Straight People Watch: Fall 2K17

A general welcome to fans of taking heterosexuality to task and a very specific welcome to whichever intern or writer’s assistant from The Ellen Show reads this series! For first time callers and listeners, Straight People Watch is where we peek behind the beige curtain of compulsory roleplay to get a glimpse of how opposite of okay straight people are based on stories of how they talk, laugh, love, breathe, fight, fuck, cry, drink, ride, win, lose, cheat, kiss, think, and dream, but mainly of how they stage their engagement photos. It’s pretty much 85% engagement photo staging.

A couple things to address before we dive in for our fall edition; first, some people have expressed that they think this might not be “fair” to straight people – that they’re living their lives just like all of us, one leg at a time. But to cite Mo’Nique on Charm School, when you do clownery, the clown comes back to bite. That’s just science. Second, some people think this might be “too easy,” and I have to tell you: it very much is. These things literally fall into my lap and basically write themselves. Third, there have been concerns of bi erasure in this series, as if the people featured in these stories are not passionate purveyors of the Leave It To Beaver, June and Ward, 2.3 children social paradigm we’ve all been spoon fed as the norm for decades, and as if queer people could ever be so muted. Neither are true!

Also, it’s not that serious. ;) We’re just trying to “have a little fun today,” which is a tagline I’ve come up with all on my own. Who’s ready to have some? Let see what those little rascals have been up to.


As you might have guessed if you’d read Summer 2K17’s Straight People Watch, this trend among women started as what they thought would be a cleaning method to “control odor.” A lot of you are probably thinking, “This cannot be true. Cis men are not such caricatures of themselves that they’re still reacting to coming into contact with a vagina that doesn’t smell like the first rose of spring in such a negative way that women are putting a burning substance inside of themselves in order to not feel like a hideous troll in front of someone with whom they’ve chosen to be intimate,” and yet you would be wrong. That is exactly what is happening.


We got a hot tip (something we encourage, by the way) from someone who came across a chess message board that was having an intellectual debate about the gender and gender role of each board piece, wherein someone says “pawns have a boob on top” for probably the first time in human history. I have no idea what is happening or why it did, but I love it in the same way that I used to love watching my dog stare at a wall for hours: it’s an incredible look at the feats of an absent mind.


Rick, my man, you’ve gotta pick mansplaining communication or enabling a lack of accountability in men – you can’t do both!


He went to VapeWorld!!!!


https://twitter.com/adamjk/status/932596605806575617

Life: it makes sense!


Or on the wall of your jail cell, which is where it belongs.


Agree or disagree: it is 2017.


https://twitter.com/IvankaTrumpHQ/status/931303381464965122

The straight women have shorted.


Straight people are that meme of that red-faced white boy with the veins popping out of his head at all times even though literally nothing bad ever happens to them.


Don’t get me wrong, I think Pasta Fagioli would be a stunning name for my baby girl, but also: can someone check on every person we knew from high school.


“So, on the ‘Saturdays Are For The Boys’ flag, you wanted the full bleed, right?”

“Yes.”

“And on the ‘Got Married On A Friday Because…’ you wanted just like a bare-boned stencil design?”

“That sounds good.”

“And you’ll be holding the Friday poster made out of scraps we found in the back?”

“That’s correct, and it is a choice I have made willingly.”

“That sounds like a nice wedding.”

“It does, and it is something I look forward to doing on what I have anticipated as being the best day of my life.”

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Erin

Los Angeles based writer. Let's keep it clean out there!

Erin has written 208 articles for us.

68 Comments

  1. I stared at the last one for SEVERAL minutes trying to make head or tail of it so if anyone needs me I’ll be frowning

  2. Erin, I’d ask you to marry me but the guy vaping in his girlfriend’s ear has ruined it for literally everyone ever.

    • *fiancée

      It’s so bad I can’t even make my own joke correctly

      #blamingthisguyforeverythingfortherestofmylife

    • Like… ??? Is it a “blowing smoke in her ear” pun…. ??? Are they having a a weed wedding… ?? A “weeding” … ??? So many questions and it’s not worth figuring out

      • The bride’s bouquet is a bunch of freshly picked cannabis leaves.

        The reception is a “high tea” with a “space cake”.

        They don’t do a toast, they are “toasted”.

        The guests receive “toke”-n gifts.

        Ok….I’ll stop ?

  3. “We’re just trying to ‘have a little fun today,’ which is a tagline I’ve come up with all on my own.”

    ERIN. You’re the best.

  4. I finally understand why the straights were so worried that we were gonna ruin marriage. Apparently, they wanted to do it themselves.

    • Reading this while on my supper break at work. Laughed so hard at your comment that my ice tea nearly came out my nose.

  5. “Saturdays are for the boys” is definitely the tag line for a glittery sweaty gay dance party somewhere.

  6. “Hello I am a demon come to suck your brains with my Hades breath. Will you marry me?”

    Giggle

    “It’ll have to be on a Friday as the other demons and I get together for beers and a damn hell of a party every Saturday.”

    Giggle

    “Tell you what, why don’t you take Saturdays to pamper yourself; put some VapoRub on to make yourself smell good, but don’t touch my chess set – unless it’s the pawns, hurhur you can touch those as much as you like.”

    Giggle

    “Oh, also, we’ll be hosting Thanksgiving for the entire 6th 7th 8th and 9th circles of hell…could you throw something together? With a nice centerpiece…I dunno..maybe stuff a mega clamshell or something..hurhur. Hey, Mega Clamshell…I kinda like the sound of that…how bout THAT as a baby name?”

