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“Have you hugged a straight person today?” That was the announcement students heard at Millwood High as the school kicked off its first ever “straight pride month.”
The first of its kind event at the school is the creation of the Millwood High gay straight alliance. The 20-person group is trying to encourage other students to think more about gender, sexuality and the many difficulties their peers might be facing. That’s meant “Straight Pride” announcements and posters with slogans like “Straight isn’t normal, it’s just common,” and “Do your parents know you’re straight?” decorating the hallways.
“The main idea is to promote awareness and compassion around issues for students who are struggling with sexuality,” says Millwood High vice principal Cathy Burton. “By reversing the terms ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ it added curiosity to the poster campaign.”
Burton says the campaign came as a surprise to her.
“I had no idea this was going on. I came into the school, saw the posters and thought someone was trying to be a jerk!” she laughs. “All the staff have been saying what a good idea this is. No one, staff or student, has come to us with a complaint or concern.”
Aside from the posters, there will also be a “straight pride” pancake lunch, a bake sale and fundraising events outside of the school. The high school will cover a new topic related to gender identity and sexuality each month until June—including pansexual, polysexual, transgender and gender queer months.
Millwood High’s GSA remains active throughout the year with many community and school events, such as the international Day of Silence against homophobia and the annual pride parade. The also work closely with GSA groups from other schools. This is the first “straight pride” event they’ve organized.
“A lot of people don’t understand all too well the difference between sexuality and gender identity,” says Jenny Carroll, one of the staff members running the school’s GSA. “We really wanted to invite conversation and increase students’ sensitivity toward their peers. That’s why we started with ‘straight month.’ So many people see it as normal or obvious. Why would you come out as straight? No one was expecting this. It got people’s attention and that’s why we did it.”
Some students had other thoughts. One who contacted The Coast called the event “bafflingly offensive,” while others found it unnecessary.
“I think this whole thing is stupid,” says grade 12 student Sarah Marnette. “It’s like they keep trying to push the ideas of gender and sexuality and labels at us. I don’t know why it has to matter so much.”
Straight pride as a slogan has historically been used in response to LGBT pride events, often by conservative hate groups and those opposed to gay rights. But Jenny Carroll doesn’t see Millwood High’s straight pride month as controversial.
“No! Should I have?” she says with a laugh. “I love controversy, pushing the envelope, starting a conversation. And is that not what we’ve done?”
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This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2014.
This is positive and wonderful!
Straight people have “Straight Pride” all year, save one week. Is that not enough?
I can understand the rationale, but the initiative is wrong – plain wrong. I would suggest these kids talk to a gay man who is over 40 year of age and learn why GAY pride is important. This effort only serves to minimize and diminish my and others personal Life experiences.
I wonder if they know what it’s like to be jumped and have your head smashed open by three guys, simply because you’re gay? It’s because of “Straight Pride” those guys nearly killed me. I don’t see gangs of gay men skulking around looking to prey upon a lone straight guy…
No. This is a BAD idea. BAD.
This is not good…. See the point of gay pride is to bump up the gay community to be EQUAL with straight community…. Hence EQUALity! Doesn’t work the other way.
Sweet! GSAs are very important, and I hope this GSA is or will be inclusive, accepting all whose gender identity, sexual orientation, relationship orientation, or existing relationship (or that of their parents) makes them a target for discrimination or bullying. Think polyamory, for example.
Great – more ways to confuse our youth. Now they have to identify themselves sexually, and by their gender…
Equality is about your gender, orientation, religion, and race not being defining factors of who you are or how you’re treated. If you treat others equally, and in kind to how you would like to be treated, then these differences that are being defined are incoherent.
The only time someones gender or sexual orientation changes The Captain’s judgement of them would be if The Captain were to enter into an intimate relationship with that person.
No one needs to identify sexually or by their gender, to their peers or anyone else. Putting so much emphasis on the need for youth to choose an orientation or gender, or disclose any of this personal information is dangerous. It’ll confuse people.
As a member of this GSA I am actually very annoyed by this article, we are not having a straight pride pancake sale and the bake sale comes as news for us. No student who is a member of the GSA was interviewed for this or it might have it’s facts straight. The pancakes are for pansexual week and there the vague plans for a sake of baked goods is tentatively set for ace week.
Jebus, over sensitivity much? I guess no one sees this for what it is, ironically poking fun of what has been labelled “normal” in the past. This is not some mean spirited attack on an older generation of gay people (or any member of the LGBT community, past, present or future) who fought for equality, its an acknowledgement of it. Y’all need to pull your heads out of your asses and stop worrying about being the person who can be the most offended by lame stereotypes personified by conservative, whack jobs.
I’m Madison Arsenault, speaking as a representative for the GSA. Just to be clear, this is absolutely not about “pride”. It’s about getting attention. We thought the best way to turn heads was to talk about heterosexuality in a way that made it seem like it wasn’t a common thing, like it was something that people had to worry about “Coming out as straight” and such, while most people think of it as “normal” or “default”. Many students of the GSA are part of the LGTBQ community (myself included) and supported the idea. This was not meant to harm or offend anyone. We plan on having Pansexual month very soon. In which case, we will advertise pride, but that was not the case with Straight month. We will also be doing months for gender as well.
