gay pride

Why would you be 'proud' of something you had no control over?

The core revelation for me was that pride is the opposite of shame. Most gay people start out feeling like being gay is something they have to hide about themselves. Sometimes this is due to genuine fear of reprisal, but even in an accepting environment, teens are often themselves unsure, insecure, and talking about sexuality is awkward. Even if you don't want to make being gay your whole identity, and even if you don't think you've done anything particularly merit-worthy, 'pride' is still the correct direction to update. It's not pride in being gay, really, it's pride in yourself generally.

This is why 'straight pride' makes no sense as usually expressed. As a straight person, there may be things you're ashamed of about yourself, and it's good and important to try to eliminate those sources of shame. But 'being straight' is usually not a source of shame, so the concept is incoherent. Depending on your background, you may really benefit from 'nerd pride', 'short-person pride', 'immigrant pride', etc.---something along those lines that gets at whatever it is about yourself that you tend to feel ashamed of. But very rarely is straightness itself one of those things.

Scott Aaronson's famous blog comment on being ashamed of his straight sexuality is an example of what straight shame really can look like:

Here’s the thing: I spent my formative years—basically, from the age of 12 until my mid-20s—feeling not “entitled,” not “privileged,” but terrified. I was terrified that one of my female classmates would somehow find out that I sexually desired her, and that the instant she did, I would be scorned, laughed at, called a creep and a weirdo, maybe even expelled from school or sent to prison. And furthermore, that the people who did these things to me would somehow be morally right to do them—even if I couldn’t understand how.

Most of the people organizing 'straight pride' events are in fact trolls with no shame whatsoever. But Scott illustrates that we do in fact need social institutions that allow young straight guys (and girls) to feel a healthy pride in their own selves and sexualities. Shame here is not limited to one political side---on the left, it comes from reading the wrong feminists (as Laurie Penny points out, feminism properly conceived is about dismantling patriarchy, so that women are fully empowered agents who don't need to be viewed as delicate flowers), on the right, it comes from religious injunctions against sexual thoughts---so maybe there's an opportunity for a cross-partisan 'healthy sexuality' movement.