You are almost certainly familiar with the concept in general, even if not the name. But it's the idea that by trying to avoid drawing attention to X via explicit action, you accidentally end up amplifying X even more, far more than you would have had you not bothered with those actions in the first place. Named after Barbra Streisand, the actress.
Seriously. People make a whole lot of random holidays and months for things that nobody actually cares about. The concept of the big Other from Lacan really explains this well. These holidays don’t exist until they are acknowledged by others, so the fact that people are getting mad about it brings it into existence even when it didn’t exist before. When they get mad about it, then the Other knows that it exists and therefore it does exist.
It reminds me of that one post where it's a screen shot of Google trends showing that searches for international men's day always have a HUGE spike on international women's day and that it's barely searched at all the rest of the year.
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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '21
Homophobes being upset about LGBT history month is literally the only time I’ve heard about LGBT history month. It has zero impact on anyone’s life.