Madison dear, accept that this is a poorly thought-out idea instead of defending it; especially in light of the feedback you’ve received here. It’s a simple matter of not having enough experience, understanding and knowledge to make the correct decision. It’s a bad idea. Period.
I’m a student from sackville high I heard of this and thought it made sense, equality doesn’t really exist anymore and by making this stright pride month it allows for equality to have some effect there is going to be a month for all of the different ways to classify your self from what I gathered from this post. So just because they started off with stright month doesn’t mean it’s going to end there. There is a lot of conversation about gays lesbians bisexual pan sexual and every other way to define your self. This is a way to allow people to voice up about how they feel in a way that is positive the quote of stright is not normal it’s common is wouderous the large percentage of the world classifies as stright this is a way to acknowledge that without putting a different group down all in all I would like to see how this plays out that’s just my 2 cents
The more I talk to students and folks involved, the more this reads as a sensationalist, crap article. They did awareness weeks, starting with heterosexuality to point out the privilege of being straight. From there were going to move on to different identities, not a month for straight people. This is a misrepresentation of what the GSA was trying to do and a poor move on the part of both the author and The Coast to not fact-check or edit a student’s work. This is a disappointing way to characterize this initiative. I’m very sad for the students whose work was misrepresented so blatantly.
This article has a lot of false information, my friend in and I are a part of millwood’s GSA and made a video explaining what our campaign is really about.
Here is the link to our video —> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgkIFE7siM4
Actually Silent Day is a Free the Children campaign. GSA has a part in it too but it’s our campaign by the most part, check it out.
http://www.freethechildren.com/get-involved/campaigns/we-are-silent/
If your going to do a article about our school at least have you facts right, i’m sorry if i’m coming of as mean i don’t intend it to be.
It was our preference not to speak to the GSA students. It’s commendable that anyone, of any age, wants to make a difference. But because of their ages, we felt it would be unfair to hold those kids accountable. Purely by being an adult employee of the school, the faculty liaison is ultimately responsible for any questions about “straight pride.” The bake sale and pancake lunch information came from the faculty member interviewed.
You children are being misled by your guidance person. Pride or awareness, being “straight” is celebrated every day. Someone needs to put an end to this nonsense before one of your classmates kills themselves for not being “straight”.
Further to Jacob’s comment, the advisor must have a “gay friend”, qualifying him/her to represent me…
Knowing and have being involved with the actual campaign, this article has ruined the credibility of The Coast for me.
To have not looked at the actual effort of this campaign, talked to students actually involved or taken a look when the project was more than one month in, The Coast completely misrepresented everyone involved.
The campaign was to promote awareness for all sexuality and genders and had nothing to do with “pride”.
It is a shame what The Coast has done to the genuinely great executed and thought out initiative these students and staff in our community were trying to put on. I know after the article was published the GSA at Millwood faced a lot of harassment and criticism based on false information, even more so than for being in the GSA or part of the LGBTQQ community. It was a good learning opportunity, even though it was a sad and unneeded one for them.
As for Mrs.Carroll, if you ever had her as a teacher you would know she does care about her students so much so that she tries to help educate them even outside the classroom. She wants to challenge the young minds with controversies in a way that makes us critically think about why they are controversial and how we can learn from them. Shes doing more than a lot of people to start healthy conversation and awareness. The article above did not do anything about her justice.
Now to address Mr.Meaty, the initiative was right, the article was wrong. You could have discovered this by paying attention to what people involved were actually trying to convey (in the comments or video posted in comments) or even by contacting the school and trying to get a hold of those hosting the campaign (im sure they would have loved an opportunity to clear things up). Instead you took it as a “minimizing and diminishing” act on the LGBTQQ culture and struggles faced by older LGBTQQ people when in truth it was not even a slight part of it. Im sorry you had to see it that way and I hope you can take from this to try and learn about using one source to base a critique off of, as well as to not so quickly accuse things as “bad” or “good”.
Lastly for Jacob Boon and Zwarte, you should have talked to the students involved as anonymously involved sources. They probably would have cleared a lot up for you since they are the ones actually holding and representing the campaign. This campaign had nothing to do with “Straight Pride” per say and you could have seen that from the video given or from the comments of the distraught students involved that did put there names forward to be accountable for your misrepresentations. Zwarte this is where your comment comes in. All the advisers are collaborating with LGBTQQ students past and present. They do not get to do anything to represent any of them or us without the students which do identify with the LGBTQQ community (There are many in Millwood).
I know this is a long comment but some things needed to be cleared up once and for all. I hope everyone who reads this article will also look at the comments as to not take the article as correct. To Mr.Meaty, Jacob, and Zwarte I only wrote this to sincerely help you understand and hopefully make the Millwood GSA feel a little better after being attacked (not by you but by others in real life and online, sadly) as a result of this article.
TL:DR This article misrepresented many people, could have been better done, some comments not completely justified, I feel bad that Millwood has to deal with The Coasts mistake. Peace, love and all the other good stuff
Actually, the girl who wrote the article was a student of millwood at the time and spoke to numerous staff and GSA members before publishing this. There’s nothing wrong with this article, it’s un-biased and allows the reader to make their own decision.