Not PC ponderings
My black skinned dog seems to be helping me with my racism. Now I, like any white, do not see myself as a racist. In my mind, that's someone who acts on it knowingly. Who lets it be a model for their world, or lets it answer questions (who should I hire?) and so on. Meantime, the POC folks keep telling us we're all racist even so. Because we benefit from the system that is built on racism. Because we have unconscious bias from racism. I say they're pretty damn racist too because they colour every moment with it. But they rejoin that this is because they never get a moment to forget what colour they are, why should we? Well it's all rather frustrating for us all and in the end, systemic kindness is the only that can fix it. You can legislate people to be nice. However, you can legislate the government to be nice, and anyone being paid by it. Like how in the medical system, right down to the pharmacies, I can actually demand male pronouns.
Side story from today: I had to pee really bad. it was one of those "hope I get in there in time" things and the women's was locked, the family occupied, and only the mens room left. Well I have no qualms about using it, but for one, getting caught in there. I really don't want to freak anyone out. Not because I fear their reaction so much as I feel for it. I don't like to discomfit folks. But it was empty and there was only one toilet, in a stall, but a urinal too. Oh would that I could use that. Maybe if I ever get the $500 together for the detachable penis? Maybe SRS would give me a whizzer one day. well for now it's toilet time. Sure enough while I'm in there another patron arrives and steps up to the urinal just as I'm done and standing up (facing the toilet so with my male shoes and shorts and position nothing would trigger notice) and now I gotta leave, because standing there while he's struggling to get peeing would be noticed.... Ok, just bomb for the door, don't look at him, and maybe get out before he has a chance to turn and look.
Yep, that's how it went down. Fast enough he could just ignore me and finally get his bladder empty. Whew!
Ok, side story over.
Yeah, about that black skinned dog and my racism.
Well see, she's got this amazing chocolatey skin that glows in the sun, especially after lotion. Shining and glowing it looks like living black chocolate. if a belgian chocolatier made a dog out of chocolate and she came to life! She even smells kind of like candy because of the lotion I use.
Ok, so that's the doggy. I'm seeing her beauty, you see. I didn't think these dogs were pretty, I still resist calling her that. I have a very narrowly defined range for that word, mostly consisting of northern european features, even when coloured dark. That's the fault of media and also my actual life exposure. My exposure to non-europeans is woefully small. It doesn't help that I'm boorish and insensitive, you know? I'm getting exposure to First Nations and it's helping a lot, I'm learning to see the variations in character and expression and region imprinted on their features.
But for blacks, woefully small sample size. I've been trying to improve that with social media, following hashtags on instagram, looking closer when black folks' work shows up, and etc. Just trying to increase my exposure without having to do something as terrifying as approaching the black neighbors down the street. now please understand, it's no more terrifying that anyone else. If I meet them at the park, and we chat, that's cool, but I just don't enter someone's property without some kind of prior introduction and invite, unless the importance of an errand allows for it. Like delivering something or such.
Now let's understand that unfamiliarity with a subset of human kind, such as being of one culture, country, or even race, and not having exposure to the other, quite puts one at a disadvantage, but not seriously. One can learn soon enough if truly innocent of the peoples one encounters. But we aren't truly innocent. Sadly, we've been exposed to all races of people right in our own homes, but with a biased and skewed perspective. probably engineered like so much of the modern evils, for the sake of keeping us weak and easy prey on whom to profit. Be that as it may, indians have been painted as savages, or criminals, or addicts, or infantilized and weak people in need of a hand out. Blacks likewise, but also as animalian, better at physical stuff than mental, and even their visage used to depict a less evolved human! I've been hammered with such images my entire life. Because it was someone else, someone I didn't know, it was pretty easy to be hammered with it. It suggested that I was lucky enough to be the superior type of human! I think about now, how the POC kids got it just as hard, only their families and extended community to gainsay the BS, and what would that do? How about the cognitive dissonance between the racist garbage and the reality around them? no wonder people are yelling about it so constantly back! And to whom do they yell? Well us blissfully ignorant "whites" of course! Personally I think calling people a colour is pretty off. I hate being called white, I'm golden, like a muffin top. I'd rather be called gold. I'd even settle for yellow I suppose. But yeah, it gets dicey. Bugs me to call folks of african descent 'black" especially when so many are shades of brown! How about "red indians?" I mean, they look either like a variant of mediterranean (I think greek explorers found this place often, perhaps storm tossed, and stayed and married into the locals) or like asians, from whom so many are descended.
