When Kadison was a toddler, just learning to identify and name shapes, 'square' came out 'queer'. And, she had difficulty distinguishing a 'queer' from a rectangle. I almost ran the car off the road the day she saw a flag and said, "Wook, Mama! Queer fag!"
I kept that story alive for her, wisely or not. Being a budding free-thinking rational mind, she now says this with great irony, and especially loves being able to say it when she sees a rainbow flag. She got her own pride flag out of her closet today and said it; "Wook, Mama! Queer fag!" just out of habit. Kind of an insider thing between us, I suppose.
Her two visiting friends looked at each other in horror, her benevolent intent having not quite translated. "Hey, that's mean! We have a cousin who is a lesbian, and we don't like it when people call gay people names!"
Deep breath. A lot of protesting and embarrassed explanations and backtracking from Kadison.
And, a lot of thinking by her mom.
I'm not going to ask my daughter to stop saying 'queer fag'. We get the joke. We're in on it. We stand firmly on the side of love. Having no question about it, we have lost our sensitivity to certain aspects of the silliness of making it an issue.
But, here's what I have to get into my head:
If I'm allowed to use words for my gay and lesbian friends that would be unkind in other contexts, and I'm allowed to call my girlfriends 'bitches' because I'm one, too, and I'm allowed to lovingly call someone a fat-ass because a lifetime of weight struggle has desensitized me to the word...then...
I can NOT EVER roll my eyes or shake my head, or in any other way pass judgement on African-Americans who call each other 'nigga'.
I don't have to like it.
I just have to shut my fat-ass bitch fag-hag fomo self up and deal with it.
I kept that story alive for her, wisely or not. Being a budding free-thinking rational mind, she now says this with great irony, and especially loves being able to say it when she sees a rainbow flag. She got her own pride flag out of her closet today and said it; "Wook, Mama! Queer fag!" just out of habit. Kind of an insider thing between us, I suppose.
Her two visiting friends looked at each other in horror, her benevolent intent having not quite translated. "Hey, that's mean! We have a cousin who is a lesbian, and we don't like it when people call gay people names!"
Deep breath. A lot of protesting and embarrassed explanations and backtracking from Kadison.
And, a lot of thinking by her mom.
I'm not going to ask my daughter to stop saying 'queer fag'. We get the joke. We're in on it. We stand firmly on the side of love. Having no question about it, we have lost our sensitivity to certain aspects of the silliness of making it an issue.
But, here's what I have to get into my head:
If I'm allowed to use words for my gay and lesbian friends that would be unkind in other contexts, and I'm allowed to call my girlfriends 'bitches' because I'm one, too, and I'm allowed to lovingly call someone a fat-ass because a lifetime of weight struggle has desensitized me to the word...then...
I can NOT EVER roll my eyes or shake my head, or in any other way pass judgement on African-Americans who call each other 'nigga'.
I don't have to like it.
I just have to shut my fat-ass bitch fag-hag fomo self up and deal with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment