Underneath my yellow skin

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Intolerant, My Flat Yellow Ass

love comes in all colors.
Flying every color of the rainbow.

I used to say that I was tolerant* of everything but the intolerant, and I thought I was so clever at the time. I still feel the same way, but I don’t say it any longer because, as with so many things, too many people have twisted it into something unholy. When W. was president, the Republicans started taunting Democrats any time they spoke up against the W. regime. “I thought you were supposed to be the party of tolerance!” was their rallying cry, and it pissed me the fuck off every time, though I couldn’t quite articulate why. I’ve thought about it often throughout the next eight years because it’s the same thing they’d say when they’d encounter push back for any of their discriminatory beliefs. For example. When marriage equality was the hot topic across the land, conservatives would get butt-hurt because some queers would get in their faces when they spouted their hatred. “Why can’t you be civil as we have this disagreement?” was their unspoken (and sometimes, spoken) injured question. It’s disingenuous because this is not a bloodless disagreement in which neither side will suffer if the outcome doesn’t go their way. One side would have been harmed by the laws being passed, and it wasn’t the anti-marriage equality folks.

It’s about boundaries, you see. Everybody has their limit of what they can–and should–accept from other people, and it’s not intolerant to state your boundaries and to adhere to them. This is why I strongly believe that love SHOULD be conditional; otherwise, you become a doormat and anyone can walk all over you. But, back to tolerance and politics. For the last eight years, conservative have decried progress as being intolerant to their beliefs. The hope was that by going on the offensive, Democrats would back down. Sadly, that worked more times than I care to remember as Dems are frustratingly spineless when it comes to standing up to the opposition. I know we’re part of the big tent party, but there are limits to what we should accept in our party.

I will now freely say that I’m intolerant of a shitload of things. First, though, I want to reiterate that I’m tolerant of most lifestyle choices as long as they don’t hurt anyone. I have to be, given that I’m on the fridge of society on many issues. I’m a forty-five year old bisexual single Taiwanese American woman with no children who is not religious and does not work in an office. I don’t care about traditions for the most part except for the ones I create on my own. I don’t drink at all, which is another thing that makes me weird, and I don’t care for most of pop culture. I practice taiji, and I love weapons the most. Given all this, I have to tolerate people with different lifestyles out of self-preservation. If I were to disdain everyone not like me, I would just be sitting around my house staring at my walls. Granted, that’s what I mostly do, anyway, but it’d be even more intense if I decided I couldn’t stand anyone not like me.

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