There's a thing too, "white" people are not only the minority, but also the most extreme mutation, caused by the uniquely difficult conditions of the north atlantic. But because of some odd trick of something, perhaps inclusion of neanderthal DNA or the harshness of the climate making them more aggressive and selfish, this little minority has gone out and gone head thumping on other people more than anyone else. Long beyond what they need to secure their borders, stealing and enslaving as they went and destroying all manner of culture and environment to serve their psychopathic masters. Funny then that these are the faces that say "pretty" to me, eh?
Well my dog's features are nothing like that. They're broad and full, her eyes are small, her hair is coarse, the skin a thick hide, black in spots like licorice, then ruddy brown in others, like translucent chocolate. But she's so unearthly beautiful, so rare and shining, so sweet and loveable, well she's truly growing on me! Others who see her universally declare her beautiful and only children ask about her hair, although some adults wonder and are relieved when someone asks, LOL she's not got much, dear reader, just a grace of it on her head, tail, and toes. Also a hint of a crest on her back in the form of sparse little hairs that break off just above the surface, being stubby and odd.
Well just today I was watching a show and noticed quite unconsciously how pretty the little girl was, her chocolate skin, her soft cloud of hair, her long dark lashes, and round cheeks. All of her, just pretty. And this happened unconsciously, I didn't have to remember to look. I think because my dog is educating my brain. I see that dog with love in my eyes day after day.
Consider my other dog, 9 years old. He is pretty in theory as well as in fact. He's delicately featured with flowing lines and all the complicated math of baby face cuteness. Now I can see I have two incredibly beautiful animals, and they are starkly different. But both beautiful. Now I am learning, on the subconscious level, to see the different beauty in humans.
It's good. I like it. The world is getting bigger in a good way. So, how do I see the beauty in fat people now? I still don't and I really should.
Side story from today: I had to pee really bad. it was one of those "hope I get in there in time" things and the women's was locked, the family occupied, and only the mens room left. Well I have no qualms about using it, but for one, getting caught in there. I really don't want to freak anyone out. Not because I fear their reaction so much as I feel for it. I don't like to discomfit folks. But it was empty and there was only one toilet, in a stall, but a urinal too. Oh would that I could use that. Maybe if I ever get the $500 together for the detachable penis? Maybe SRS would give me a whizzer one day. well for now it's toilet time. Sure enough while I'm in there another patron arrives and steps up to the urinal just as I'm done and standing up (facing the toilet so with my male shoes and shorts and position nothing would trigger notice) and now I gotta leave, because standing there while he's struggling to get peeing would be noticed.... Ok, just bomb for the door, don't look at him, and maybe get out before he has a chance to turn and look.
Yep, that's how it went down. Fast enough he could just ignore me and finally get his bladder empty. Whew!
Ok, side story over.
Yeah, about that black skinned dog and my racism.
Well see, she's got this amazing chocolatey skin that glows in the sun, especially after lotion. Shining and glowing it looks like living black chocolate. if a belgian chocolatier made a dog out of chocolate and she came to life! She even smells kind of like candy because of the lotion I use.
Ok, so that's the doggy. I'm seeing her beauty, you see. I didn't think these dogs were pretty, I still resist calling her that. I have a very narrowly defined range for that word, mostly consisting of northern european features, even when coloured dark. That's the fault of media and also my actual life exposure. My exposure to non-europeans is woefully small. It doesn't help that I'm boorish and insensitive, you know? I'm getting exposure to First Nations and it's helping a lot, I'm learning to see the variations in character and expression and region imprinted on their features.
