LGBT+ Family & Games [S2- E1] Super Straight?

Super Straight? Join us while we talk about this fiasco of a trend originating from straight TikTok and 4chan. We discuss how this trend is problematic and echoes past themes of anti-trans efforts like Pridefall and Straight Pride Parades. 

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What happens when you put 3 LGBT+ people in a remote recording session? We talk about everything under the sun including tv, movies, music, current events, drama, LGBT+ topics, gaming, and more!  LGBT+ Family & Games is a nonprofit organization here to create safe spaces for LGBT+ individuals online. So join the fam and enjoy the podcast!

Thanks For Listening!

Chapters

• 0:10 Intro
• 2:22 What the heck is super straight?
• 9:33 "I Made a New Sexuality"

Transcript

0:06

hello and welcome to the lgbt family and games community podcast my name is james and today i'm joined by hella who is one of our lfg community moderators and long time member joined us from another discord community called queer cave back in 2008. 17. sure 2016. i don't know anyway a while ago uh and also joined by sebastian who's also a community moderator in lfg and both of these guys help keep lfg a safe space for all of our members and uh work tirelessly to have a great space for people to be in the reason we are here tonight this episode is going to be about something that has come up recently caught me completely off guard one of our other moderators ari kind of mentioned it but i think sebastian you you really came in with like strong information about what was going on that helped me like understand how how inappropriate something was and that is the super straight i don't know if we call this like a movement or like fiasco yeah fiasco that's a good that's a good way to refer to it it's it's just this year it's it's going to be super straight uh last year it was prideful right um the year before that i think it was straight pride parades oh my lord yeah i remember yeah the usual right right right i i remember my family being kind of on board with that so oh yeah i'm sorry i mean i'm so sorry it is what it is meanwhile you're wearing a um gay frog what is it you have on gay frogs having a little fun and sebastian you're representing in the apparels oh yeah we got we can't even think straight sure that i've ruined i can't even think so yeah that's the line and here i am in my normal uh very colorful outfit i always wear black it's just my preference i mean i'm technically wearing black that's true but anyway so this is another like alt-right thing um sebastian i think you did some some research on it and can give us a little bit more detail on like where did this start like and not only where did this start what is this what the heck is super straight so why is it concerning all right i'll start off about like what it's about the whole super straight thing um so obviously lgbt people over the years have had a whole lot more um i've been brought into the scene a whole lot more so to speak especially online and it's been generally more accepted over the years as well you see this through my discord and facebook and twitter etc kind of um getting rid of the the blatant uh hatred or at least keeping an eye on it more so than they have in the past and um this spurred seemingly uh this like super straight kind of thing going on now the whole point of the like super straight thing is um people are intentionally excluding trans people from like say if you are a cis man you like you are saying you like cis women now i want to say first and foremost there's no problem with having a preference like a general preference of how you want your partner to be obviously we all have different sexual preferences and that's perfectly fine however the problem is is that these people who are using the super stripe tag they are using this as a way to specifically target trans people and say that they are trying to trick them first and foremost which we've heard in the past before yeah and yeah like we've heard that time and time again the comment the comment alt-right trope yeah pretty pretty common um however as i said before they're using this kind of preference as a facade to what they truly mean which is transphobia um and getting into the whole i want a real woman or i want a real man kind of thing well how do you define that is it defined by what's in one's past because if i don't have a penis what does that make me but they still don't consider me like a real man or a real woman because i look different obviously i have a deep voice i have facial hair i pull that that kind of stuff um well they obviously wouldn't date someone like me so what are they really looking for other than a reason to discriminate against trans people not only is it like completely transphobic but also it's them trying to say that they have some type of plight because they're straight they're discriminated against and therefore should be part of the lgbt community now i want to be really clear i'm not like a labels person i'm really not like i i believe that people are people and we spend too much time trying to categorize every single thing in life that's my personal opinion um so i think sometimes we go to an extreme um with that whole alphabet soup i'm just gonna leave it there because i don't want to like offend anybody but i i feel like we go to extremes sometimes that being said i feel like it is very short-sighted and ignorant to assume that being straight has given someone a hardship that is equivalent or approaches any modicum of equivalency to what somebody in the lgbt community might have to go through yeah for example being gay you know i have faced discrimination many many times um before we started recording i talked about how i've faced lgbt or you know gay discrimination in the workplace um with healthcare being completely blatantly excluded from healthcare um and you know i know both of you can speak to other ways that you've been discriminated against so yeah that's different than being called out for um prejudices right yeah their their argument with that is that they they're being discriminated against in the way that they're saying that if they don't want to be with trans people then they are being excluded from some kind of like group and us they are then being discriminated against that's their whole argument i know it doesn't make much sense to anybody with half a brain cell but here we are um now this reason it exists yeah as far as the origin goes um so there's a there's a couple of uh like theories floating around uh firstly and foremost one of them the first one of them is that it originated on tick tock uh yeah the other one had a fortune yeah um i'm not going to say either it kind of like originated on both i've heard too like it was kind of like people some people kind of started it here and then they all trickled over to there and yeah i personally thought it started on tick-tock that's just where i saw it first that's that's what yeah same yeah that's because that's where i spend all my time yeah and see i don't spend any time on tech talk i was completely like i was completely out of the loop somebody joined lfg they they somebody joined lfg they said that they were super straight and i just thought they were like exaggerating the fact that they were straight because you know yeah yeah something like that hyperbole well not even hyperbole but maybe maybe they're just insecure in their masculinity and feel like they have to qualify it with some you know adjective just to say also what i believe to be one of the reasons it was created was because their fragile masculinity involved where they have to defend they're they feel like they have to defend their sexuality that they have to be like i mean let's let's be real that's that's where most of this comes from that's right and most of homophobia transphobia is usually from some type of personal insecurity um that is manifesting in anger towards other people um so but we're not going to get into the psychology of that that's a little extreme but yeah so arguments or disagreements on on where it started so possibly on tick tock um there was i think the defining tick tock there's there's one that has turned into a meme now um that i think got posted in lfg at some point just to kind of explain this whole super straight thing yo guys i made a new sexuality now actually it's called super straight okay since straight people are straight men as myself i get called transphobic because i wouldn't date a trans woman you know they're like would you date a trans woman i'm like no why that's a female uh no like that's not a real woman to me like i want real woman no you're just transphobic so now i'm super straight i only date the opposite gender women that are born woman so you can't say i'm transphobic now because that's just my sexuality you know the other thing was um fortune and honestly i'm not surprised that it would show up unfortunately no unfortunately no no four chances that's cool so to speak at the devil's wonderland actually no i like the devil lucifer fan no have you heard us some forms of satanism are actually like all like that's a whole another podcast though so the other thing was kind of like the alt-right like symbolism right so like there's so super straight is obviously two s's so you have the the ss yeah but he even got the colors down too like well it's it's what orange and orange and black which i would like to just add on account that was my high school colors really yeah oh no and my middle school same i i went to high school in austin texas so we were very close to ut austin i think orange and black are just popular colors too and yeah at least first of all we had we had burnt orange which is a little different oh orange sorry it's it's like a glorified brown well it's also the color yes it's also the colors the grinder isn't it you've got grinder and pornhub yes it is uh let me check there's like it's going right now he's just gonna look at the two apps that he has on his phone yeah grinder is more yellow but still the idea of the stark symbol against a black background and this warm color yeah no i i think that's the bigger concern is it's like it's becoming more loud right it's getting traction it's getting noticed even like if it's not positive media attention it's starting to get media attention which is validation here's my other concern like my concern is that someone kind of unwittingly kind of takes up the idea of super straight because they have a genital preference right and then getting completely blasted by other people um out of some ignorance not to say that somebody shouldn't notice all the nazi symbols but like i said i was completely ignorant to what this was when it just kind of like popped up one day yeah and i could see where somebody might like not know the history behind it and then all of a sudden you know say oh well i could i could see how that would make sense for myself like i i i do prefer you know this genitalia and primarily this you know obviously they're not going to go through i i don't expect like like knowing the male brain i don't expect a cis straight male to like go through all those steps of like justifying their actions they're not used to having to no i feel like it's just more instinctual and just you know raw action versus thought yeah um yeah which is why i like being gay because i feel like i get you know a little bit of finesse in life um but no that's one of my concerns and then um i feel like it just continues to build upon this like divide and conquer uh animosity towards each other instead of reaching out and and trying to educate people then it's just like an automatic shutdown yeah um that being said we have no choice like as an lgbt community where we're trying to create a safe space for our members and we don't want people just spewing toxicity that you're going to see everywhere else on the internet um we pretty much have to make a decision to auto ban anybody that's like supporting super straight and also typically the people that are like actually like advocates for and whatnot are the ones that are going to be proudly displaying it everywhere the people that like misunderstand or whatnot aren't really going to automatically be like correct i i'll so i just like i feel like i i need to be clear that like just because you're straight doesn't mean that lgbt people hate you yeah and just because you're straight and have a preference to the opposite genitalia it doesn't mean that lgbt people are going to hate you that's just when you create a movement that is like actively seeming like targeting a certain group of people not even creating a movement well it's when you make a big deal about it right like when it becomes when when your preference becomes something that is made um made into something bigger than it should be right yeah like i said everybody can have a preference but you don't have to be like you don't have to be rude about it you don't have to be mean about it um like we can all still treat each other with kindness we're all human i don't i don't understand you know and i will say the flip side too right like i feel like as lgbt people like we are trained and conditioned to um as lgbt people were trained and conditioned to be cautious around um straight people right yeah and some of that is completely understandable uh it's something that is just a circumstance of historical acts but i think if we take the opportunity to be the bigger peoples in a lot of cases and at least try to hold out the olive branch um as a community we're better served yeah because then we build allies and i would love to have more straight allies i i mean people who are straight are welcome in lfg if you know if you're willing to understand lgbt you want to learn about lgbt please and you're going to be respectful i have a discussion and you're going gonna be respectful that's the other thing like if you're coming into an lgbt community it doesn't matter if it's lfg or any other lgbt group um and you're there because you have an idea of what is right in your mind and you want to teach lgbt people about what you think the world should be i'm sorry you're not welcome yeah because that's not what those spaces are for um the reason why lgbt people have spaces like like lfg the reason why those exist is because we see all of these things all the time right like i said in the workplace not able to get health insurance just because i'm with a male partner and i'm also a male you know a workplace policy that explicitly says that you do you're not allowed to have benefits um benefits are only given to um marriage married couples um between male and female between male and female thank you i can't talk we know now some of this is is being resolved through the legal process and i think that um culture has caught up right it's catching up and sebastian i think you mentioned it too i i think that um online platforms like twitter and facebook are being a little bit more sensitive to um the harms even reddit has straight up banned the super straight like form that they had on there and i think in and of itself a kind of victory like seeing reddit yeah reddit typically will ban overly toxic things um like we've seen this in the past with um what was it what was the one that recently got banned um crap i don't even remember i don't go and read it often enough to be knowledgeable on it um is r the donald still around or something what was it r donald because everything's gonna be r slash no i i thought it was like r slash the donald or something like that was where like originally like all the trolls came from yeah um but yeah like i think um i think this is just another one of those things that comes up um kind of around this time of year it seems to be very cyclical um because pride is normally engineer and stubborn so they start prepping it's that call it kind of yeah this is physically out there started that kind of thing yeah it's nearly nothing halfway to april have gotten a hold of this i like what has particularly unnerved me is the rate at which it's growing like i personally didn't expect to see these uh super straight people showing up in the server and just like it happened within the first week i think wow probably has to partially do with the election because political um strife has been just already at the limit since then and everyone's already been kind of like ever like everyone i talked to has gotten political basically i always used to say hey i'm not going to talk politics but then it always comes up and i always end up saying something even though i don't want to it just you know you're there and it happens