Jermaine Dickerson is the founder of Hero Nation, a “family-friendly comic convention that celebrates superheroes and diversity, with the mission that everyone has a hero inside of themselves that deserves to be celebrated.”
The day after Christmas, he posted an 11-part tweetstorm that exposes a form of “privilege” not many talk about. According to Dickerson, “heterosexual privilege” is a cultural phenomenon that either purposely or inadvertently seeks to keep the LGBT experience on the fringes.
The intro to Dickerson’s tweetstorm went massively viral, with the combined number of likes and retweets standing at well over 100,000 as of this writing.
Read it below:
Heterosexual privilege is seeing heterosexual sex and relationships throughout all of history including in art, music, films and literature and still believing that homosexuality is what’s being forced on everyone.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is proposing in public without the disapproving, angry and disgusted stares, and the concern that your lives might be in danger because a stranger is so repulsed by your love that they react violently, often under the guise of a righteous cause.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is using religion to create legislations that criminalize homosexuality and other non-cishet orientations.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is “joking” about killing your son if he were gay and getting thousands of RTs and replies from other heterosexual men and women who laugh it off.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is never having to go through electroshock therapy to “cure” your sexuality.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is thinking marriage equality is the end of LGBTQ activism like Obama’s presidential appointment meant the end of the Black liberation.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is never being scared to hold your significant other’s hand in public out of fear of being physically and emotionally assaulted – even killed.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is using religion to impose beliefs that teach that non-heterosexuality will lead to external damnation.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is painting a revisionist historical narrative that homosexuality is a modern “invention” and an act of genocide.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is thinking that gay couple can’t have children using the same methods many heterosexual couples use.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
Heterosexual privilege is being faced with the high rates of homelessness and suicide from LGBTQ youth, and thinking you have nothing to do with it.
— Jermaine 🏳️🌈 (@jermainedesign) December 27, 2017
One Twitter user tried to detract from Dickerson’s words, saying, “I’m a heterosexual woman and I don’t like the amount of sex I see in movies and TV regardless if it’s [Male-Female, Female-Female, or Male-Male]. The amount of affection in media needs to be cut back IMO. So I don’t think of it as privilege but forced onto me as well.”
But Dickerson wasn’t having it.
“Your preference for seeing less heterosexual sex everywhere doesn’t negate the institutional power or existence of heterosexual privilege,” he replied. “This is a false equivalency.”
Featured image via charitybuzz.com
