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I, too, remember the popular political refrain of "it's like ramming your dick down my kid's throat" of 2010.
Of course, the same thing applies to other newly-protected characteristics like, well, sexuality; said dick-ramming happens to be a bit more literal these days.
A government that protects characteristics is, by the reasoning behind protective characteristics, not to then start "affirming" some characteristics over others. The Progress flag and the Christian cross belong in equal measure in government: completely absent.
Oh being cis and straight is absolutely affirmed by schools every minute of every day.
Like a fish in water, it's so common that you don't notice it until it's absent for a moment.
This comment got enough reports that I feel it is important to respond to it with my moderator hat on.
This is certainly an unpopular opinion around here, but we don't moderate on unpopular opinions. I partly wish people would stop reporting things just because they are unpopular opinions. This clogs the mod queue for other uses.
At most I'd just say that you could elaborate on something like this:
Which is a claim that might get accepted uncritically in some circles, but not around here.
I can't speak for others, but I didn't report it for being unpopular - I reported it as being consensus-building and being an extraordinary claim without evidence. It's written both as "we all know this is literally true" and uses over-the-top language which seems... at odds with significant evidence of teachers and administrators affirming the opposite. If the claim had been that "being cis and straight will likely pass without notice" I wouldn't have said anything, but that's very clearly not what was said.
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Like a fish in water, it is the normal, healthy, and natural way of the world.
So long as we agree on the empirical claim.
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Indeed, thinking about it further, I see that symbols of straight pride always accompanying the not-straight ones (flags, banners, crosswalks, etc.), mandatory readings of works that are primarily about how awesome being straight is rather than more objective literary value, teachers specifically going out of their way to promote exclusively straight sexual activity and discussing it in detail, and many other examples too numerous that I'm sure I've forgotten them.
Of course, if "affirmation" means "the mere tolerance/existence of straight sexual student behavior in the halls serves as its own affirmation" (in the same way, and certainly consistent with the belief that "the tolerance of anti-whatever belief systems is affirmation of that viewpoint"), one would simply expect that to be discouraged in equal measure (and in most places, it is) rather than what we see, suggesting that the motivations are different and that those affirming aren't interested in equality.
Yes, almost every story involving romance or relationships will be about straight people being happy about their relationships models, many will talk about how awesome their straight love is, they will probably read Romeo and Juliet, etc.
I don't know how things were like when you were growing up, but from my experience most teenagers romantic feelings are barely taken seriously at best, or outright mocked at worst. Hardly what I'd call affirmation.
The example you gave here has to do with normalization, which is a completely different thing. It also has nothing to do with "gender".
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