The issue isn’t that the majority of people are straight (though I’d point to what we saw in the rates of left handedness once we stopped punishing it), it’s how we talk about it and the assumptions we make - and it’s about the disparities LGBTQIA+ people can face because of the specifically heteronormative way society is set up.

Marriage equality is a great easy example - the reason marriage equality was (and is, in so many places) such a big deal wasn’t just so we could marry just like heterosexuals - it’s because there are so many rights afforded to married couples that aren’t afforded to others. Healthcare access is the big one - in so many places, only married spouses are considered ‘family’ and able to make decisions for their partner, or even visit them in hospital.

To use your analogy, it would be like there not being any metal concerts, ever, because everyone just likes pop, right? Why would anyone want to go to a metal gig?

Its different, it's that feeling when your music, which you know is absolutely fine, gets shat upon by christian conservatives who believe it's evil. But then throw in the cops and the government which historically and systemically shut down your opportunity to even play or listen to it and give more opportunities and legal benefits to those people who play pop.

And you're just trying to listen to the music you like, while every step of the way it gets way more difficult than it needs to be because it's systemically rigged for you not to be able to listen to it. It's exhausting.

edit: grammar

That doesn't mean it's not tiring.

But also, why does the norm need to be hetero vs "people are varied". Sure, most people are straight, but that doesn't mean it automatically has to be the default assumption, that's just a choice made by a... heteronormative society. Most of the time, we aren't in situations where we actually need to assume someone's sexual orientation, so we don't need to play the odds, as it were.

Nah. It'd be like if everyone just assumes that you like pop, because most people do. It might be understandable, but people constantly assuming you like pop and only pop is... tiring and annoying.

Also, on a personal note, it definitely stopped me from figuring it out wayyy earlier than I could have. "Normal/average people are straight, I am normal, therefore I am straight" was effectively my reasoning.

common gaywallet W

i dont know how you have so much emotional energy to share here as much as you do, especially in the face of so much intolerance. much love.

to add some nuance to this, if anyone would like to listen. a cry from a cishet to the cishets.

beehaw platforms safe spaces. within that, this is a community for queer people. coming into this discussion as someone that isn't queer, a person needs to be aware of the nature of safe spaces. this isn't the same as seeing a post from r/cars on the front page of reddit and adding to the discussion that trains are more convenient for you. to queer people, many of these discussions are existential in nature. this will not carry the same weight to you, because it does not impact you in the same way- if at all.

take a moment to reflect on how irritating it is to see average people turn into experts on twitter whenever a new topic is trending. understand that in queer discussion, you are that person, but your words aren't simply annoying, they're harmful.

a common response to this is "well you can't have discussion with only people that agree with you, that's an echo chamber!". sure, you can put 100 men into a discussion about feminism and hear a hundred different opinions, but none of them will be a womans. there's enough cishets discussing this, respect that this space is designed to amplify the voices of the minority.

stay quiet, recognise that you have privilege blindspots, and say "thanks for sharing".

Unfortunately this is one of the issues with federation. In the future we would like to have all the identity based communities either beehaw users only or locked down from comments/posting. We have no control over other instances, but to remove their content or remind them how to act here. I've personally been avoiding a scorched earth policy for non-beehaw accounts, but I'm slowly finding myself leaning towards it because of behavior like this. I've cleaned up some of the worst of it, and I'm keeping a close eye on a few folks in this post.

Well said on all points. I expected better of this community.

Yeah, these replies are not at all what I expected to see coming into this thread. When did we decide that this is enough representation, and why did no one ask me?