Sunday, 11 May 2014

Of Spades and Roses (Take 2)

I'm not done growling for this weekend.
Fasten your seat-belts.

Last week's been weird about what I read, heard, witnessed and watched - and it was all wrapped closely in time, which made it all the more annoying.
Last Friday, I overheard a young woman tell her two male companions that 'Look! There's a man in a skirt in that store! Look! Look! Look!'. I didn't manage to spot the gentleman, but, judging from the reaction of the young woman, I'd say it probably wasn't a Scottish kilt (or she's been living in a cave until now... which isn't entirely impossible, actually).
It's 2014, guys!
As I was listening to that young woman being all shocked and bothered, I firmly kept thinking "So WHAT?!!!". Why couldn't a man wear a skirt? Why bloody not?
This is with stories like that that I end up thinking I'm wired differently because, as long as the guy-in-a-skirt isn't telling me how I should dress, he could wear a green tutu, and I wouldn't care less.

Speaking of tutu brings me to story #2. Apparently, a young boy's been banned from an after-school religious club for wearing pink princess dresses. *fake gasp* The horror!
It seems that the children didn't care one bit, but the bigoted adults were traumatized... or they're just plain old bullies who can't stand seeing a child showing signs of individualism... or they've got three brain cells each and get all confused when they see something a tad different.
Uniformity isn't good for the brain, guys. If you don't know that... get another job, you do not belong anywhere in education (even of the after-class variety!).

Then, last night: Eurovision.
I've stopped watching loooong ago, but I followed this year's competition from afar because the Austrian candidate was making Russian MPs froth at the mouth (and that's my idea of fun).
Miss Conchita looks great (I'd kill to have legs like that! And her eyes!!!). But her victory has all the Neanderthals (apologies to actual Neanderthals, who may well have been better than that; I'm using the word as a stereotype) spouting venom from light ('But... the beard!') to dark ('He can say whatever he wants; he's a bloke in a dress').
Very mature, guys.
As I said when I growled about IT updates, I don't like changes, but lil' paradoxical me is also the queen of customization. Fuck uniformity. Uniformity is boring (see China and the USSR under Mao and Stalin: Yuck! Double-yuck! Triple-yuck!).
And clichés are boring, too, which is why we need equality. Full equality. Now.
No! We need it yesterday.
Everybody deserves to be taken seriously, and an XY who wants to wear a skirt/dress/awesome evening gown has the right to do so. Otherwise, it's back to Mao's uniform in just one colour for all humanity, and I'll shout 'Bloody bollocking hell; fuck, NO!'.

It all boils down to some people thinking/believing that there are "normal" things. Nothing is normal. We can have similar patterns, but no two things are fully similar, and the sooner bipeds realize that, the sooner this may start feeling like the 21st century, not a bad reboot of the Victorian Era!
Sexism in all its forms must be fought.

I sometimes say that I miss London, because, when I was there, no one judged anyone on the way the other was dressed or the way someone's hair was done or coloured. That was precious... but perhaps that's just a nice souvenir floating in the past now...

I want to believe that we can do better than that.

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