Straight Pride is one thing, but a straight coming out party?
When hearing about the Straight Pride parade, the best route is just to shake your head and move on. While clearly, some people are missing the point of Gay and Queer pride parades, it’s still their right to gather and walk down paths. So to them, go ahead. Do your thing. But don’t mind me as I shake my head at it.
And now, I just caught wind of the idea for a “straight coming out party,” and that one’s got me stumped. But the ironic thing is, it’s the idea of a teen’s misguided attempt to support LGBTQ people.
Redditors have been abuzz with discussing the idea since an anonymous user wrote a post about it. In the post, the user, who says she’s a 27-year-old female, wrote that her teenage sister told the family she would throw a “special celebration” for her 17th birthday. But, the sister wouldn’t tell the family the theme and subject of the the party.
After nagging her sibling about it, the 27-year-old found out that her sister was planning a “coming out” party.
“Normal I would have been happy and supportive, but she had been dating the same guy since she was 13, so I was confused,” wrote the woman. “Was she coming out as Bi? Trans didn’t make sense because she has always been a girly girl, but I guess not impossible.”
Then while talking to a mutual friend of hers and her sister, the original poster discovered that the party was a straight coming out event.
“I instantly became completely enraged, I thought it was so insincere and disingenuous,” she explained. “It just all came across as very attention-seeking and stupid. I told her best friend as such, and her best friend immediately got angry with me for not seeing that it was my sister’s job as an lgbtq + Ally to do her part and destigmatize coming out.”
While to the poster, this coming out party seems like an insult to LGBTQ people, it’s an effort to normalize all sexualities/gender identities to the sister and friend. If everyone, cis/straight/trans/gay/bi/etc. came out, it would help to normalize anyone not cis/straight.
The redditor then asked others if she was being a jerk for finding the event offensive and thinking of refusing to go. For the most part, redditors agreed with her.
“You can’t ‘come out’ of closet you’ve never been in, especially when you’re ‘coming out’ into the thing that everyone assumes you are anyway,” one redditor argued. “No. This is just ‘I saw coming out parties on Instagram and I want one too’.”
Another commented further that the younger sister is missing the point.
“Yea but its not the ‘declaration of sexuality’ that needs to be normalized, its the existence and tolerance of non-heterosexuality that needs to be normalized,” they wrote. “You could literally say that having a ‘straight parade’ would help Pride by normalizing parades based around sexuality; which obviously would be abhorrent.”
“I’m a queer woman and her straight ‘coming out’ party is the dumbest, most obnoxious thing I’ve ever heard of,” commented a third. “She’s treating this like it’s a fun party. It’s not. Coming out is f***ing terrifying because you risk a lot every time you do it.”
“I see what she’s trying to do, but she’s doing it the wrong way,” they concluded.
But what do you Instinct readers think? Is the younger sister in the right or sadly misguided? Share your thoughts below.
