Why I support the idea of a Heterosexual Pride Day

Seeing a hashtag for heterosexual pride was the tonic I needed after a spell in a feminist group, where the opinions of straight women were routinely ridiculed

Pride London Parade, London, UK - 25 Jun 2016 (Tolga Akmen/LNP/REX)

I didn’t expect to see Heterosexual Pride Day trending on Twitter this morning. Aside from my surprise that anything unrelated to Brexit had managed to get a look in on social media, I didn’t know we had a Hetero Pride Day.

Predictably - understandably – the hashtag went down as well as a bag of Farage’s beer stained blazers at a jumble sale for refugees. Not only is it currently Pride Month, it’s also less than three weeks since the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, in which 49 people were killed and 53 more injured.

“STFU” (“shut the fuck up”) was a popular response to the trend, as was the question, “What’s next, White History Month?” Some pointed out that Gay Pride is not simply a celebration of being gay, it’s about the right for gay people to exist without persecution. So I understand the disgust at the idea of a Heterosexual Pride Day. As one person said, it might as well be known as “Wednesday.”

For me, though, seeing a hashtag for heterosexual pride was the tonic I needed after a spell in a feminist group, where the opinions of straight women were routinely ridiculed. For the record, I had not inadvertently wandered into a lesbian separatist group – but it began to feel like it.

One member posited the theory that all PIV (penis-in-vagina) sex is rape, and that women who engage in it are handmaidens of the patriarchy, colluding in their own sexual assault. Actually, I very much enjoy a spot of PIV. It’s lovely. And when I like a man very much, I want his P in my V with a physical intensity that could suction a broken-down bullet train across the country.

But apparently, I didn’t really feel this way. Other members of the group knew better. According to them, I didn’t know my own mind - I’d simply been conditioned to imagine I fancied men. I’d “internalised porn culture.” What an idiot I was. All those times I’d thought I was having fun, I wasn’t!

Of course, I understood the underlying principle – that living in a heteronormative society, heterosexuality is seen as the norm, and PIV sex is depicted in the media as the definitive sex act. I’d actually written about this, over a decade ago, for my MSc dissertation in Gender and the Media. But society’s expectations aside, we all know who we fancy, and we know what we want to do with them in bed. I am straight, and when I fancy a man, it’s like having an EU-banned vacuum cleaner for a cunt – my power draw could pull him towards me from space.

But sexual attraction wasn’t the only topic on which I was told I was woolly-headed. The opinion of heterosexual women in the group was dismissed on virtually any subject – apparently we were unable to think clearly, due to our membership of the “I Love Men Club.” I reached the conclusion, one day last week, that there was no point in contributing to discussions if my views would be classed as invalid simply because I’m straight.

So while I understand the anger directed at the hashtag, right now I’m flying the flag for no fucks given (except the fun kind). So that’s why I’ll be making myself as popular as a backtracked Ukip campaign and tweeting #HeterosexualPrideDay.