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We Need Straight Allies

It was National Coming Out Day on October 11th. A day where LGBTQ+ individuals received a little motivation to come out – if they hadn’t already -and not be criticized for it. Although, of course, some ignorant people had to mock the process of presenting yourself as a sexuality that was not straight, aka not completely socially acceptable. Twitter was a place where this was prominent. Through the hashtag for the event you can see a numerous amount of heterosexual people claiming to be, well, heterosexual. This is in every way, shape, and form offensive and not clever nor funny. It takes a lot of strength to tell people you’re not straight if you’re in a tough situation (homophobic parents, friends, etc…) and it’s not fair to the people who are trying to ease their way into doing so.

 Straight people should be motivating people to come out and not make the day about themselves, you should be an ally. We NEED allies. A large amount of the time heterosexuals and/or cisgender people tend to think that we are shoving our sexualities and genders down their throats, even though typically everywhere you see straight couples and not much representation of LGBTQ+. I’m not trying to scold at every straight person and tell them to be asexual, bisexual, or gay, I just want you to respect me as a human being and not get offended by MY life because it really doesn’t affect yours.

 You don’t have to understand something to accept it. I am bisexual and I am not “going through a phase” I am here and I exist, just like many other people who are apart of the community. We are all humans, people with feelings and we deserve to be respected. Roughly three quarters (73%) of LGBTQ+ youth say they are more honest about themselves online than in the real world and 4 in 10 LGBTQ+ people say that the community in which they live is not accepting of LGBTQ+ people. This means that Twitter should’ve been a safe environment for them to open up about their sexuality/gender since so many people have to face discrimination in their own towns and from their families. We’ve come so far, yet individuals still don’t want to face the fact that we’re not abominations.

The truth is that homosexuality is, and has been for a long period of time, natural, being gay or any other sexuality should not be seen as wrong or an abomination whatsoever, especially when looking at the statistics of hate crimes, due to sexual-orientation bias. Based on the FBI hate crime statistics showing that the true number of sexual-orientation hate crimes are estimated to around 52,000 each year (20.8 %), and these crimes are initially rising. This just shows by itself how important straight allies really are. National Coming Out Day was our day. Some of you don’t realize how crucial it is for us to have this 24 hour period to see other individuals who are in the same boat as us. At least try to be more considerate and accept us for who we are because we are not leaving anytime soon.

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