and i feel like it just means these things are just more like it it increased the chance of these things happening in the at the rate they happen yeah well and honestly i think that's part of the the i think that's part of the challenge that we have in society right now is we have a lot of echo chambers um social media is designed to be just what you like to see it's like doing research with google right if you google something google is going to tell you what you want to hear yeah sometimes the top it's going to give you sometimes the top response can change based on your google preference well based on what you're searching right like the way that you i mean google knows as you are searching yeah that too so i mean here's the deal if it's kind of everybody's responsibility i think um i try to stay informed on kind of all sides of things i generally try not to watch um politically affiliated news channels i try to research every topic that i can um but i i think it is everybody's personal responsibility to try to diversify their information and especially with pandemics i think a lot of people have been finding out that when we don't have in-person interaction with people that might have different beliefs than us we become more entrenched in our own beliefs yeah especially because we have social media everything that we're seeing is something that we're saying we agree with for the most part i mean most people will j their behavior and that's that's why these become why i said the term echo chamber when you see something on social media and you agree with it you like it and then the algorithm picks up on that and says okay i'm going to give you more of that so you stay on my platform longer and then we can feed you advertisements and you know make money off of you and i can't blame the social network that's just how we created this yeah that's how they are set up so they can actually be successful not get shut down yeah yeah and even like our our own behaviors like i don't agree with you so i'm going to block you um you know again like i feel like and somebody can come come to me and say that i'm being a hypocrite all day long right they say well you you run a um an lgbt community right so what's different from that you know you're you're automatically banning people that say they're super straight um and like i said my argument to that is this space is created because we see too much of the alternative elsewhere right you can be in a video game and you can hear slurs dropped all the time and you know having people that you can be comfortable around is important especially for lgbt youth who might not be able to be out with their parents and their families they need a social group to support them that being said not having the interaction on a daily basis like i know my dad is like way more entrenched in conservative politics right now because he doesn't have a balance by talking to people in a work environment he's not going into a work environment and and sharing ideas with other people to kind of balance him out when you when you stagnate like that that tends to happen the same thing happened with with my dad once he was out of work and he was staying at home all day i mean you can all figure what he was watching all day and if that's all yep there you go if that's all you're interested in like how are you going to learn anything else that's why i kind of i almost prefer you know environments where you are continuously learning that's why you typically see college students lean more towards um like open-minded things because they're just constantly learning about new things and exchanging ideas of their peers and yeah once you are out of an environment where you are actively engaging yourself in different thoughts and um other people's uh opinions and what have you you lose that kind of perspective and then you close inward and eventually what happens is the most vulnerable populations start getting targeted and this kind of thing pops up every oh here we are anyways yeah yeah i mean so so here's the deal we're used to this right like yeah lfg has been around since 2016. but the queer community and oh yeah yeah uh everybody who identifies as lgbt this is like no surprise you deal with something like every year at a certain point um telling you know if i'm a trans person at a certain point saying that you identify as an attack helicopter or not a trans person if you're gender fluid or have a different you know non-uh binary gender identity if you say i identify as an attack helicopter like at some point that gets old and boring and doesn't really make me angry anymore it's just like i'm sorry i feel bad for you yeah um i feel sorry for you that you are going through something personal um that you have a your own internal conflict that is causing you to lash out at other people you don't know how to handle it you don't know how to uh work on your issue so you just react yeah and that's why i said like i would much rather see straight people that are feeling um i don't know some kind of way about their genital preference or whatever i'd i'd rather see them maybe join a community like lfg and and talk to people in the community and realize that we're human beings like i like video games we're not asking to like come in and then change what your sexual preference is or anything like that just to broaden your horizons uh not uh intellectually and acknowledge human beings existence and um validity yeah and straight being straight is not going away no let's face it i am thankful that my parents are straight thank