Can't Stop Us Being Loud and Proud

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.


My words are:

clutching ~ woeful ~ happy ~ stretched ~ hop

They were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/


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Ok I'm gonna need y'all to have some discussions with your friends and family who have full on gay panicked over Lil Nas X and every famous gay who didnt make themselves quieter for the straights' comfort before him if we're being honest. 

 
I hope they stretched real good before all the reaching and clutching of their pearls they've been doing about how gays will corrupt their children and how unnecessary his open gayness is and the devil and HIV and all the other little homophobic things. But now it's beyond ridiculous. Do you have any idea what it's like to wake up in 2021 as a gay, get on your phone, and wade through homophobic rant after homophobic rant? Woeful doesn't cover it, and a lot of this could be avoided if they got a little education.

First of all, if anyone is worried about music corrupting your children let's start with not letting your kids listen to explicit hip hop or any other genre of music for that matter. ALL of them except maybe gospel will have people talking openly about sex. Lucille Bogan's songs from the 30s have made even ME blush, and we all know how my mouth and mind are. There are dozens upon dozens of country songs about sex and sexualizing women. There's an entire subgenre of indie Americana called murder folk. No genre is safe, but these same people are the ones in hundreds of videos I've seen who are happy and think it's funny when the kids are singing along about their broken hearts or honky tonk badonkadonks until it's a gay man doing the singing especially a Black one. What will your kids learn? I don't know. That it's ok to love who you love? That sex isn't shameful? That their parents are wrong? That's the crux of this isn't it. If kids are exposed to gay people making a success of themselves by societal standards, gay people who are happy, who aren't tokens, who love no differently than anyone else, who aren't at all different than anyone else, that proves more than any bullshit lie their parents tell them and then they might think for themselves or *gasp* feel safe to come out themselves.

You can also happily report to them that their christian religion actually says nothing about being gay as a sin. The Bible discusses sexual exploitation. None of the passages y'all's folks point to in order to declare homosexuality a sin are actually about loving relations or consensual sex between same gender partners. These passages are actually mostly talking about assault of minors, rape, and exploitation. Homosexuality actually didn't show up in the Bible until 1946 as a bad translation paid for by christians in America who wanted to demonize homosexuality and knew the best way to accomplish that is through religion (the same happens with different sects of Christianity and abortion too actually). Jesus never once talks about same sex relationships in the new testament. If anyone does it's Paul. Jesus though did say the number 1 commandment, the thing we are to take to heart more than anything else to live the life wanted us living is to love one another. Above everything else he said, love one another was the thing he wanted everyone to practice.

There is no gay agenda to corrupt y'all's kids. I need your family and friends and, hell, some of mine to know that. These kids are coming into a changing world. Gayness is more socially acceptable now than it's ever been at least in some countries and while we still have a long way to go to equality, we have, through hard work and decades of activism, given space to new generations to come out into a safer place, to meet others easily just like them, and with a variety of labels to help specify their needs and wants in romantic and sexual relationships. Society isn't gayer all of a sudden because of some weird gay agenda to corrupt the kids (which is honestly just another facet of satanic panic). These kids have support now that they never knew was there before. They have people accepting and loving them as they are. They're coming into a world where yes they still face bigotry, in everyday society and systemically, but it's improved. Equality isn't now, but it doesn't seem nearly as far off.

That's the only gay agenda there is--that we get to live our lives in peace like anyone else. We want a world where being gay won't get us fired in any state, where we aren't denied adoptions, where homeless shelters for disowned gay teens aren't filled to capacity, where a small town judge can't deny a wedding because of his beliefs (yes it still happens here), where no one is worried about marriage equality being overturned by a stacked conservative court. We want a life that doesn't punish us for being born.

We don't need to corrupt any children to being gay. They already are gay, and they quite often get mentored by those of us who are out because their own parents failed them. They're gay and trans and asexual and fluid and beautiful in all the ways these identities co-exist. Whether you know get to know it or not and get to be a supporting character or a villian in their stories is up to you. And I can guarantee--and be sure to tell y'all's folks this part--hearing you verbally destroy a gay kid with a successful rap career for being unapologetically queer tells your kid a lot about how unsafe you really are and is a first class ticket to being the villian.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:


Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

This time. Maybe.

