Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: social anarchy

Oh what a feeling (realization)

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I’m back with more about masking, what I consider ‘normal’, and why I’m a social anarchist. And, yes, these are all connected. Maybe just in my mind, but they are connected. Also, this was the last post I wrote.

By the way, I will forever be grateful to Ian for pointing out that he thought I was an anarchist. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me taht I might be one. Probably because of the very negative portrayal of anarchists in the media. I know, I know. Grain of salt and all that, but when a message is constantly pushed in your face (like neurodivergent people are broken/flawed, ahem) , it’s easy to unthinkingly accept that propaganda as truth.

Here’s the thing about rules (to me). I follow them when they make sense. Such as road rules. It makes sense to follow traffic signals, for example. If people driving on the road relied on everyone negotiating who had the right of way, well, there would be a lot more deaths on the road than there already are.

Same with taxes. Grossly simplified, I believe in the collective common good and doing what we can for those among us who have the least. I think everyone should have a roof over their head, food to eat, and the ability to see a doctor when they need to (for a few very basic human rights). I believe it’s our duty to ensure that for everyone in our society. If that means cutting our defense budget, so be it.

Oh, by the way. This observation by Ian happened because I was saying that I was a libertarian with a small l in most situation. He said that I seemed more like an anarchist to him, and something clicked inside me when he said that–with some caveats.

I do believe in government. I don’t think having no government would be an improvement over having one. It’s not even that I don’t believe that individuals will do the right thing  (though I don’t), but more that you can’t run a large institution like a country without there being some structure. Even something as basic as roads. How is that going to happen if there isn’t an umbrella organization (government) that makes it happen? There are things that individuals simply can’t do.

Anyway. To veer sharply back to the topic at hand, I think part of the reason I’m an anarchist is because of my neurodivergency. What do I mean by that? I mean that the fact that I don’t see things in the way most people see them is one reason that I can strip away the window dressing (most of the time) and focus on the window.

Side note: I’m also a socialist, but that’s another post altogether. I feel the two go hand-in-hand, actually.


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Tradition? TRADITION!

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I’ve been musing about tradition for several posts, and I want to continue that gravy train. When I start thinking about something, I keep going until I am beyond tired of the subject. Then I think about it some more until I’m ready to drop it and never speak of it again. I’m not there yet with this topic so let’s roll!

I’ve talked about several topics that opened my eyes to the fact that what I was raised with wasn’t necessarily what I believed in. The one that really stands out, even thirty years later, is having sex for the first time. I was very much a wait-until-I-get-married gal when I was young. That was what I was raised with and it was what was pounded in my skull in my church. Sex is evil, bad, and will put your soul in eternal damnation. Until you get married and then it’s pure and holy. Angels will sing as you have sex, but only for procreation reasons!

By the time I entered college, I was what I called a TV–technical virgin. I had done everything with a man except P-I-V (or P-I-A, but that wasn’t even a possibility to me back then). It really was a matter of inches at that point, and I became less and less convinced that it mattered. To be clear, I never really believed in the Christian God with a capital G. I tried really hard, but I could never truly believe. Which made me feel crappy, obviously. i thought there was something wrong with me that I never felt that connection to God. It didn’t occur to me that maybe there was no connection to feel.

I prayed for God to change me into a boy when I was seven. Every night before I went to sleep, I prayed that I would wake up a boy. If God was that powerful, then it should be a breeze for Him, right? It never happened, obviously, and I would wake up, bitterly disappointed to still be a girl.

To be clear, it wasn’t that I felt as if I were a boy; I did not. I never have. I am not a man. I am very clear about that. However, because of all the shit I got as a young female-shaped person, mostly from older Taiwanese women (internalized misogyny is a bitch, yo), I thought the only solution was for me to be a boy instead.

“Girls don’t _____” was a recurring theme in my childhood. Fill in the blank with climb trees, play roughly, sit with your legs open, laugh loudly, and the list went on and on. It was some toxic, retro bullshit, even for the time, that I didn’t recognize was firmly not my problem.


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