White supremacy is why we can’t have nice things. Seriously, though, thank you for talking about things that no one wants to talk about. A number of years ago I realized how much of my childhood and teen language revolved around calling each other insults that were far too often different labels for disabled people. Or mentally ill people. Or really anyone not fitting a ridiculously narrow definition of “normal.” The more you dig at this stuff the more you realize it’s like tar coating over everything. Here’s hoping we are at least doing better.
Truly, when you even scratch the surface of human variability and complexity, WHAT EVEN IS NORMAL?
And yeah, I maybe have ever used gay as an insult, but you bet the R-word was a solid part of my teenager vocabulary. It took a fellow queer person pointing out that using the R-word as an insult was not different to justifying using gay as an insult no matter my intention or "How I meant it."
It's like being covered in leeches, only the leeches are chameleons that you have poke at to finally see. And you think, well, but if I get rid of this leech, there's a bunch of my blood gone. But it was already gone and the leech was using it to just leech harder. So you finally unhook the damn thing and you're like yay no more loosing blood! Until you find the next one....
White supremacy is why we can’t have nice things. Seriously, though, thank you for talking about things that no one wants to talk about. A number of years ago I realized how much of my childhood and teen language revolved around calling each other insults that were far too often different labels for disabled people. Or mentally ill people. Or really anyone not fitting a ridiculously narrow definition of “normal.” The more you dig at this stuff the more you realize it’s like tar coating over everything. Here’s hoping we are at least doing better.
Truly, when you even scratch the surface of human variability and complexity, WHAT EVEN IS NORMAL?
And yeah, I maybe have ever used gay as an insult, but you bet the R-word was a solid part of my teenager vocabulary. It took a fellow queer person pointing out that using the R-word as an insult was not different to justifying using gay as an insult no matter my intention or "How I meant it."
It's like being covered in leeches, only the leeches are chameleons that you have poke at to finally see. And you think, well, but if I get rid of this leech, there's a bunch of my blood gone. But it was already gone and the leech was using it to just leech harder. So you finally unhook the damn thing and you're like yay no more loosing blood! Until you find the next one....
What a visceral metaphor for working through negative implicit biases. I love it.