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Thursday, March 3, 2011

Sticks and Stones...

I was thinking this morning about how as a society we are leaning so much towards the extremes. Hence the term extremist I suppose. But the politically correctness of it all gets confusing. I mean I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to call my black friends black. I don't like to say African American because what if they are from Jamaica? It's the same way with my Hispanic friends. Is it Hispanic or Latina/Latino? Unless you are specifically from Mexico you aren't Mexican. But then some Mexican's don't like to be called Hispanic because they are proud to be Mexican. See it's all very confusing.

Some people might say, "why even use labels?". Well that's fine to a point but if I'm at a party and I point at 4 girls standing by the wall and say, "That's my friend J, the graphic design one", are you gonna be able to pick her out? But if I say, "that's my friend J, the cute black girl". You might be more inclined to know which one I'm talking about. I suppose I could just say they one in the paisley shirt, but why do I have to censor my descriptions. I wouldn't be offended if you called me the white girl. The pasty one. The one white as Wonder Bread. The short chubby girl. The lesbian. The dyke with the cool hair. Whatever. You see I don't mind labels. Words can hurt but only if you let them. Dyke used to be a derogatory term, and to some it still is. But I believe that if you take ownership of the word it loses it's ability to wound. I own the word dyke. By taking it and making it mine I take the hurt out of it. Gays did that with the word gay. It used to be shameful, fag too. But by taking ownership of the words, they no longer have that impact, and now we call ourselves those things.

I was walking down the street with my girlfriend, holding hands, and some guys walked by and said, "dyke!". I just laughed and said, "why yes, I am". Because, seriously folks if that is the worst thing you can think of to call me, I'll take it. Of all the things you could call someone (liar, bigot, racist, murderer, psychopath, abuser, etc.), if the absolute worst thing you can say about me is that I'm a dyke. Well by all means I will take it. It must mean I am doing something right.

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