I am getting angrier and angrier the more aware I become.
More and more I resent the old white guys running my country and ruining my country.
I'm aware of the education system and its failings and how it grinds kids into the ground and into debt and sometimes into incredible anxiety and depression. I feel like I've learned more since graduating than I have the entire time I was in school. The most valuable thing I learned in school was how to make a resume and how to use a calculator. My mom taught me how to read, and in school I could read better than many of my peers that learned in school. I wonder what the years of hell were for.
I'm aware of the incredible misogyny. I scream inside every time my family makes even the most offhanded sexist remark. I know the don't mean it, I know they've been raised thinking the way they do. I know much of the rest of the world DOES mean it and taught my family to think this way. I'm aware of how it affects me and mine. Part of why I'm terrified to EVER be pregnant, aside from the body-horror-parasite thing, is how the burgeoning life inside me will be prioritized over my OWN thinking, feeling, conscious life. How once that life is outside me, it won't be such a precious thing to the gross myriad of systems we have to live in.
I am learning about the terrible transphobia and transmisogyny. The horrifying things done to kids that dress different, the appalling way families can just shun a person they spent years loving, in whatever capacity then can, because that person placed all their trust in that family after mustering PHENOMENAL courage.
Is it REALLY that difficult to continue loving someone just because that person decides they want to be called by different pronouns? Just because they're attracted to people in a pattern you aren't? Are the suddenly not worthy of your love now that it takes EFFORT ON YOUR PART to make sure they're comfortable and feel safe? Are they not worth TRYING for?
I hate that my country is so unaccepting. I wish stories of a parent's uninhibited acceptance were the norm rather than hopeful beacons in hateful darkness. I wish there was widespread outrage about parents disowning their children, about a precious and courageous kid being bullied. I wish those people were punished and persecuted for being assholes, rather than the people they're terrible to.
There are so many -isms to keep in mind, yes, it can be hard. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, ciessexism, ableism... But they're -isms because there are SO MANY PEOPLE affected by these mentalities! These people are WORTH THE EFFORT to be kind to!
This ended up ranty, but words fail me a lot of the time. I reblog things because others articulate better than I do. Because they understand better than I do. I don't want to understand because it's a terrible thing to face, but I do want to understand so I can be supportive, in whatever capacity I can. Even if it's just in my small way, reblogging things that are important to me alongside things that I like.
I will continue to challenge my family and my friends and myself, because there is absolutely no way to know who thinks differently, who wants to be called differently, who's attracted to things differently, until that person feels safe enough and trusting enough to come forward.
