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4:05 p.m. - 2017-10-29 That's what I've been looking for, the all but unspoken, "I thought we were boys." That has been lingering in a lot of these conversations. You started into role-playing games to have an escape from the closed- minded folks who you grew up around. But now you're just another one of them. Thanks to your service, you came home and they accepted you as one of their own, and not that weird little kid they remember. I don't have that luxury, nor would I want it. People know me for just how weird I am. And yet I still get people trying to confide their racist or sexist views and/or jokes to me like we're boys. Like, nope, sorry. I won't be complicit any longer. I won't amplify their signal. So if I seem off lately it's because I've reached a turning point where I'm being more vocal about these things. Thank Trump for turning on the kitchen light and showing us all of these racist and sexist cockroaches, who, thanks to him, don't just scurry back under the fridge when the lights come on. It's 2017. We need to get it together and stop letting differences in skin color or gender separate us. And yes that means that when people say or do racist or sexist or even homophobic things, they are, indeed racists, sexists, or homophobes. If those labels make you uncomfortable, then stop saying or doing racist, sexist, or homophobic things. It's that simple. It may not be easy, when everyone around you says and does it, but it is that simple. One simple step: Stop it! If we can't be boys because it makes you uncomfortable, so be it. But that just says you are comfortable with your prejudices. And you choose the safety of utter conformity, even if that means perpetuating the same outdated racist ass shit that should just die out with our grandparents' generation. � � |