But for blacks, woefully small sample size. I've been trying to improve that with social media, following hashtags on instagram, looking closer when black folks' work shows up, and etc. Just trying to increase my exposure without having to do something as terrifying as approaching the black neighbors down the street. now please understand, it's no more terrifying that anyone else. If I meet them at the park, and we chat, that's cool, but I just don't enter someone's property without some kind of prior introduction and invite, unless the importance of an errand allows for it. Like delivering something or such.
Now let's understand that unfamiliarity with a subset of human kind, such as being of one culture, country, or even race, and not having exposure to the other, quite puts one at a disadvantage, but not seriously. One can learn soon enough if truly innocent of the peoples one encounters. But we aren't truly innocent. Sadly, we've been exposed to all races of people right in our own homes, but with a biased and skewed perspective. probably engineered like so much of the modern evils, for the sake of keeping us weak and easy prey on whom to profit. Be that as it may, indians have been painted as savages, or criminals, or addicts, or infantilized and weak people in need of a hand out. Blacks likewise, but also as animalian, better at physical stuff than mental, and even their visage used to depict a less evolved human! I've been hammered with such images my entire life. Because it was someone else, someone I didn't know, it was pretty easy to be hammered with it. It suggested that I was lucky enough to be the superior type of human! I think about now, how the POC kids got it just as hard, only their families and extended community to gainsay the BS, and what would that do? How about the cognitive dissonance between the racist garbage and the reality around them? no wonder people are yelling about it so constantly back! And to whom do they yell? Well us blissfully ignorant "whites" of course! Personally I think calling people a colour is pretty off. I hate being called white, I'm golden, like a muffin top. I'd rather be called gold. I'd even settle for yellow I suppose. But yeah, it gets dicey. Bugs me to call folks of african descent 'black" especially when so many are shades of brown! How about "red indians?" I mean, they look either like a variant of mediterranean (I think greek explorers found this place often, perhaps storm tossed, and stayed and married into the locals) or like asians, from whom so many are descended.
There's a thing too, "white" people are not only the minority, but also the most extreme mutation, caused by the uniquely difficult conditions of the north atlantic. But because of some odd trick of something, perhaps inclusion of neanderthal DNA or the harshness of the climate making them more aggressive and selfish, this little minority has gone out and gone head thumping on other people more than anyone else. Long beyond what they need to secure their borders, stealing and enslaving as they went and destroying all manner of culture and environment to serve their psychopathic masters. Funny then that these are the faces that say "pretty" to me, eh?
Well my dog's features are nothing like that. They're broad and full, her eyes are small, her hair is coarse, the skin a thick hide, black in spots like licorice, then ruddy brown in others, like translucent chocolate. But she's so unearthly beautiful, so rare and shining, so sweet and loveable, well she's truly growing on me! Others who see her universally declare her beautiful and only children ask about her hair, although some adults wonder and are relieved when someone asks, LOL she's not got much, dear reader, just a grace of it on her head, tail, and toes. Also a hint of a crest on her back in the form of sparse little hairs that break off just above the surface, being stubby and odd.
Well just today I was watching a show and noticed quite unconsciously how pretty the little girl was, her chocolate skin, her soft cloud of hair, her long dark lashes, and round cheeks. All of her, just pretty. And this happened unconsciously, I didn't have to remember to look. I think because my dog is educating my brain. I see that dog with love in my eyes day after day.
Consider my other dog, 9 years old. He is pretty in theory as well as in fact. He's delicately featured with flowing lines and all the complicated math of baby face cuteness. Now I can see I have two incredibly beautiful animals, and they are starkly different. But both beautiful. Now I am learning, on the subconscious level, to see the different beauty in humans.
It's good. I like it. The world is getting bigger in a good way. So, how do I see the beauty in fat people now? I still don't and I really should.