When the slogan “Make America Great Again” was born, arguing that America lost its greatness during progressive Obama-era reforms that threatened the 1% in total power, it catalyzed a series of reactionary groups. Once the Black Lives Matter movement emboldened the country to recognize victims of police brutality, the phrase “All Lives Matter” began being tossed around. After the Me Too Movement gained momentum, those who believed specific recounts of sexual assault were an attack on an entire gender began “Not All Men.” The term “feminist” precipitated “feminazi,” a word coined by alt-right radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, thereby equating the fight for gender equality to the Holocaust. 

Aside from how utterly unnecessary these reactionary groups are – Me Too is about lifting women’s voices, not denouncing a gender, and the BLM movement does not believe white lives don’t matter – they are also damaging. They seek to invalidate the necessary activism for which their predecessors fought by wielding “clever” comebacks against progressive gains.

Enter the “Straight Pride Parade” on August 31 in Boston, a reactionary event to LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. 

 In June each year, LGBTQIA+ people organize marches around the country to fight discrimination by celebrating gay culture. “Pride,” as the month has been nicknamed, is a protest that originated at the Stonewall Riots in June 1969, when black trans women threw bricks through windows at the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Manhattan, to protest a police raid there. Though progress has been made through Pride month, LGBTQIA+ people continue to face persecution twelve months out of the year.

Though this may sound rudimentary to spell out, straight people do not face this kind of persecution during any month of the year. Pride is not anti-straight or anti-cis. The evidence? Lots of trans people are straight! Lots of gay people are cis! Straight allies and cis allies are welcome to participate in Pride month festivities.

But Straight Pride is anti-LGBTQIA+. Heteronormativity is woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Security questions still ask for your mother’s maiden name. Boys and girls are prescribed different dress codes. Gay couples are asked who “wears the pants” in the relationship. Even Groton’s dorm system only recognizes straight students who fit into the gender binary. Homophobia is a system, a jumbled puzzle of microaggressions combined with explict acts of physical and sexual violence. To contend that straight people are oppressed is both ridiculous and alarming. It must take a lot of hate to ignore the heteronormativity that Americans encounter on a daily basis. 

GSA Head Becky Lipson ’20 was tempted to attend the Straight Pride Parade to try to make sense of what was happening. However, she later decided against it, resigning herself to the fact that “bigotry has no logic.” Becky is right; reactionary groups like Straight Pride are unjustifiable. 

In a blog post reacting to criticism from The View, the organizers of Boston’s 1st Annual Straight Pride parade have taken a stance. “Heterosexuals have languished in the shadows for decades,” the post reads. “Until an ‘S’ is added, LGBTQIA+ pride will continue to be a system of oppression designed to systematically erase straight people from existence.” Reading this quotation almost seems like a joke, because the language is almost identical to that of LGBTQIA+ acceptance campaigns (with phrases like “system of oppression” and “eras[ure]”).

The Straight Pride Parade is a hate group failing to veil itself in victims’ clothing. When it comes to social justice, marginalized groups and their counterparts are not interchangeable.