Livre d'Or

I will try (and my context is as a variably-out cis bi woman who has faced gender discrimination in the workplace and in my sporting hobby).

If I read a statement that "straight people face discrimination too", and then it's followed by a list of discriminations that seem to me about gender rather than sexuality, then it strikes me as a category error, mixing up the axis of gender with the axis of sexuality, to claim that the majority, default group along one axis is oppressed because of harms done along a different axis.

It might be an honest mistake. But in my experience, this kind of category error or whataboutery is usually a deliberate attempt to waste time and activist energy. I also feel a reflexive exasperation that someone is attempting to make Pride all about straight people, similar to how I get annoyed with the people that only care about International Men's Day on International Women's Day. Humans are pattern-matchers, and this sort of thing pattern-matches to the kind of person who isn't here to be constructive.

Recently, in my hobby group, a jersey design was recently suggested that depicted a female body in a skimpy bikini. A lot of women complained, half a dozen men and a couple of women told us we were overreacting, but the organisers said they'd rethink and withdrew the bikini jersey. The replacement design is of a seagull, and now some of those same men are all complaining about animal rights and how it's unfair to depict an animal that way. Now, they are so obviously in bad faith it's almost funny, but it's a whole drip-drip-drip of experiences like this that make me reflexively categorise "category error" as "likely troll".