    Giggle….I am like soooo lucky to catch this guy….I’d better nail down a wedding date soon!

    Not okay, Erin, so not okay.

    • This is so perfectly tied together.

      Also is it wrong of me to find the Giggle interjections hyper funny ? Oh dear.

  7. ERIN you bring me light even in my dark days ?

    Straight people are definitely not OK. Who also saw the “cucumber vagina cleansing” craze?!

  8. Also, it’s not that serious.

    What. I’m surrounded all day by straight people, this could not be more serious if it was tagged Serious Business.

    What if someone re-purposes my desk as an overflow area for outsize table decorations and a mountain of dried pumpkins roll off and trap me beneath for days and I can only be fed by these same straight people lowering down food tied to a rope and what food do straight people even eat?

  9. This may be slightly off topic, but I just got a job at a super old school IT company where apparently straight people still like to stereotype gay folks. What? Day One: me minding my business until I overhear straight new coworkers chatting amongst themselves about their magnetic charming powers over queer folks. This was DAY ONE. They didn’t even bother testing the waters with me on what was acceptable. They just jumped right into the ‘I-assume-you’re-straight-and-cool-with-hating-on-queer-people’ pool. One mediocre woman even had the audacity to mockingly joke that she “has that affect on lesbians” (cue me in my backwards cap, ‘90s color-block softball tee, arms crossed, foot pointed out, pouting “YOU WISH!”). I may like women, but bitch, I’m not desperate. To the point, all this obsessing over queer folks seems mega queer.

  10. Oh those poor, poor straights! Watching them is like watching a dumb dog chance a frisbee in the woods. You know it’s going to end in disaster but you can’t blame just they just don’t know any better.

    straight people
    #Straights

  11. Personally this column reads more like bi validation to me – because every one of them makes me so damn glad to be bi! It makes me feel so smug about my lovely cis het husband who listens to me and doesn’t insult my vulva or blow smoke in my ear or suggest bj themed photoshoots.

    We’ve been married 16 years and while, like all healthy relationships, it’s taken commitment and work to get here, it’s really NOT THAT HARD! I don’t get this version of straight culture. (Straight men, if you don’t want to get married, just say no – or just don’t ask).

    • I love this attitude. As a bisexual person who doesn’t really do the whole gender thing, the whole “why are straight people Like That” conversation has always been much more about poking fun or directing criticism at the sorts of heavily-gendered relationship attitudes and behaviors that restrict healthy communication and draw up arbitrary enforced boundaries between partners. I’m never including different-gender-partnered bi/pan people or even non-gender-conforming straight couples in that conversation, and I wish more people within the queer community would clarify that they aren’t either when they have these kinds of discussions. While I don’t necessarily think that AS’ Straight People Watch column contributes to bi erasure, transphobia, etc. as it’s been presented, I do think that the queer community as a whole VERY much contributes to those things with a lot of “why are straight people Like That” discussions, and it’s understandable why many shy away from these kinds of discussions as a result.

      Relationships (of all kinds, not just romantic) require a lot of open communication and individual adaptation for the unique people involved. How your body contributes to the production of biological children or how your brain chemistry falls along lines typically associated with personality and social functionality norms is often only a tiny, tiny percentage of that.

  12. Gotta say though, a giant clamshell doesn’t strike me as the straightest of Thanksgiving centrepieces. Maybe poor Ivanka is trying to flag us?

    • Someone is going to be impaled by that centrepiece. Maybe it’s intentional and she wants to commit murder and pretend it was an accident, in which case I sort of admire her creativity.

    • IDK Chandra, putting the skeleton of an endangered animal on the table seems pretty straight to me lol

  13. Erin I love you so much these are works of art that constantly remind me how gayblessed I am :raised_hands:

  14. Queer couple: *Makes out in public, calls one another ‘honey’, gets married, has three kids, talks about how they plan to get matching San Junipero-themed gravestones when they die, etc.*

    The Straights: Awwww, are you sisters?

    Starbucks:

    The Straights: HAROLD….

  15. Erin I thought I couldn’t love this series more but then YOU QUOTED CHARM SCHOOL and wow I have ascended

  16. While we’re on this topic, has anyone else seen the latest Sexiest Man Alive issue of People? I don’t know who that guy is and have no intention of googling him, but he looks like someone you would meet at a dinner party at Mitt Romney’s house. Even I could have come up with a better choice.

  17. So that’s what my festive Thanksgiving centerpiece was missing! Hair pulled out of the shower drain! Damn.

    Oh well, I guess next year I’ll just have to glue pumpkins to an old Swifer pad I used to clean up around the cat box.

  18. Erin, I am so, so, sorry to tell you this, but “Saturdays are for the boys” is a MOVEMENT. I know because my partner and I were mystified by a red, white, and blue flag that a house was flyng at a house we often drove past. It took us a few days to read the whole thing and we were mystified. What where the symbols? Why Saturdays? Why were the residents so proud of [whatever this represented] that they flew it with their American flag?

    Then I came home one day and my partner had bad news to share with me. The same bad news I now impart to you. This originally started with Barstool Sports but it’s become a thing a thing where men (seeminly just cis straight men) give themselves permission to check out of family obligations, chores, etc. all Saturday:
    https://nypost.com/2016/10/21/heres-how-men-are-taking-back-saturday/

    It pains me deeply to see that wedding picture.

  19. Those wedding cake toppers are flat-out scary. Also, anyone heard that some women are putting GLITTER CAPSULES in their vaginas??!

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