you mom and dad how we get kids that's how we get those adorable little monsters that run around some of them yeah and i mean on the topic though monsters is good it's gonna be nice on the topic of labels um the one of the major problems with those labels that does unfortunately kind of support this thing is that when we start putting people into these boxes we then categorize them as oh you are trans so you are then removed from that kind of human aspect of the person and it's given a definition i i yeah i'm i'm correct yeah i'm now labeled as this rather than you know i'm a person trying to support my fiance and trying to live just like anybody else yeah like and like people don't have something straight yeah and like we're we're just the problem is that they don't realize that trans people are people like anybody else and the most vulnerable population being trans youth see this kind of stuff and they think wow i am a social reject and they're seeing these things and thinking that they have that there's no allies for them like there is literally of a movement or any not even a movement at this this fiasco people directly targeting them and saying that i don't want enough values you're like you don't deserve to validate it yeah exactly and i i genuinely feel horrible at how these people are now feeling isolated and i hope that you know in the future especially in the higher politics of america that we can try to find a way to be inclusive of everybody especially trans people like the fact that it is dangerous to come out at work or like just just be who you are um especially trans women trans women are like deaths per per year from suicide and and things of that nature are just astronomical it is incredibly problematic and this this super straight [ __ ] is really blending to that kind of isolation and that's honestly in my opinion part of the goal yeah no it is and i and i i think um some of the article articles that you surfaced and and we're gonna link a lot of things in the description of this just for information purposes i i personally like i don't like to give a lot of these things more credence than they deserve right i'd rather ignore them and just you know kind of let it fizzle out unfortunately like like we said it happens every year um and i think the i i feel for everybody i i feel for the trans youth that are you know listening to this and doubting themselves um and are in fear uh for themselves and and rightfully so right now you know it's not always safe um for trans people to be themselves and that's not okay right um that's like it was not always safe for me to be myself when i was a teenager in texas i'm pretty old so a while ago it was really not safe and uh you know i i remember um when i when i came out to my mom i'm just going to bring this up because i think it's relative when i came out to my mom um one of the things she said was i don't want that for you and i thought she was just saying like she didn't want me to be gay um and we actually went to therapy about it um and she explained she's like i don't want you to have to live that life because it's so much harder yeah i've had it's similar yeah i i don't want you to have to go through that i don't want people to discriminate against you i don't want you to have to um worry about your own safety i don't want to worry about your safety you know that was hurtful thing um and so you know yeah these things are concerning and i i i also feel for the people who are really at at the point you know that they feel like i don't know less than because they're not part of lgbt and then they like create like they have to create this to feel value like that sucks too yeah so uh but that being said i you know we'll um we'll kind of leave it there oh there was somebody who did um and we'll share this as well there's somebody who did a phenomenal uh and hella you just sent this to me so you found the same one that i was talking about um but but this person was was basically relating this whole super straight thing to somebody you know to more of like a a race preference um and i think they really like hit the nail on the head of why this is a problem so we'll we'll share that we'll show that clip before we head out super straight meaning that you think that men that date trans women are less straight meaning that trans women are men and therefore not real women which is not only transphobic but scientifically inaccurate it's not transphobia it's my preference i'm just super straight that's not a preference if a white woman says she prefers white guys that means she dates white guys more often but black guys aren't off the table versus i won't date you because you're black which means she thinks that there's something inherently wrong with black people even if she doesn't consciously think so the exact same thing applies to what you're saying also i think it's really funny you think you're super straight you like women but you're excluding an entire group of women if a plumber only works on shower drains and refuse to work on sinks we don't call him a super plumber if anything you're semi straight or straight impaired huh maybe i should re-examine my prejudice i do want to say that especially towards especially like trans youth you always have allies around i don't want anyone to think that because of this you have less allies if anything good is coming out of this is showing just how many people are in support of trans people being who they are and us all supporting each other really means a lot and it definitely helps to combat some of this nonsense