15 awesome ways to celebrate #HeterosexualPrideDay

BY HEATHER DOCKRAY From Mashable

There are LGBTQ pride festivals all across the United States this month, but some heterosexuals want to know: “What about us?”

When is their pride fest? How come nobody is celebrating them? Stonewall just became a national monument — so why can’t Hooters, too?

On Twitter this morning, disenfranchised straight people from all across the globe came together under one hashtag and one collective voice to celebrate #HeterosexualPrideDay. No longer content to sit by the sexual sidelines, oppressed heterosexuals spoke up, spoke out and defended their right to exist.

If you’re a heterosexual, or a queer person questioning your homonormativity, here are the best ways you can get out and celebrate #HeterosexualPrideDay.

1. Join a parade of people just like you/Walk down a normal city street.
Every year, LGBTQ folks like to gather together in an enormous parade with other like-minded folks. On #HeterosexualPrideDay, simply walk out of your house and onto a street, anywhere, anytime, at any point in history and find hundreds and millions of people exactly like you.

2. Attend an awesome #HeterosexualPrideDay party/Go to the nearest possible bar and sit your ass down.
LGBTQ bars, often seen as refuges for a marginalized community, are on on the decline nationwide, so queer parties have had to fill the gap. This #HeterosexualPrideDay, celebrate your right to penis-and-vagina sex by going to your nearest possible bar and discover that 96.6% of the customers are just like you.

3. Have a baby, just because you can!

Fertility treatments are enormously expensive (the average price of in vitro fertilization hovers around $12,400) and adoption notoriously difficult. Celebrate your right to having a family by giving birth to one. Today!

4. Spend all the money in your bank account, and then keep spending!
20.7 percent of single LGBTQ Americans have incomes less than $12,000 a year, compared to 17 percent of single non-LGBTQ people. Transgender Americans are four times as likely to have incomes under $10,000. This #HeterosexualPrideDay, blow your cash and your shame away.

5. Go to work and swap tongues with your hottest coworker in front of everyone.

In 2016, in 28 states, LGBTQ folks can be legally fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. But not you! Celebrate #HeterosexualPrideDay by making out with your cutest coworker — in front of your coolest HR representative!

6. Audition for an LGBTQ role in television or film, and actually get it!

Sure, LGBTQ representation remains abysmal in Hollywood. But that didn’t stop Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club or Sean Penn in Milk from taking roles that could have gone to LGBTQ people. You also get the added benefit that people will call you “brave.”

7. Buy a whole house! Heck, buy two!
40 percent of all homeless youth identify as LGBTQ. Celebrate #HeterosexualPrideDay by taking over a whole neighborhood. If it happened in New York’s West Village, it can happen anywhere!

8. Go on Tinder for a day and enjoy at least several semi-acceptable matches.

LGBTQ make up up less than 4 percent of the population. This #HeterosexualPrideDay, go on Tinder and increase your chances of finding someone moderately attractive and borderline not horrible.

9. Come out to your parents as straight.
You’re a man who likes Real Housewives. You’re a woman who likes Kristen Stewart. Your parents always thought you might be gay but now you have to summon all your strength and come out as — sigh — heterosexual. Brave you!

10. Write to your local legislator and advocate for your right to exist.
#heterosexualprideday. A real issue. Because in red on this map are all the places it is illegal to be heterosexual. pic.twitter.com/voNjLnwQpj

— monica (@monicaleww) June 29, 2016

Shouldn’t be a problem.

11. Walk down the street at night holding the hand of your partner.
There were 1,115 documented hate crimes against people because of their sexual orientation in 2014. Of these, 997 were directed against members of the LGBTQ community. This day, be proud that you’re in the safe statistical majority.

12. Start referring to your partner as your “friend” because you’re scared of how people will respond.
Queer people can do it, so why can’t you!?

13. Explain to your mom that no, she didn’t make you straight.

It’s not her fault that you’re straight. That’s just who you are!

14. Read any book or comic, watch any TV program or movie, listen to any podcast or radio program you want and find someone who reminds you — of you!
Only 17.5 percent of 126 major films released in 2015 included LGBTQ characters, and just one included a trans character. There were no trans characters on primetime TV this year. But there were a lot of you!

15. Go on Twitter and start an absurd hashtag campaign.

It seems that #HeterosexualPrideDay was started by an Internet troll, but that didn’t stop people from taking it seriously and joining in on this very strange parade. Anything is possible if you don’t think hard enough.

IMAGES:
IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES/WIN-INITIATIVE RM
Group portrait of family and friends sitting on sofa in living room
IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES/CULTURA RF
Screenshots

For more on this story and video go to: http://mashable.com/2016/06/29/celebrate-heterosexual-pride-day/#vYx11Y9AN8qn