Learning and Growing

A long time ago I used to say things like "ugh she's such a slut." pretty regularly. I used to clump people into stereotypes and not consider it racist and even though my ignorance was pretty harmless and not actually hurting anyone it was hurting EVERYONE. It just took me years to figure this out. It was pretty common for me to ignore what was going around in the world because it wasn't affecting me personally and to be honest it was just uncomfortable. I used to explain this by saying "I was too empathetic" which is an oxymoron if there ever was one. I was going to separate myself from everything that made me feel uncomfortable by stating that I was a person who could easily put myself in other shoes, what a moron!The reason I bring this up right now is because I am not that person but I recognize that person a lot. I see that person every day in people I encounter and it makes me sad and happy that I could acknowledge that. What changed? Maybe it was age? maybe I just decided to open my mind a bit?

 A year ago while talking with a friend about some interaction his friend had with a girl he said "she was acting like a slut, you don't respect girls that act like sluts." What the hell did that mean? I reacted unlike I usually did. I think I screamed at this person, stormed down my street and at one point started crying. It was the first time I felt so betrayed by how women are seen. The words coming from a friend, I was so ignorant to think that this is not how the world is. The word and the education I was seeking was found in feminism. Now this won't be a rant about feminism because that is not the only thing that I am learning about or opening my eyes too. Cut to Miley Cyrus....

Sometimes when I state this I get the biggest of eye rolls, but I think we can all see where this is going. Her VMA performance got a lot of slack but I am not here to hate on her "overtly" sexual dance moves or her get up but at the fact that she uses a black culture stereotype as a prop without seeing how harmful that can actually be. Moving towards cultural appropriation which is something I am learning about now. The thing about cultural appropriation is that it's such a fine line and it is not reserved for black culture but for all cultures. This is probably the hardest thing to learn about because a lot of the time it is not meant to be seen as racist by the artist, or person but within this world it can easily offend or harm. The other day my co-worker was asking us to watch this video of this women twerking at Walmart (yes, I know!) no one wanted to but he played it anyways. I wasn't going to say anything to him as he already eye rolls me any time I open my mouth "Why don't you know how to have fun?" he says apparently I am too uptight for him. Regardless he was watching it on the computer next to me and so I looked over. At one point he said "I wish she would lift up her dress so we could see if her ass is real." This is the kind of shit that cultural appropriation creates. If you think I'm reaching I ask you to reconsider.

What I discovered though is that people rarely want to have a conversation about offense or why things are seen in this light. Anytime I bring something up I always get told I am overreacting or that "I just can't enjoy anything." Which makes me remember why I stayed so ignorant in the first place. Still I can't let myself go back to that, I want to educate myself. I want to hear others opinions, I want you to tell me I'm wrong and list the reasons why. That is the only way I can grow and learn, and that's what I plan to do.