Sorry, I'm all awarenessed out.
Oct. 20th, 2010 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdymonkeyI am not a cool kid. I don't have a cell phone that does anything but be a phone. I don't Twitter. I only get on Facebook at night, usually wondering what the hell I'm doing on Facebook.I don't need or want or care to be plugged into the zeitgeist 24/7 'cause I might miss something.
I get dressed at about 6:05 AM Pacific Daylight Time. I usually have time before work to check email and messages, watch the morning news and then I go to work.
So it's not until the day is mostly over that I start noticing some pretty damn obscure references to wearing purple, many coming across (intentionally or not) in what reads as a cooler than thou, "I'm wearing purple today, why aren't you?" kind of note. Oh, God, now what? Did I miss mention on the news that it was National Appreciate Your Eggplant Brethren Day when I was flossing? Did Barney die? What is Wrong On The Internet NOW?
There hadn''t been a peep on the calmly read news snippets that punctuate the classical station I play softly at my desk. My co-workers are not wearing purple. It doesn't hit the local newspaper I read online, in fact, until 11:19 AM (you know, a time of day that people who don't work from home or pull the swing shift have already gotten dressed) in a blog posting to a column titled "The Mommy Files," which I don't read as I am not anyone's Mommy. I had Google "wearing purple."
Is it OK that I marched with my parents for civil rights because I was old enough to walk however far it was on a cold day in Minneapolis in 1966? Do I get any points for that? Of course, my father, a German Jew whose parents had the good sense to emigrate from Frankfurt in 1936, married my mother, an Irish-American Catholic in 1957 against the objections of his entire family except his mother. (Mom's family liked him just fine, thank you.)
I was a Supreme in Cindy Sykes' back yard in 1968, lip synching to Motown 45s with friends. They didn't care that I was white, I didn't care that they were brown, we were too busy working on our choreography. Teaneck was progressive then.
I spent pretty much all my spare time and cash from the age of twelve right up to about 1995 under the tutelage of a horse trainer who never married but had several male "roommates" in the time I knew him. (Yes, my parents knew - and approved. I was occupied, learning responsibility and making some pocket money mucking stalls and teaching lessons.) By the time I moved into Demarest Hall at Rutgers my senior year I didn't think much one way or the other about the fact that Rob and Fran were boyfriend and boyfriend.
Try working for a health insurance company in the mid 1980s and trying to figure out what is going on with this sudden influx of claims for a disease that doesn't even have a name yet, and then finding out with the rest of the world. And wondering if any of your old dorm mates who you never quite managed to keep up with are dying.
Anybody remember POW/MIA bracelets?
What color ribbons were we all looping around things in 1979 and why?
So please forgive me if I was so uncool and insensitive as to have put on a blazingly fuschia pullover this morning. I'm doing the best I can, OK?
I get dressed at about 6:05 AM Pacific Daylight Time. I usually have time before work to check email and messages, watch the morning news and then I go to work.
So it's not until the day is mostly over that I start noticing some pretty damn obscure references to wearing purple, many coming across (intentionally or not) in what reads as a cooler than thou, "I'm wearing purple today, why aren't you?" kind of note. Oh, God, now what? Did I miss mention on the news that it was National Appreciate Your Eggplant Brethren Day when I was flossing? Did Barney die? What is Wrong On The Internet NOW?
There hadn''t been a peep on the calmly read news snippets that punctuate the classical station I play softly at my desk. My co-workers are not wearing purple. It doesn't hit the local newspaper I read online, in fact, until 11:19 AM (you know, a time of day that people who don't work from home or pull the swing shift have already gotten dressed) in a blog posting to a column titled "The Mommy Files," which I don't read as I am not anyone's Mommy. I had Google "wearing purple."
Is it OK that I marched with my parents for civil rights because I was old enough to walk however far it was on a cold day in Minneapolis in 1966? Do I get any points for that? Of course, my father, a German Jew whose parents had the good sense to emigrate from Frankfurt in 1936, married my mother, an Irish-American Catholic in 1957 against the objections of his entire family except his mother. (Mom's family liked him just fine, thank you.)
I was a Supreme in Cindy Sykes' back yard in 1968, lip synching to Motown 45s with friends. They didn't care that I was white, I didn't care that they were brown, we were too busy working on our choreography. Teaneck was progressive then.
I spent pretty much all my spare time and cash from the age of twelve right up to about 1995 under the tutelage of a horse trainer who never married but had several male "roommates" in the time I knew him. (Yes, my parents knew - and approved. I was occupied, learning responsibility and making some pocket money mucking stalls and teaching lessons.) By the time I moved into Demarest Hall at Rutgers my senior year I didn't think much one way or the other about the fact that Rob and Fran were boyfriend and boyfriend.
Try working for a health insurance company in the mid 1980s and trying to figure out what is going on with this sudden influx of claims for a disease that doesn't even have a name yet, and then finding out with the rest of the world. And wondering if any of your old dorm mates who you never quite managed to keep up with are dying.
Anybody remember POW/MIA bracelets?
What color ribbons were we all looping around things in 1979 and why?
So please forgive me if I was so uncool and insensitive as to have put on a blazingly fuschia pullover this morning. I'm doing the best I can, OK?
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 06:12 pm (UTC)What *does* matter is that I speak out regularly about anything I care about. I *DID* have one conversation on Twitter that happened to coincide with yesterday's "spirit day / purple" thing. But the conversation includes my regular thoughts: Bullying is always wrong. I support Free Speech and Free Thought. I will never want to punish someone for their Thoughts. But I also believe that some people's exercise of Free Speech does constitute a dangerously close level of bullying when it comes to teens and adults struggling with unacceptance of LGBT equality. I will always support someone's right to free speech, and MY right to disagree with them and use my free speech to express my disagreement. And this includes speaking out when someone asserts that LGBT folks are inherently evil, wrong, or worthless --> I will EMPHATICALLY disagree, in public, and across all areas of my life.
I strongly embrace equality in a zillion forms, and that includes losing friendships/acquaintances with people who decide they cannot be my friend because I support LGBT values. (Really. I've lost friends over speaking out on Facebook. Clearly, they didn't value the friendship we had between us.)