Straight People Watch: Winter 2019

It’s time for Straight People Watch, my sweet birthday babies, and we’re back for another round of the same horrifying things! It appears that this series has not served as a significant enough stress signal (to, I don’t know, Mother Nature? Father Time? The gods? The Universe?) to spin us off our axis into oblivion, so the gender reveals and Target engagement photos and apocalyptic fires rage on. Splash some of that water on your face and let’s kiss this party on the mouth!

This kickstarter for A BUTTON to alert your significant other for sex is devastating. The sell here is that if you’ve both pressed your sex button within the same time frame you are a go for “the deed,” and if only one of you has pressed your sex button then no one’s the wiser and you “avoid awkward rejection.” Lady, we’re talking about the very real and very complex circumstances involved in one’s desire for sex and intimacy, not an expired coupon denial at Chipotle! Awkward!

If you can’t talk to your partner about why you do or don’t want to have sex, you don’t need a button, you need therapy. You know what this button would be good for? Bars. Because this only makes sense for people you don’t know. Everyone gets a button and finds out where they are at the end of the night. Oh, wait, this is Tinder, isn’t it. They made Tinder for couples.

This project was asking for over 7,000 USD to enable straight people to get away with the bare minimum effort in terms of communication and, well, they surpassed their goal. Good job, everybody.

I love my boyfriend and I also HATE him entirely ;)

Ah, the age old tradition of getting black out drunk to engage in compulsory romance. The worst part about this is I don’t know if this flask is intended for married women or someone on Spring Break, and of course the answer to this is both.

What is going ON? I even risked a google search to investigate whether or not this was a band that I wasn’t cool enough to know. It’s not!  Also, even if this was a band, and even if this is an inside joke none of us are privy to and that’s sort of the point: huh? If gay people can’t hold hands in public without you comparing that to an aggressive display of sexuality, you CANNOT celebrate your horny teenager. Sorry, I DO make the rules and that is one of them.

The singularity is destroying heterosexuality, one failed marriage at a time.

https://twitter.com/gossipgriii/status/1095897639177125889?s=21

Something I’m curious about is if straight coupling has always stood on a foundation of contempt. Cleopatra walking through Ephesus with Antony like, “I just think it’s really funny that you know exactly where every brothel on this street is,” and he’s like, “Yeah, ’cause my buddies told me about them. Is it illegal to have friends now?” And she’s like, “Wowwwwwwww, okay,” and he’s like, “Babe,” and she’s nodding her head with her eyes closed like, “No, this is a joke to you. That’s great. I’m gonna kill my sister by myself, how about that?” and he’s like, “Good, I didn’t want to kill your sister anyway,” and then she rears her head towards him like an owl.

Fellas, be honest: is it gay to use your hips?

*Carmela voice* Tony!

Similar to my question about whether or not men know an option available to them is not murdering their entire family to end a marriage and date other women, do men know it’s an option to not get married? Sure, even George Clooney eventually did it, but that’s when he was already selling tequila and watches in commercials. Wait for your tequila and watch era if you need to.

Honestly how dare you disrespect lasagna like this. The very least you could do is stick to cake. While we’re at it, let’s just go back to king cakes. The gender? Baby.

*pins my mom’s funeral to my mood board*

Yeah, sorry about my… vase that holds flowers. And also for this picture of my grandmother at a time when the clothes and makeup she wore in it were the only thing she had agency over. Also, my folders containing contracts that I had to work twice as hard to secure? That’s my bad, as well. My apologies for the statue that encourages inner peace and harm reduction. Sorry. Sorry sorry. Sorry I’m sorry.

I know the answer to this, but just to zoom out if I could and call it by its name: Why are straight white people so horny for white boys? It doesn’t even have to be their kid! Most times it’s not! Even if you’ve only seen or listened to ten percent of the true crime documentaries or podcasts available, you know white boys are the very last people you should be investing your time in, and yet! Jennifer Percy, you goofed, babe!

First of all, this is a co-opting of queer culture. Let’s leave chapstick out of this. Second of all, what did the people of Walmart ever do you to, besides destroy small businesses across the U.S. and offer criminal wages to its employees? You know what? Keep them!

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Erin

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

Erin has written 208 articles for us.

77 Comments

  1. What really gets me about the lasagna is, if you must be On That Partiicular Bullshit, wouldn’t ravioli have been the more obvious option?

    I’m not eating blue ricotta either way, KAREN, but c’mon.

  3. I love these. I see some of these throughout time, but all gathered together does really make you wonder what in the hell are straight people doing

  4. I f’ing love the style of that woman’s “man-repelling” home… does that say more about me or her or the terribleness of that “interiors therapist”? PS What do you study in school exactly to be an “interiors therapist” who helps single hetero women build man trap apartments?

    • Right? I think the apartment is cute. Maybe the issue here is not that these women are repelling men, but that they have not realized they are queer?

      • I mean, having 51 images of women displayed in that tiny space sure seems to point in that direction…

        • I had to double-check that the caption wasn’t written by Erin.

          51 pictures of strong single women is screaming SO LOUD even an Straight Interiors Therapist (TM) should be able to figure it out.

    • I really love that wallpaper and the fact that she has a painting of a woman (herself?) in front of that wall on that wall so it’s a painting of the wallpaper on top of the wallpaper!!

    • Obviously, you don’t study religion and spirituality for a credential as an “interiors therapist.” It’s impossible to overlook the bizarre labeling of “Buddha: a sign of poverty and isolation.”

