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Idaho bar celebrates "Heterosexual Awesomeness Month" with free beer for straight men
(www.lgbtqnation.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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Honestly, I'd love to have more healthy representation of straights.
We never went anywhere, we are the majority, and most of us here in Gen X and Gen Z have nothing against LGBTQ+ people.
Yet when we see any hetero activism, it's mostly about screwing LGBTQ+ people over, not showing the beauty and variety of hetero relationships, which is not only the traditional nuclear family.
This skews many people's perception of what hetero relationships are and/or allowed to be. There is so much in there, all sorts of dynamics, all sorts of approaches, a beautiful spectre of whatever it can be.
And this is something to be celebrated - along with the beauty and awesomeness of LGBTQ+, not as an opposition.
As a straight man, I feel like I've been represented plenty and still am in media. What exactly are you looking for that you aren't seeing? There are thousands of years of representation, still continuing to this day. Don't get me wrong, free beer is awesome but not sure why anyone feels unrepresented as a straight person.
What is represented is a traditional family. This is not the only way things can happen in a heterosexual relationship.
There are amazing couples with changed or reversed gender roles, plenty of happy child free couples, there are heterosexual people entering polyamorous relationships with bi-s/pan-s, there are heterosexual couples with trans people, etc. etc.
All of those are under- or misrepresented, and all of them are very much heterosexual. We need to praise this variety, to show that heterosexual relationships can be unique and different from what we normally see.
You seem to be under the impression that straight couples in media are only ever married with 2.5 kids with a working father and stay at home mom but that really doesn't seem like it's been the case for a while.
While polyamory is probably still underrepresented, I'm not sure about your other examples. Also polyamory often includes at least one LGBTQ+ relationship so I'm not sure it makes your point. And a trans person in a heterosexual relationship falls at least half into LGBTQ+ by definition.
Most rom coms aren't about married couples with kids. Most sit coms show relationships where both partners work. The old trope of the dad who knows nothing about his kids is pretty dead at this point. Divorced and widowed couples show up a lot, too.
I don't think you're wrong that all kinds of relationships and gender expressions should be represented, but comparing it to the overall lack of LGBTQ+ rep out there... Well, one of these things is not like the other.
Also, my sister works and her husband is a stay at home dad. When people hear this they say "oh" and move on. When I mention my nephew is trans... Well the reaction is different. Very different. As stupid as it sounds, media representation plays a huge role in exposing people to things they don't get the chance to see often in their own lives (especially if you're from a small town). It's good for people to see trans characters they like and relate to before they find out about my nephew. I actually use it as a gauge to decide if I should tell people at all.
So long as straight is the assumption (or default), we are gonna need these kinds of spaces.
Heterosexual relationships might absolutely intersect with LGBTQ+ - for example, because one or some of the partners are trans or bi/pan.
I might have created a wrong impression that I aim to compare the struggles of LGBTQ+ people to someone else's. I never meant that. I just said that even in heterosexual relationships, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, and both acceptance and representation of various forms of heterosexual relationships also differ wildly between cultures.
And I wish we could have a higher share of positive and kind representation of all kinds of relationships, including different forms of heterosexual ones.