Australian man awkwardly humps his way up a set of railings to avoid using ‘woke’ Pride stairs
The video appears to show a man going to great lengths to avoid getting any homosexuality on his shoes (Twitter)
A video of an Australian man awkwardly climbing up a set of railings to (apparently) avoid walking on a set of stairs painted with the Progress Pride flag colours has gone viral.
He might have been attempting to “own the libs”, but on the whole the libs were just very, very amused by what appeared to be a grown adult humping his way up a metal bannister.
In a clip shared on X/Twitter that has now been viewed almost 300,000 times, the man can be seen “avoiding gay stairs” by dragging himself almost painfully up the central metal handrail on a Progress Pride themed staircase, which is located at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
A post on the university’s Instagram account confirmed the paintwork was done to celebrate the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, which took place this weekend (1 March) and saw a moving tribute paid to gay couple Luke Davies and Jesse Baird, who died in February.
The jokes flew thick and fast. One person tweeted: “This is like 100x gayer than just using the stairs like a normal person, he’s literally sliding his hole and pole across a railing.”
Another simply wrote, “this is camp.”
Given that “@JebraFaushay” appears to be a satirical, anti-woke account, there is of course a chance that things aren’t exactly what they seem.
The bannister humping could just have been a stunt, or, as one person said in the replies, “You are assuming that is what is happening. What if his friends said ‘I bet you can’t get to the top without touching a step’”.
However, there’s a pretty long list of examples of homophobes avoiding – and, much worse, vandalising – Pride flag-painted staircases or road crossings, so this example would certainly fit in well with previous ones of people getting angry at basic city infrastructure.
In 2018, the mayor of Paris made a set of Pride Month rainbow road crossings permanent after they were vandalised with graffiti twice in a week. In 2017, a crossing in Lethbridge, Canada was also vandalised twice in one week, less than a week after it was first painted. In 2019, a Trump supporter was arrested on suspicion of vandalising a rainbow crossing in Albuquerque, New Mexico…. look, you get the idea. It happens a lot.
Whether this was a genuine attempt to avoid walking on Pride stairs, or just someone being a silly goose, we should all probably just be grateful that no one vandalised anything, for a change.