At the end of this post you’ll find links to the other blogs featuring this challenge. Check them all out, see what words they got and how they used them.

I’m using: balance, cerebellum, gentle, overhear, surround

They were submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

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I feel like I'm on autopilot lately. Cerebellums be getting us through, right?

As I'm writing this, protests against racism and police brutality and how those two intersect to cost Black lives have been going on for 47 days. I've watched live streams from independent journalists for most of those days keeping up with marches and protests across the country in as many cities as I can and occupations in new york city, buffalo, the North Carolina governor's mansion, Aurora, d.c., Atlanta, Nashville, Louisville, Seattle, and more.

I have seen American citizens be brutalized for nonexistent or arbitrary rules, shot point blank with less than lethal rounds, choked, hit, gassed, maced, pepper balled... I've seen protesters shot at by racists and people mad about being inconvenienced. I've seen them hit by cars while I've been on their streams and unfortunately I saw someone shot and killed. Every time I open a live stream these days I brace myself for seeing someone get hurt or even die...and that's from the relative comfort of my home. I can't imagine how bad it is for people on the ground, the ones streaming every night to get the truth out who have been targeted by police in multiple cities across the country despite their press passes (because of their press passes) or for the ones marching for justice and reform every day they're able.

I've also seen protesters give each other gentle education, make demands, surround one another with love, and succumb to the stress and cause problems. It has not been a faultless movement and fear and defensiveness has cost lives, but the good, the empowerment, the organization has been more than a balance to the ugly. That good, that love and it's search for justice and equality has exponentially outweighed the bad.

It feels different this time.

I remember (vaguely) the LA riots/protests. Protests about our involvement in Iraq. I remember the occupy protests in 2011/12. I remember the protests after Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. There were protests after Trump won and again in 2018. For many of the years of my life there have been protests to address our attack on other nations, our attack on Black and Brown people here and abroad, and for an end to the kind of unfettered capitalism that costs so many lives especially Black, Brown, and queer ones. Yet here we are...

But this time...maybe?

Earlier this year people protested for the right to get sick and die and also get others sick, for haircuts, for using servants for conveniences...and the general public looked on in horror at what we were willing to do to one another. Coughing and spitting and screaming spittle on folks during a pandemic for the right to go to a bar. The divide seemed impossibly wide.

And then George Floyd was murdered by police in broad daylight by an improper chokehold by a police force representative of every department across the country with a long history of lynchings, rounding up slaves, busting unions, belonging to the KKK, committing assaults, running drugs, having theft and prostitution rackets with the locals and more.

People of color are tired. Tired of dying over nothing more than the color of their skin, when they're asleep in their own homes, doing what they're told, or acting out. Doesn't matter. Tired of building up their own communities just to have them destroyed and then told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Tired of existing in a society this unfair just to be told they're playing a "race" card.

If you use that phrase, eat my entire ass.

People are tired of a system that allows people to sit back and profit off their work, that makes it impossible to escape poverty, that puts people in huge amounts of debt to get an education they'll never stop paying for during their lifetimes. People are tired of being overworked and underpaid and having to choose between food and water or not even having access to clean water. People are tired of men like Jeff Bezos whose taxes if appropriate could, alone, pay for so many social programs, for needed infrastructure, for mass transport, climate change programs, and more. Seriously...and more. And he would still have more money to burn than most people will ever see in their lifetimes. We're tired of being in the caboose begging for scraps and fighting for a step up while people with inherited wealth and endless opportunities have golden toilets and rows of shark teeth ready to snap the smallest chunk of change.

We're tired.

And angry.

And this time, it's different.

If you listen closely, you can overhear it whispered from our lips in the shadows of the night and the bright of day. Every moment.

This time.

Maybe.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2020/07/end-of-lineage-use-your-words.html

Wandering Web Designer https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2020/07/sallyball.html

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Crazy Mama Llama https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2020/07/use-your-words-sunshine-at-mall.html

Two Words

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 13 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is:

Mad because of toothpaste and toilet seat lids? Think again.

You are volunteering for a women’s charity. Today one lady tells you about her exhaustion and frustration. She feels all the housework, social activities and kids care are on her shoulders, and all her husband ever does is hang out on the couch, play with his phone and expect her to take care of everything. What are you telling her?

