Better Business

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Freedom is the simple recognition that your neighbor will inevitably have to be offered all the same rights as you.

You only sacrifice a freedom, if say, it’s for something that negates the freedom of another individual.

The simple answer is, if you would hate to have something done to you, you are called to sacrifice doing it to others.

Straight, white, “normal” people want the right to gender identify, they just don’t get challenged on it as much. But we do, and we take it for granted. You don’t have to respect your neighbor’s identification. No one can make you. But your neighbor, whomever he or she or however they identify is, probably works, and probably has money, and probably has network connections.

You respect how they identify, you call them how they prefer to be called, because selfishly, greedily, connivingly, they are valuable. And people who get along with more people are going to be better at business. End of story.
They’re going to get more out of life.

Say you hate someone over their skin color when it’s really your own lack of self esteem. But eventually, they’re going to receive every right you have been offered. Including the justified right to hate you right back.

Prejudice, racism, sexism, I’m not sure these things are inherently so bad as they are stupid. They’ve been cursing and tackling civilizations for millennia, while we crucify and martyr anyone who dares recognize the value our economies ignore.

And that is the value of love.
One sided consideration that never asks to be reciprocated.

It may not make you wealthy, but it will make you impervious to poverty.

And I wish I could hand you loftier reasoning, but if nothing else, trust that black kid, that person you don’t know how to call, people who don’t speak enough of your language to know how to call you, have money in their pockets. Value to their person. Probably spend it here and there, when and where they feel invited, welcome, and free.

Conservatism isn’t dying.
Natural causes are revealing it was never in our nature.
We’ve never been a conservative creature.

If we were, we’d have gone down with the trees, and never learned to stand upright. If we were conservative, there wouldn’t be this much diversity in our species.

In fact, one could argue, that if homo sapiens had been a more conservative animal in the past, we’d all still be black.

No matter how you look at your neighbors, exercise no right you would not also extend to them.
Because in the end,
it will come back for you.

Not because it is right.
It really is just better business.

Mind your LGBTQ’s

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

These words. This string of mismatched letters. LGBTQ. And what do
any of them have to do with me and you, I don’t know. Is it high heel shoes?
Is it Saint Laurent on a man’s ruby lips? Is it who you choose to be with?
Because straight people have worn all those choices.
Heterosexuality speaks with all these voices.
But we do not think to call them anything other than human. This prefix, trans.
Unless you’re transhuman, who cares? Have you ever undergone pain to be different,
not the same, to look at in a mirror who you see in your brain.
If it helps one and does not hurt two, what is it to you?

I do not take for granted that as long as I stay panted
nobody cares what is between my legs.
I do not take for granted that as long as their name isn’t Brandon
no one really worries who I’m with.

Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Questioning. Nobody calls me straight.
Nobody refers to my anatomy when they discuss my sexuality.
So if our goal is pure equality, why are we labeling anyone
based on information it is not appropriate for us to own.
Words. And these words give shallow-minded people an excuse to dehumanize.
To participate in uncomfortable conversations that might not happen otherwise.

This is not a reference to the color of your skin.
This is not bias based on the historical and cultural relevance
and transitions of your people. I’m sorry if this comes as a shock,
but you can be a straight man, and not carry a cock.
You can be a woman, in my mind,
and I never need to know
what you left behind.

It is inappropriate. It is offensive. Disrespectful, and borderline mad.
Discussing someone’s sexuality like that. It is an epidemic in this country,
looking at people sexually, completely disregarding if they invited us to or not.
It is the seed of assault. It is the germ that breeds sexual violence and hurtful fetishism.

We don’t have to support our LGBTQ’s.
We don’t accept people’s differences because it is right to do.
The definition of freedom means we do not have these conversations.
If you’re hurting nobody while helping yourself, you’re golden.
You’re just like the rest of us. Pure human.

And if we asked them these questions,
we would be much more aware of all the queer stuff straight people do.
But we don’t get asked. Because that string of letters. It doesn’t include S.

An Ironically Open Letter to the Alt-Right

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Isn’t it control alt delete? Wasn’t sure if you were freezing up on an old screen, I have to do that as well when what I’m looking at fails to update how I want it to.

Moving on, you really like paper work don’t you? Bureaucracy seems to have become more a philosophy in your movement. I mean it might be hard for you to see a person as a person without checking their driver’s license first, am I right? Something about their image and name and height and weight and birth date all on a little laminated card between fingers. That has to be an intriguing experience for someone who believes identity lives in skin.

But as far as race, that is not skin color, correct? I sometimes burn old magazines and newspapers to start fires, and every now and again this really interesting thing happens, where a book on fire will actually turn its pages as it burns. If you get a chance in the next few years, take a look at a science book or two as it gives you its dying attempt at seeding information anywhere other than solely on paper. We are all all races. You, white man, are an African. This is not climate change. This is not human ownership of such a process. This is not environmentalism. That is not disputed science. We have read our genetic code like it were some special form of government identification, and it read we all come up one continent. We have genetic codes for every color skin all wrapped up in ours. Look at it this way, the way you look is more about the doorway you passed through coming into the world, than the room you were in before you took a step forward. Those last few generations of skin color and nose shape and eye color and hair type, the tip of an iceberg of genetic information stored just beneath the surface. So you’re going to have to claim and build this identitarian ethic all on your own. It has no foundation in truth.

And gender. That is half your fucking species man. That is your mother. Your daughter. Your sister. Hopefully your friend. They don’t have to whoop you in an arm wrestling competition to convince you you don’t exist without them. We are equal by necessity you bozo. We represent that fact in pay, protections, access and respect, not because its right or a nice thing to do or a special gift for your lady. You do that because it is reality. Women are not an ingredient in the stew, they’re the fucking water you start with. They’re half the equation. You strengthen and improve their way of life, their self-esteem, the respect offered them by their society, you enhance the entire system in one fell swoop. You support half of all of our foundation when you right this equation. You might feel good when you buy her flowers. But give her your eyes as an equal, and you will see the superhero you’ve been keeping in the kitchen. She walks city streets having lived through your worst fears head high, shoes sharp, face painted. She has heard words, and felt pressures, and experienced pain you don’t know exist. Learn them. Gain a friend. An equal. Make our species whole. Keep the flowers. Make the world ours. Because it will die if it stays mine.

That being said, a little advice for your ethic. I would love to be hated for the color of my skin. For being a man. For some externally perceived categorical assessment of my identity. Puts me in the perfect place to practice powers you won’t believe exist in my category. Allows me access to so much more subversive development of ideas and plans. Get to know me, talk to me, even feign friendliness just to access some better, more nuanced understanding of the answers to who, and how, and why, and what for and what all I am, and more importantly, all I intend. To put it simply, empathy and consideration are keys to greater hate. Just saying. Try it. Even if the sole motivation is ‘how the hell can we hate these people just a little more effectively?’ But I get the feeling that’s not going to happen. Not while this nice neat little laminated card stock photo identification stays cradled between those peachy white well callused fingers. You don’t want to know me. You want the me that can be erased from the world by a pair of scissors. Which is why my movement will always be stronger than yours. You have numbers.

But we, the people.