Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: society norms

Gatekeeping’s gotta go

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I’m mad that libertarian has been coopted to mean narcissistic asshole who doesn’t give a shit about his (and it’s definitely a ‘his’) fellow man. I used to say I was liberttarian in my ideals, but I never wanted to be associated with the term itself. Now, however, I stay as far away from the word as possible. Too many assholes have warped it into something other than letting people be themselvves as long as no one is hurting anyone else (deliberately and with malicious intent. As defined by me).

I’m grumpy. Why? Because I was reading a thread about professional norms and one of the ways it devolved was someone proudly declaring that they were a coffee snob. Coffee was only to be drank (drunk?) black, damn it. End of. Like, she wrote that with her full chest. She’s not the only one, by the way. I’ve read and heard that so many times.

Same with tea. Those funny Brits who like to think they invented tea stand by putting milk in their tea. Which, fine! If you want to drink tea with milk, go for it. Asian people have milk tea, too, but it’s a specialty and not for daily dinking. Well, at least before Taiwanese people invented boba tea, which is now everywhere.

Apparently, if you dare try to order tea without milk in Britain, you will be exiled with prejudice. Never mind that the people they stole tea from did not drink it that way. Again, I have no issue with people drinking their tea that way–until they say it’s the only way/the proper way to drink tea. Then I have to laugh in their face as a person of Asian descent. Oh, and as someone who is lactose intolerant, no thank you very much.

But, wow, do people have so many opinions about how food should be eaten, what music is good or bad, how video games should be played, and so much more. I’m particularly irked about food, though, because I have  struggled all my life with food and eating. It’s hard not to as a human being. I was going to say in American society, but it’s not limited to America. It’s just a different flavor of toxic negativity than it may be in other countries.

I mean honestly, who. the. fuck. cares? If you’re not the one eating it, then keep your eyes on your own plate.

I really can’t get why people are so–yes, I can. It’s a way to sort people as in or out as are so many of our other societal norms. Like choosing a sports team or something like that. For a ot of people, being in the in-group is a comfort. Or at the very least, having hard and clear rules. It’s comforting, I guess.

For me, I find rules and laws to be restrictive and almost punitive if there is not a good reason for them. Like,  I can get with not driving forward on red because that’s a safety issue. Not stealing other people’s shit? Yeah, that makes sense to me, too.


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A letter to my younger self, part four

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In yesterday’s post, I went off on a tangent because of course I did about how much I love tangents/side notes/footnotes/side roads. Then, because I’m me, I spent a healthy chunk of time on that instead of what I actually meant to write about.

Which, in this case, turned out to be about how much I was bashed about the head when I was in my twenties for not womanning the right way. And how it was the planting of a seed (ironic in the context of having children) for me questioning if I was a woman at all.

Side note: Here’s the thing about gender–for me. My biggest feeling about gender is that I am not a guy. I wanted to be once when I was a kid because boys clearly had more freedom and autonomy, but that’s not the same as thinking I am one. More to the point, I don’t want to be one because of the negativity associated with being male. In the general sense, I mean, not specifically. And I don’t want to have to deal with that bullshit, either. The patriarchy hurts women, yes, more than it hurts men, but it’s not great for the latter, either.

When it comes to thinking about my identity as a woman, I draw a giant blank. This is because I (still) don’t know what that means. I can think of how I’ve been treated because I was perceived as a woman, how women treat me (for better and for worse), and how that has affected me. But it doesn’t make me FEEL like a woman.

As for nonbinary, I probably would have chosen that (maybe) when I was a teen if I knew it was a possibility back then. K and I have talked about this–how we both would have went with nonbinary if it was a thing when we were teens/in our twenties. As old people now (in our early fifties), it’s not at the top of either of our important things to do.

Also, for me, there is no gender that feels right to me. I sat with ‘woman’ for a long time, and it did nothing for me. I can relate to women because we’ve had shared experiences, but when I focused on the word woman and tried to relate it to myself, I came up empty. I did not feel anything other than a vague, “Oh, yeah. I used to be called that.” I don’t hate it when others call me she, but it doesn’t really ring true with me, either.

I have explained it thusly: It’s like an ill-fitting raincoat. Yes, it’ll keep the rain out–mostly. But it’s uncomfrortable and restricting (if it’s too small), and I’ll breathe a sigh of relief once I take it off. In other words, it does the job–barely–but it isn’t the best for the job–by far.

When it’s raincoats–I don’t have to stick with the too-small coat. I can buy another one, an umbrella, or just run around in the rain (which is my personal favorite). When it comes to gender, though, they all feel weird to me in one way or the other. With that in mind….


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Going low or no-contact with faaaaaamily

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One of the problems with a society that gives lip service to family is that it will often be resistent to any negativinty surrounding faaaaamily. Any time you need to defend something that heavily, it means that fundamental thing is broken.

An example that I ofen use. When I was twenty, I realized that I did not want kids. And, more to the point, that I did not have to have them! It was the best realization of my life (at some point, I will do a comprehensive post about how the best realizations of my life were negative ones–meaning, that I realized I was NOT something or did NOT want something, rather than positive ones), and I felt a lightness that I had not felt beforehand.

And, at the time, I naively thought that it was a one-and-done decision. I wasn’t going to have kids. Boom! That’s it. I was a sweet, summer child, but in my defense, I was raised by wolves. I did not know much about societal expectations because my parents did not have any interest in being a part of American society so did not impart any of those norms to me. Yes, in my ancestral culture (Taiwanese), there is the expectation that a female-shaped person will have kids, but I didn’t think it was as strong in American culture.

Like I said, I was a sweet summer child. So yioung. So naive.

Women started asking me about it when I was mid-twenties. I will note it was only women. Men just wanted to get in my pants and probably didn’t care want me to get pregnant from it. But women would ask, and I would honestly answer. I never brought it up myself, but it was a common topic of conversation. I want to emphasize that I never, ever, got into a rant about my thoughts of having children. I simply said that I didn’t have them/wasn’t going to have them. They would press and ask why. I wouuld say that I did not want them.

That was it. I never elaborated more than that. And you would think that would be the end of that, but it never was. For some reason, the women felt the need/urge/compulsion to arguue with me. And the one that got to me the most were the women who were angry at me because “You must think I’m a loser to have children/want them.” Uh, no? I don’t think about you and your progeny at all? It literally is not on my mind–at all. I don’t care if someone else has children or not.

This was so confusing. Why were they angry at me for making a decision (that they dragged out of me) that had no effect on them at all? It took me a decade or so to truly grasp what was going on. It’s beacuse they were invested in the status quo and societal norms. Or that they had never questioned them all their lives. They grew up assuming they would get married and have children, and that would be that. Then, they were vaguely dissatisfied with their lives (or not so vaguely) and could not figure out why.

I walzed along and blithely say that I’m not having children. I wasn’t questioning the status quo; I was just blowing past it. I didn’t care about having children. I didn’t care if other people wanted them or not. I didn’t understand agonizing over not having them or falling over yourself (as a woman. Let’s face it. Most dudes were not pushed to defend their decision to this degree to not have children. By other men, at least) to apologize for not having them. I didn’t want them, wasn’t having them, and it was glorious! It made me feel so good, I wanted to hire a skywrite plane and have it emblazoned in the clouds.


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