It was submitted by: http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/ 

oh boy was I the right person for this one 

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I am fairly certain if any woman comes to me describing a scenario in which their partner is pulling less than 50% of the labor, both physical and emotional, my brain will be in such a swirl of variations of the word fuck that I will at least be momentarily speechless trying to sort through to find just the right iteration for the extreme fuckery going down at their house

Two more words will probably filter through the f bombs.

Dump. Him.

To me, nothing else really needs to be said, but it’s a much more complex issue than those two words make it seem.

For the longest time, marriage was more or less a business arrangement. Wealthier people arranged marriages that benefited each family. Kings and queens rarely loved one another taking a spouse that would create a needed relationship with another kingdom/country or arranging marriages for their children which would do the same. Average folks needed one person to work and one person to tend to the home and children, and in the vast majority of societies, the responsibilities were split with men working outside farming, or, after industrialization, outside the home and women tending the home. It made sense with women needing time to recover after children and being responsible for breastfeeding children. Women’s labor was never as valued as men’s nor were women treated as equals. But that proved to be a mistake in wars that sent increasing numbers of men off to fight and in need of a larger labor force to supply demand for both soldiers abroad and civilians at home. It was women that worked the factories to meet those needs—the same women still at home taking care of everything that needed doing. Women have fought for the right to vote, the right to own property and work, to study whatever they chose wherever they chose to do it, to exist in this world as more than homemakers and objects to be owned and used. The idea of equality between genders has caused a lot of bloodshed with women powering through anyway knowing how worthy we were of those rights.

We’re still fighting for the ability to exist in spaces without being paid less, to get where we need to go without being hounded on the street, to be believed instead of seen as hysterical, to be partners not caretakers for our partners, and to be appreciated for everything we do, and this situation is still far too common in families today. Women are doing 40% more of the household chores, are less likely to be able to engage in sports or hobbies on any given day, and spend twice as much time physically caring for children on any given day. And, at least in American, most people still feel like that’s the way it should be regardless of who works and how much. Even if both partners are working full time, even though more and more women are the breadwinners for their families, people still generally believe that chores, children, and emotional labor belongs almost solely to women. But why?

Splitting household chores is one of the top factors in whether a couple rates their marriage or relationship a happy one or not. Top 3. More than half of people rate splitting chores as very important to succeeding in a relationship. The less balance there is when it comes to responsibilities the more problematic a person might rate their marriage.

Women run households. They make budgets, plan meals, notice the things the family needs, make schedules, learn, delegate. Women are almost always working to better their households or at least maintain them far more than their male counterparts *even when household chores are evenly split.

I would tell this woman that she does even more than either of them realize, and that if she wants her marriage to work long-term, if she can still envision her happily ever after with this person through the haze of resentment and stress this imbalance has caused, then the first step is counseling. They’re in a pattern, a cycle of sorts. They’re locked in, and it won’t be easy to break through it without help to deconstruct the pattern and take out the parts that don’t work anymore. Simply delegating chores more often without discussing why they’re locked in this pattern in the first place could create more resentment on his side and is honestly where the “nag” trope comes in for women—asking repeatedly for the help they need while their male counterparts feel entitled to more free time and freedom from the workload.

I would absolutely tell her everything she is feeling is valid, that there is absolutely no reason why she should shoulder the brunt of the work while her husband lounges even if he is the sole income earner. Sure, that means the workload is trickier to evenly divide, but that division should still be equal. Child care should always be equal. The emotional, invisible labor should be equal.

And if he refuses counseling?

Boy, bye.

Fucking dump him.

Here are some resources on some of these issues:

http://time.com/2895235/men-housework-women/

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37941191

https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-difference-between-a-happy-marriage-and-miserable-one-chores/273615/

http://time.com/money/4561314/women-work-home-gender-gap/

http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/psyched-in-san-francisco/why-women-are-tired-the-p_b_9619732.html

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Here are the rest of the submissions. Enjoy!

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2017/07/secret-obligation-secret-subject-swap.html

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

The Bergham Chronicles http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Simply Shannon http://shannonbutler.org

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

The Angrivated Mom http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com/

Not That Sarah Michelle http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Bookworm in the Kitchen http://www.bookwormkitchen.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/