In the last post about gatekeeping, I went on a wild tangent about my mother and how she did not accept any part of my being so I stopped telling her anything of importance. It relates to gatekeeping because when I was in my early thirties, I finally realized that I would never be what she wanted me to be. Bear with me because this is related to gatekeeping–at least in my brain.
Every time I told her something personal about me, I expected more support than I got. Which, to be clear, was no support. Jvery major announcement I made to her was met with negativity. And, since I was a slow learner, I kept telling my mother things I really should have kept to myself.
They include: Being bi; getting my first tattoo (I have four now, including one to cover my shitty first one); losing my religion (I never reallly told my mother untilc she would not shut up about her God and I blurted out, “I don’t give a fuck about your God!” Do not recommend; not wanting children; not wanting to get married; and studying Taiji. You would think the last one would be innocuous, but she said, “That will let the devil dance on your spine.” Which sounds intriguing, btw, but I have no idea why she said that. She tried to defend it, but it made no sense at all. It hurt just like her reaction to me telling her I was bi hurt. Oh, I don’t think I said–after saying that I had always been so boy crazy, the next thing she said was, “What’s next, animals?”
By the way, I don’t understand that at all. Why is the go-to for homophobes animals? I don’t understand the logic of thinking cross-species interaction is even on the table, let alone the first thing to cross your mind–well, technically second, but still.
Nowadays, I’m not keen about the word ‘bi’, but it’s still the best of the insufficient words. The current thought behind bi is ‘people who are like me and people who aren’t’ in terms of gender. So, for me, that means agender and every other gender. I have considered and rejected pansexual, omnisexual, and anything else of that ilk. I’m a plainspoken person, though very verbose, so I like every day vernacular.
I tried to use queer for a while, but people just assume that means gay. This is is the issue with many of the labels, by the way. POC means black even though supposedly, it’s person of color. Same with BIPOC. It all means black because other colors don’t exist.
Basically, I don’t like labels so I try to use the least-label-y terms possible. Bisexual. Areligious. Agender. Obviously, I can’t use asexual beacuse that means a much different thing, but I would love to be able to say I’m just sexual. That sounds way to smug/smarmy, though. That’s the problem with going outside the norms with many of these terms. Because they are not well-known, I come off pretentious/weird/just making shit up/just wanting to be different.
Now, here’s the thing. There’s a trace of truth in the last. Not ‘just’ wanting to be different, but I do want to be different. Or rather, I am different. It’s not a question of wanting; I just am. And, yeah, there’s a ‘just’ in there. I have allways been different. For the first twenty years of my life, that meant I thought I was broken, defectinve, and worthless. I was fat, ugly, and most emphatically, Not A Girl. I didn’t like any of the things considered feminine, and I had no clue about American culture because my father was a Taiwanese nationalist who only cared about Taiwan. He hated living in America and eventually went back to Taiwan.
In my mid-thirties, I started studying Taiji, and that was when I began to realize that maybe it wasn’t me. I mean, it was me, but it wasn’t. I was that different, and it was fine. At that time, it was more bravado tthan actual conviction, but it was at least something other than self-loathing.
Anyway, being the weirdo for my whole life has made it so that I don’t care if people like what I do or not. I unintentionally discovered that people get really flustered if I smile and enthusiastically agree witth them that I have horrible taste. I wasn’t doing it to be a jerk the first time, but after I saw how well it worked, I kept doing it.
I realized why after doing it several times. For a certain group of people who want to tell people their opinion suck, it’s a form of negging. Negging is predicated on the belief that people want you to think well of them and will scramble to make it happen. That’s the basic of it. It puts them in a one-down position and they will try to please you.
So, if someone tells me that me hating The Big Lewbowski is unthinkable and a bad opninion, I’m supposed to want to make them think better of me and change my opinion. The problem is, I don’t give a shit. Maybe it’s because my brain is neurospicy or beacuse I’ve been told so constantly throughout my life that my opinions are trash, but I just don’t care.
It has become my secret superpower. Someone tells me they can’t believe I do/don’t like something and that I’m terrible for liking/not liking it, and I just smile and nod. “Yup! I have terrible taste in music!” Or movies. Or TV shows. Takes the wind right out of their sails, and fills me with such glee and merriment. It’s hilarious to me, and it never gets old.
I do know why people get so offended/upset/horrified when people don’t like what they do. Reason one, it’s a team thing. An out/in thing. “You are eeither one of us or you’re not.” If you are one of us, you are cool.If you are not, you’re dead to un. The second reason is that a lot of people over-identify with the things they like. They see it as a part of them. I have more sympathy to that viewpoint beacuse pop culture is meant to be emotive–it’s should hit you in the feels. And if someone resonates with a movie, say, and thinks it says something about their identity,
I’m tired so I will finish this, er, continue it in the next post.