challenge: if “straight” was the minority??

You’re buying deodorant. Your eyes examine the whole shelf, anti-perspirants, coconut and jasmine, lotus flower, 24-hours protection, invisible ice, aloe sensitive... you reach for your usual, and you deliberately don’t even look at the one at the end of the shelf, the Lynx Pride Limited Edition one with a black and white stripes, the heterosexual pride flag. A few years ago you would’ve been so excited - you would’ve bought it and kept the can long after it had gone empty, just to hype yourself up a little everytime you look at it, to feel like even your deodorant accepts you. Yeah, that would’ve been a few years ago. A few things have changed since then. Today you know how easy and cheap it is to paint a can of deodorant. There’s a special machine that paints like a thousand of them every minute, and in two months all of them are going to be thrown away, and nothing will change. It’s just a cash grab, no matter how much those old gays grumble about it. Don’t worry, your society is safe, you think to yourself bitterly as you walk to the till.

Straight hasn’t become normal, although the media paints a very different picture. Celebrities come out all the time now. When you were young, the only straights you saw on TV were caricatures and punchlines, and now they’re in every second show and series, in all shapes and sizes. They’re in political parties, even those whose supporters hate them. Every now and then historical figures are outed as old letters and memories resurface and turn the world on its head. It disturbs some people, it really does. They write countless articles about the destruction of traditional values, the dark threat to the lovely old family model, and, of course, the Church. The straights are painted simultaneously as blood-thirsty terrorists and sensitive snowflakes, who are somehow going to destroy all civilisation with memes on social media. Honestly, it’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

You’re home now, reading the news online. Right underneath the article about a fabulous pop singer who wasn’t afraid to kiss her boyfriend on a red carpet there is one about a mixed-gender couple who got beaten up on their way home from a nightclub. It reminds you of an incident from last year, when a teenage boy killed himself because of senseless bullying. It reminds you of the 2019 pride march that started with singing and dancing on the streets and ended 15 minutes later due to flying bricks. It reminds you that you need to keep some things to yourself for now - you can never tell your grandparents the truth about your own heart for fear that their “unconditional” love will leak out of their old faces in the blink of an eye, and your family will be torn apart. Then you scroll down a bit more and find an opinion piece about how watching straight people kiss in music videos degenerates children’s brains.

Something’s degenerating brains, for sure, but you’re pretty sure it’s not music videos.

Author’s note: Hiya, English isn’t my first language, please feel free to point out language errors if you spot any! :)