It’s Pride Month, mga mahal!
Along with the celebration of Pride Month, comes the clout-chasing heterosexuals using the lovable community just for engagement and to appear relevant. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with greeting your queer brothers, sisters, and non-binary folks a “happy pride month,” and there’s nothing wrong with being straight and heterosexual.
But there is definitely something inappropriate when someone who identifies as straight and heterosexual, uses Pride month for their own gain. This also includes companies who capitalize on LGBTQIA+ during Pride Month.
To start this off, no, I don’t identify as any part of the community; I’m straight. But, I strongly support and advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights, because they’re essentially human rights, right? What makes them so different from anyone else? Is it just because they’re queer, and they stray away from the norm? Or is it because you can’t comprehend anything else outside your bubble of thinking?
Forgive my aggressive way of expressing my thoughts, since this topic is too taboo for some to even discuss. But, I just have to let it out.
Pride Month is celebrated annually every June, in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots that happened on June 28, 1969. This month is to celebrate, affirm, and acknowledge everyone else identifying within the LGBTQIA+ spectrum – whether out in the open or still in the closet. With the amount of hate crimes and intolerance being experienced by this community, they deserve to be celebrated for their strength and resilience in times where they’re still being misunderstood.
These people deserve to feel validated and to be unapologetically themselves – as everyone should be. They don’t deserve the hate, or the prejudice that’s repeatedly being thrown at them. They are just like anyone else – they love who they love, they are who they are. And no one should tell them otherwise.
And to the heteros, straights, and companies who use this month to capitalize and draw influence to themselves, sit down. You have no right to do those things to this community who has sacrificed so much just to try and fit in, who has been continuously rejected and left out by society, and who has been unjustly treated for not fitting in the norm.
You have no right to say “Happy Pride Month!” to these people when you can’t even support same-sex marriage because the “Bible doesn’t approve” of it.
You have no right to say “Happy Pride Month” when you don’t believe that this community is struggling for acceptance.
You have no right to say “Happy Pride Month” when you think that this is just a phase everyone grows out of.
You have no right to say “Happy Pride Month” when you can’t even try to learn the proper pronouns that people identify as.
You have no right to capitalize on Pride Month when you don’t actually support it.
So please, leave this beloved community alone and let them live in the way they should. They don’t need your exploitation or your false support. Just say that you want people to look at your content/products and go.
Just a friendly reminder that Pride Month wasn’t made for your hetero clout.
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