This is an argument that the past and present suffering of my community, including millions of deaths through time, was wrong. In doing so I join a long, long list of writers and thinkers who have had to turn to their fellow man and pitch their own existence to their neighbors. In many ways, explaining why a Pride Pack is important is heartbreaking and insulting. Every day LGBT kids are losing their lives.
"If sticks and stones." The adage starts, but names do hurt people. All that was curtailed were his words, his insults. My biggest bully was told that if he were caught saying another negative word to me again that they would take parts of his own social life away from him, as he did to me. Things changed at school pretty quickly after that. Not in a Connecticut suburb with a kid in private school. I seemed fine, a little depressed sure, but not in this house. When my mother walked in on me during an attempted suicide in my middle school years, it was shocking for her, not because she walked in on her son in the middle of an attempt at his own life, but because it was wrong. But once I grew out of my early 20s and discovered a world outside of my own experience, I realized that people were still having a hard time like I did when I was a kid. I'd walked down the street holding my boyfriend's hand (we did get beeped at, and one neighbor threatened to return with a bat for everyone in his crew). Despite being called “faggot” for most of my childhood, I was living in New York City. When Nike first started releasing pride packs I thought they were cool but unnecessary. (And we’re not making more gay people, only straight people are. We’re not going anywhere, and our voices are only getting louder. We’re your teachers, your bosses, and your cabbies. These are people who will wear clothes designed by gay people and be styled by gay people. And these comments are pathetic, small, and the worst versions of our culture because they think that my sexuality somehow impacts them. This is the community I write for, that I spend my time explaining aspects of the industry they don’t understand. These are the people I’m supposed to rub shoulders with. The people who are commenting on these posts are the same that read what I write. It’s strange to read comments like this on a sneaker blog. But it fits in pretty squarely – don’t you think? That third one, with its correct spelling and soberly expressed thought stick out, and is actually by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s PR guy. What did you do to make your son gay anyway? You're probably gay. Thanks for adding one more degenerate to society with no purpose other then to fulfill and promote their twisted reproductive urges. “How does it feel to know your son likes it up his backside? You've failed at being a man- You raised a gay son, the definition of failing as a man.
“We must exterminate these people root and branch the homosexual must be eliminated.” These butt pluggers need to keep their fetishes in the closet.” “I'm all for equality until some faqqot school teacher tries to turn my kid into a faqqot too. “ “be true"? Ok then tell people that being gay is disgusting and stop lying to them acting like the shit is all good.” And then I scrolled to the comment section. Even adidas jumped in the pool this time with a different interpretation that is refreshing and bold. Sock Darts are flames, and the rest of Nike’s pack is pretty good. So having a cool pride sneaker makes me proud as a gay sneakerhead. There are 29 states in this country where you can get fired from your job just for being gay, and it’s 100 percent legal. Even Urban Outfitters was embroiled in an anti-gay political donation PR mess. Barilla Pasta explained that a happy family headed by a same sex couple didn’t reflect their values. When this started, Chick-fil-A was officially against marriage equality. They were lazy, on bad silhouettes, and most likely a marketing ploy to engage a community with a ton of disposable income looking for brands who weren’t taking stands against them. I want to look at them again because for the first time, gay pride shoes are cool.Ī handful of brands have spent the last couple years taking stabs at combining gay pride and sneakers, but they’ve basically been a bust. I see one of the sneaker blogs I follow has another tweet about Nike’s #BeTrue Pack, the one that celebrates gay pride and the LGBT community, so I click. I decide to take one last look at Twitter. It’s nighttime and I’m about to grab four hours of sleep before I have to get up for my first job (I have about five – I live in New York City).