The totally sincere and legitimate group describe themselves as follows on their website: "Super Happy Fun America advocates on behalf of the straight community in order to build respect, inclusivity, equality, diversity, unity, solidarity, dignity, social mobility, empowerment, sustainability, justice, awareness, intersectionality, human rights, education, access, participation, dialogue, visibility, tolerance, and alliances with people from all walks of life. We encourage everyone to embrace our community’s diverse history, culture, and identity regardless of sexual orientation."
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| Playing it straight for 0.4 years. Or something |
Yeah. Totally no trolling or spoofing going on here. This totally doesn't have 4chan, or a very similar source, written all over it. They've even adopted Milo Yiannopoulos as mascot and grand marshal for the parade. Just think about that. Really think about it. Take your time, and let it sink in.
It should be obvious by now that SHFA isn't playing this straight.
Plus I'm sure you'll be shocked to discover that the masterminds behind this stroke of genius also have a history of involvement in far right bootlickery more generally. One Mark Sahady, parade organizer, has a history with a group called Resist Marxism, founded by "based stick man" Kyle Chapman, according to this Daily Beast article. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of antifa and found them hard to sympathize with even when one of them did get whapped upside the head, but here we have the exact reason that the far right is a lame dud that will never come to anything, and is no vehicle for dissent and protest against globalism.
Resist Marxism.
Yeah. You go, boys.
Should this farce of a parade actually take place, expect to see far less of their corny heterosexual pride banners and far more defacing of the hammer and sickle. Because even more than queer tyranny over straights, Marxism is clearly a looming power in America today. One look at the current US administration and one can only wonder how long it will be before industry is placed under worker's control, finance is nationalized and agricultural collectivization is to begin? On a more serious note, what being anti-Marxist has to do with heterosexual pride is anyone's guess. I don't think the Soviets were that keen on LGBT issues, to put things mildly. Marx himself was a heterosexually married man. The phrase "bourgeois decadence" comes to mind here.
So yes, far right cringe. Behind an all but acknowledged as farcical facade of straight white male pride, you'll get just the kind of anti-social welfare, anti-public sector, anti-union, anti-socialist and anti-social democracy cringe fest we've all come to love and expect from the yellow and black crowd. I can hardly wait!
Yet this is not what the progressives criticizing this are up in arms about. This is about identity politics, and as you can imagine, the internet is responding with what it does best. OUTRAGE!
Some examples you might have expected:
"This is why straight people don't get to have a fucking pride parade." Followed by a link to a news story about a violent homophobic incident, wherein a lesbian couple was allegedly assaulted on a double decker bus in London, UK.
"A straight pride parade is kinda like throwing a fundraiser for healthy people because people with Cancer had one."
"Straight men already have a pride parade - it’s called the Senate."
Et cetera. Straights get to have a pride parade when straights have a history of being oppressed like LGBTQ folks have. To be clear, this straight pride parade sounds like the stupidest thing I've heard of in quite some time. I wouldn't be caught dead at this parade, assuming it even goes ahead, except maybe to make fun of it. And even then, probably not, since even if I did live in Boston, I have better things to do.
But as little use as I have for any of this, I also have concerns with this whole "straights/whites/males don't get to have a pride day" mindset. Not because I think straight (or white or male) pride is needed. As I indicated above, I don't think that even the far right organizers of this charade really believe that. What concerns me is the social justice crowd appointing themselves the gatekeepers of who is and isn't oppressed, deciding exclusively among themselves that one must first be deemed oppressed in order to be able to put on a pride parade, and therefore who gets to have a pride parade and who doesn't.
While I'm not necessarily against the idea that pride is more appropriate for a group that has had to struggle for its rights as opposed to groups who have always defined what the norm is, I still wonder who died and decided that professional progressive ideologues were the ones who get to decide all of this? Perhaps, by that rationale, a pride parade is in order for everyone who isn't a professional queer, feminist or critical race theorist. And the Fortune 500, Washington beltway lobbyists and the military industrial complex can probably sit that one out as well.
This mindset is already coming around to bite Pride in the tail, as is evidenced by recent incidents wherein Black Lives Matter has taken it upon themselves to decide that Pride parades should not include uniformed police officers. BLM gets to decide this on behalf of Pride because of intersectionality. Or to make Pride more "inclusive." Or something. Such are the issues that arise when the self appointed vanguard of groups that assign marginalized status to themselves can then take it upon themselves to police the public expression of other groups, and be seen as legitimate in the media in doing so, because marginalization. It doesn't sound like an environment where anyone gets to decide for themselves whether they can have a pride parade or not. Is this really what progressives want?
As much as I do agree in principle with race and sex based equality, this "power plus prejudice' mentality is profoundly anti-liberal and undemocratic, especially when the gatekeepers themselves actually become powerful enough to impose their will on the governmental authorities who actually issue the permits. Last time I checked, the right to free speech, to assembly and to protest belonged to all equally. To decide that only some and not others should have it is the very definition of privilege, exactly the thing the woke crowd professes to be against. Well, only when "privilege" is narrowly defined as an essential feature of whiteness, masculinity and heterosexuality, it would seem.
I don't recall being consulted about how oppression was defined and what privileges get granted to those who fall under its umbrella. No one I knew was either. I don't recall "we the people" being able to vote on the definition of who is and is not oppressed, and therefore who is and is not allowed to have a pride parade in honor of their identity. I don't recall any of this being seriously debated in any sort of public forum. As usual, mainstream media didn't present the arguments in a for and against format. Somewhere along the line, we just started being told who was and wasn't marginalized and oppressed, and therefore who was and wasn't entitled to a pride parade. Told by professional academics and activists in the media and in the education system, and whose dictates have since been parroted ceaselessly on social media, in comments sections and by any "progressive" eager to evangelize. Progressive, in the same sense that Lenin's idea of a "democratic" centralist, vanguard party was progressive. Which is to say, not at all.
No recourse, no debate, no looking under the hood of the institutions which have formulated and propagated these dictates, no thinking for oneself or seeking a second opinion about the issues of race, gender or sexual orientation. This is not good for an open, liberal democratic polity. To question any of this is to be a far right bigot, we are told. That sounds like a dangerous recipe for a self fulfilling prophecy, if you ask me.
As a curious aside, the white male working class wasn't included in the charmed circle of marginalized groups. Rich or poor, if you are a straight white dude, you are "privileged" and therefore an acceptable target for progressive scorn by default. And we wonder why they voted for Trump.
Indeed, I suspect that the real outrage over this straight pride parade among the woke twittersphere has a lot less to do with the demonstrable threat to LGBTQ rights posed by this parade (which is virtually negligible, since the vast majority of the people taking this parade at all seriously will be the counter-protesters) but because some straight white dudes somewhere are daring to challenge the authority of the self appointed holy trinity of feminist, critical race and queer theorists. Despite the fact that challenging authority was, until recently it seems, supposedly a left wing value. As long as it isn't the progressive establishment's authority, of course.
And while the challenge may in this case be stupid and juvenile, the authority itself also lacks democratic legitimacy and has zero transparency and accountability. And I find that a lot more worrying than the antics of some 4chan themed group trolling social media with plans for something so cringy and stupid as a straight pride parade.
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