  5. what no horny boy baby and body-shaming girl baby gear? no blue onesies declaring the wearer a lady killer or pink onesies apologizing for the wearer’s weight? a key component of straight culture is aggressively indoctrinating your offspring into the cult of heterosexuality and inflexible gender roles from birth, duh.

    • If that women was convinced by that therapist to get rid of all that stuff, maybe we can convince her to give all that man repellent stuff to us. I just moved and sure could use a few of those 51 man repellent single lady pictures to decorate my walls with.

    • Wow, now I understand why I lined my front entryway with cacti and succulents (and here I thought I was just saving water).

  8. a neat thing to do is try to arrange these items in order!

    -Revert your apartment from a man repeller into a man trap
    -Drink from the flask
    -Influence his internet to make him propose to you
    -Game Over wedding shirt
    -Use the LoveSync buttons
    -Lasagna gender reveal
    -Parent of horny surfer
    -Son on cover of Esquire
    -Matching chapstick/dick shirts (Chapsdick?)
    -Funeral

    Mix n Match!

  9. Do the Interiors Therapists also work outside of the house? Can I make my entire block Man-Repellent? How about my entire neighborhood?

  11. OK so all I’ve gotta do is move to an area with a LOT of cacti and I will be man-free, right….got it…..🌵

  12. as always, straight people watch has reduced me to both helpless laughter and deep existential dread. thank you erin for this important and ongoing work

  13. LISTEN. I just finished an essay about how much I hate Cormac McCarthy and the literature of white men acting as universal truth, and sent it to a professor who 100% disagrees with me and I needed something to focus my roiling emotions on. Thank you for providing that target. I feel much better.

  14. Ok also….what happens if you forget not to put tomato in the lasagne and your beautiful “baby boy” lasagne comes out purple? I mean….if I were to bake said lasagne for someone that’s definitely what I’d do.

    And the gender issssss (cuts lasagne)………………..purple? What does purple mean?
    It means gender is a social construct and nobody cares, Karen.

  15. Also, at the bottom of the Whiny White Boy ”piece”: a subline about the trial of Harvey Weinstein. Place your bets now as to their stance on that, people…

    • Lol at first glance I thought the author’s name on that was Erin Sullivan 😬 it’s ERIC Sullivan! how dare

  16. So what you’re saying is I need to hang more pictures of single women in my apartment? That should be doable.

    Also, wow, the straight people are so not okay.

  17. So based on this and Rachel’s helpful article about plants, I’m trying to formulate some kind of queer plant flagging code.

    cactus = lesbian seeking masc of center play partner
    succulent = bi babe seeking partners across the gender spectrum
    lady’s slipper orchid = seeking oral sex

    • How would the flagging go? Put the plant in your window and wait for people to notice them? They can be difficult to take along to bars and clubs.

      • Yeah. Hmmm. I think to use the cactus for it’s full straight-man repelling, lesbian attracting potential, it would have to be in a window.

  18. I am pretty sure I’ve seen that surfer sticker on a camper van out here in Venice beach. For all, we know the person’s son could be into other men who surf and they are proud parents.

    Also, eww to that lasagna, what is the green suppose to mean?. No, just no that idea.

  19. Wait I think I got it, they are having a mint baby, why else is the lasagna green? The only explanation that makes sense, despite it probably tasting nasty.

    • The baby makes them throw up a lot. That’s why green.

      The baby will be a pot head. The baby will be rich. The baby is ready to Go!

  22. “Even if you’ve only seen or listened to ten percent of the true crime documentaries or podcasts available, you know white boys are the very last people you should be investing your time in”

    This bit of truth right here.

  25. Ok, but that shirt the girlfriend made for her boyfriend like, I’m still looking at your man because he’s got some weird, long ass, grammatically incorrect rant written on his shirt. I literally wouldn’t have noticed he existed if you didn’t put him in that shirt. I mean, I know I’m not the target audience for her marking her territory but still, seems kinda counterproductive. Not that the straights make any sense of course.

    The Cleopatra bit was classic, but I died at the co-opting queer culture on the disgusting chapstick shirts. You make our culture’s slide in to a dystopian nightmare seem so much more amusing, thank you for that.

  26. Is it bad that I wish the guy in the LoveSync ad would accidentally punch himself in the face with his own upraised fist?

  27. Can you see your stats in the LoveSync app? Like number of times you have pressed the sex button vs the other person? Seeing the data probably would’ve helped me realize earlier that I needed to divorce my husband.

  28. “you know white boys are the very last people you should be investing your time in, and yet!” erin, erin i am always so pumped for these and they somehow get better and better every time bless you for doing this hard work

  29. yesterday in the name of familial harmony i watched a full hour of heterosexual standup and i was alarmed, first of all, by the fact that straight people comedy never really moved past just redoing carson era joan rivers, but more gross and with curse words

  30. Someone on Twitter said that the LoveSync might actually be designed for non-neurotypical people but marketed for a wider audience. Apparently that’s how it works with many infomercial-type products; if the marketing was restricted to people with disabilities, etc, it wouldn’t be able to achieve economy of scale and would be too expensive.

    I have no idea if that’s true, but it certainly makes more sense than the anonymous tinder-for-couples button as it’s presented.

  32. This column is one of the things I look forward to most in life.

    Also my wife and I have 6 cactuses (cacti? cactae?). All have names.

  34. Waffle asked me several times what I was doing while I was reading this last night because I was cackling alone in a room with my phone. BRILLIANT as always.

    Also, very disturbed by the last one. I…don’t think I wanted to see that.

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