolism here that actually reads as straight rather than lgbtq.
All in all, it’s harder to find symbolism here that actually reads as straight rather than lgbtq.
It’s much harder to come up with something genuinely more gay. This is possibly the gayest image I have ever seen.
Adapt it as the new gay flag just to fuck with them.
Not right away though. That would scare them off. Give them a little time to adopt it first and start flying it at their house. THEN pull the switcheroo.
Thanks.
Guess you’re not a 90s kid!
Hah, definitely not! 67 on my last birthday.
No shade intended but by any chance are you Gen Z or younger?
If so, there’s some ingrained toxic social more context you might not understand because you grew up in a better society than we did.
But if you’re genuinely asking…
Anything that acknowledges women exist? Gay Anything that recognizes men in relation to others instead of as the default? Believe it or not, gay Anything that involves sharing? Gay Pink? Gay Blue? Also gay Pink and blue? Liberace Diagonal lines? Gay The male/female Mars/Venus signs? Gay The Venus sign on a blue background? Lesbian Mars sign on a pink background? Flaming gay Two men standing near each other: friends of Dorothy Two men holding a flag together: Gay The way the one guy is pinching the corner: Super fucking gay Wearing a teal shirt: Gay Wearing a yellow tie: Gay
I could keep going but I think you might get the picture.
I still have relatives that say “ugh that’s gay” to mean “I don’t like that”.
I don’t speak to these relatives anymore.
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It’s still common for people to use “narcissist” as an insult when it’s the name of a mental disorder.
I used to say it, cause it was my environment in a very lgbtphobic area around lgbtphobic people to fit in, stopped saying it cause I don’t want to spread hate, and started using it again, cause it is my environment in a very gay friend group and gay girlfriend cause it is feels funny and good to reclaim it.
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Exactly! We also like to poke fun at it ever being a “bad” thing. One of our running gags with each other, my partner and I, is to respond to something/event by saying “I think I might be gay” and the other one of us will feign horror.
I lost it at Liberace. Also apparently this is the official colour of Liberace
Nope. 67 and doing my best since high school to be inclusive in my thinking.
I guess I just don’t get how anyone other than a toxic fuck or at least a thoughtless stereotyper could say that most of what you point out of indicates gayness.
Someone else went through a “symbolic analysis” that helps me see some of it.
a toxic fuck or at least a thoughtless stereotyper
That’s like everyone back when I was in school, me included.
Yeah, point taken. The toxic fuckery I saw and experienced and probably propogated in school is likely why I’ve put in effort to be better.
I’m 40, and when I first opened the image, I was overwhelmed with how hilariously gay it looked. But not in a bad way - almost at if it were made unironically for lgbtq.
The other person that replied to you with a lengthy list is spot on.
How does a blue curtain look blue?
Looks like two guys holding it up. Kind of ironic
I assume this is some sort of mockup. I don’t mean to be judgemental based on a picture, but those guys both 100% love dick. Sometimes it’s just obvious.
I don’t have the gaydar I guess but I do like the idea of a straight flag that can be brought to lgbt+ events and parades etc
Why lol
Maybe she’s born with it…… maybe it’s Maybeline?
Gaybeline
FTFY
Let’s beat them up for kissing girls. Who am I kidding. These guys can’t get self-respecting women.
I always thought it would be funny if “s” was added to “lgbtq” for straight.
Then when someone has a problem with “lgbtqs”, you can be like “you’re not straight?”
2-Spirit already took the S, lol.
*in Canada (and perhaps parts of the US? not sure)
Why is this funny?
Like when a homophobe says they hate lgbtqs, you can respond as if they are saying they hate straight people.
Makes it really easy to defeat their “you include everyone but us” argument and call homophobes gay at the same time.
I’m confused at why an LGBTQ community wouldn’t take the strategy of forceful adoption. Mostly under the point that they offer a home to all. However, it would negate any exclusion arguments against those communities.
Take your adversaries symbols and make them yours kinda thing. A Yankee Doodle approach.
“Where’s muh straight flag?”
“Right here sparky.”
Wait, what exactly are you saying we should do?
Yes, please elaborate. I can’t tell if I agree or not.
The straight flag was made by homophobes… above comment was proposing that we hijack it and make it part of the lgbtq+ community, fly it in pride parades, etc., the same way we turned “queer” from a slur into an identity label.
The straight flag has been around for quite a while. It’s black and white horizontal stripes. The ally flag is the straight flag with a rainbow “A” on it.
These guys in the picutre didn’t bother doing any research evidently and started flying the wrong flag.
