Cross Post: Rules and regulations

Rules and regulations
Posted Today at 08:12 PM by Keenkitty
I am not stupid enough to go shooting off my mouth to purposely offend people just to get myself tossed out on my behind.

In fact those of you who know me really well, know that when I get angry I don't get foul mouthed and irrational.

I get thoughtful and articulate.

The points that really rankled me was not that I got mod-slapped. Honestly with all the friends on here that I have lost who never come back here (you all know who they are), with the sheer number of PM's and messages and e-mails telling me that they too were mod-slapped for similar "offenses" I was feeling 50/50 on my comfort level talking about my life here.

However with the recent adoption of my brother and his partners new daughter. and the upcoming wedding of my Godmother, I was feeling really good about "LGBT" culture.

I was feeling like the idea that my godmother used to be a genetic man and now is going to get married to a wonderful man as a beautiful bride meant more people were OK with talking openly and honestly about what really goes on in our lives and how we really see ourselves.

We talk about tattoos in naughty places. We have entire blogs and threads devoted to piercing our bits. But that is OK because that type of information titillates but doesn't push too far past the comfort zone.

Yet if I say that I had over 240 partners before deciding to marry Crash and 100 of them were female I wonder how long it is going to take before I am told that is "inappropriate language or content"?

I do NOT talk about our bedroom life on here. I have never talked about the frequency or the lack there of on this blog. But I talk about my home boys joking around with me because they themselves are comfortable enough in their masculinity to hang around with our friends who are gay, straight, bi, purple with yellow polka dots, or disabled like me.

They treat each person on their individual merits or demerits as a case by case scenario. The fact that I wear boxers, appreciate women, have a sordid track record, and wear men's clothing and identify more with my homosexual brother than my bisexual sister doesn't matter to them.

They love KJ the music lover. They love the writer who wrote such a scathing review of a friends new restaurant that he still won't let us in there.

They love me because I treat everyone the way I would want t be treated and I am still hurt and angry that people are told to "Just pipe down and do what they tell you" or to not cause a fuss when something is really fundamentally screwed up.

It feels like they are saying: Be who you are, just, be fun LGBT, not out LGBT and not too much LGBT.

Better yet, just leave off the "T" because it makes us really uncomfortable.

The thing is. I used to be one of those people. I used to be uncomfortable and against the "T" in LGBT. So I can understand where they are coming from. But I never went as far as to ban someone else from talking about their life.

Life is a library, you don't like one book you walk away and get another book. You don't walk it up to the librarian and demand it be burned because someone else might read it.

You know I wouldn't talk to my godmother for three years when she started transitioning. Then I went to a conference and heard a Kate Bornstein lecture. I offered to take her out for lunch and ended up sitting in her car after wards crying in her arms.

She told me imagine if you were forced to wear dresses all the time, and hose, and put your hair up, or worse, shave it off, cover it, and never allowed show your face.

I told her I would feel like someone else was wearing my skin.

That night I went to my Godmothers house with cookies, Pricilla Queen of the Desert, and a 4 pack of Guinness. I let her paint my toenails, we sat up talking, laughing, and crying.

The next day after my shower I grabbed my boxers and pulled them on and saw her in her makeup and robe.

I was shocked because she was beautiful. SHE was beautiful. I'd never thought of my godfather as a great looking person. But My godmother was poised, elegant, smiling, and beautiful.

I changed my mind about being weird-ed out or against the "T" in LGBT after that.

So I guess yeah this is a community for us to talk about long hair. But we talk about other things. We seem to pick and choose what we get offended about and what we choose to find appropriate and inappropriate.

However, if I were to use that same logic in my life 12 years ago I would have wrote off my Godmother and never been involved with the LGBT community and have the many friends that I have. Many of which have come on here and later left because they didn't feel welcome.

Merriam-Webster defines "Community" as:

"Main Entry: com·mu·ni·ty
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈmyü-nə-tē\

1 : a unified body of individuals, people with common interests, an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society: social activity : fellowship d : a social state or condition."

We are a LONG HAIR community. Not a Long Hair >insert neutral non offensive term< Community.

It would be really unfortunate if we started to pick and choose what types, and whom those "various kinds of individuals" can be.

KJ