So, yesterday afternoon I was buzzing around the apartment with the Mister. I was mutli-tasking - cleaning the apartment, purging things from the apartment, trying to get inspired to draw, and, of course, ditzing around on the Facebook.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm kind of starting to move off of the Facebook anyway and looking to spend more time writing here and/or doing well, just about anything else. I love yakking with my friends from various places/eras in my life, but I've become kind of addicted to it. And the best way to fight that is to ween oneself off. And, by 'addicted', I mean it in the sense of it being the default thing that I do when I'm bored. You know, rather than read or draw or do about anything else. I know that I'm not alone in this which is why I can be fairly blase about it. It's a thing that I know a lot of people are going through. I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that the Facebook has turned into the cold Civil War where people are just pitted against each other, locked in an eternal 'well the libturds said this' and 'the republiturds said that'. This country of ours has real problems - a fundamental difference of ideologies of how a society should be run. There are, unfortunately, no easy answers and, more unfortunately, there seems to be this very strange thing where two people view the exact same event and have literally opposite interpretation of it. I know this situation from my childhood, but seeing it happen out in the wider world as an adult is really freaking me out (and, in this, I know I'm not alone either).
Anyway, I made a comment on a friend's comment and some person (I can't believe it's an actual friend, but who knows) let out their rage at me calling me a 'dumbass' and immediately after, a 'homo'. I went to the person's page to figure out what kind of creep this would write this kind of thing and found this:
I decided that the irony was too delicious, so I posted it to him as a response. Then I reported the hate speech. The Facebook doesn't always get everything right but the post vanished minutes later and I went on about my day.
It occurred to me that I'm always fascinated by the slurs that people use. For a gay person, calling them a "homo" is supposed to, I suppose, be derogatory, but I am, in fact, a homosexual. Shorting the word doesn't make it any more or less true.
I've been out for 30 years. I assume it's cost me a job here and there (it definitely cost me my family) but, well, it is what it is. I could have stayed in the closet but other people could have been more accepting and not such puritanical slugs. So there's that. As it is, I've found that most people either don't care or find it interesting for a hot minute because they have a cousin or a brother or a next door neighbor who is gay, and by the way, do I know them? (I say that for a little comic effect, but the sad reality is that after fundraising within the LGBT community for the past 20/25 years, there have been times when it has felt as though yes I do know everyone).
Anyway, when I then mentioned this on the Facebook, someone posted that I must be offended. I guess I am. Sort of. But, really, how can I be? I don't know the guy, and it doesn't really sound like I would want to. I survived a childhood of taunts and jeers and an adulthood of trying to be there for people who had been marginalized as I had. I didn't get famous or rich doing it, but there is some measure of satisfaction in a life lived well in this way.
Here on this blog, as in life, like many people, I'm always striving to be kind, fair, passionate, and honest. I don't always succeed. But then, I don't know anyone who succeeds 100% of the time.
This is a new week. Go out and make it an awesome one and let's see if we can change the world for the better in our own small way.