The Equality of Shame

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Straight people are just as transgender than transgendered people. This is an issue with perception and vocabulary, and how they affect our self-determined reality. You do not have to understand, agree with, or accept what it means to be transgender, to realize sexual privacy is a basic human right of all people. I know, it’s confusing, all these movements, finally putting who they are and how they live out there in front of you to see. But think about it, a man holding the hand of the woman he loves is not seen as an invitation for their sex lives and preferences to be publicized. You want equal respect? Well, you can’t handle equal respect. So I’m asking, as a temporary measure, at least, for the equality of shame. You should be ashamed for discussing someone’s sexuality out loud and openly without them consenting. You should take the value of your own shame, and assume it is similar to the same shame felt by others. Who do not want their personal, biological, anatomical, emotional, or sexual reality discussed like the weather, or a recent football game, or a financial liability.
Yes, a healthy level of shame, that should do.
Just enough to cover us for now.
And still put so much shame on you.

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.

The Greater Movement

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

In societies where the scales have been tilted, the argument for balance looks like a defense for the status of things, though it is not. It looks like this because someone always benefits from imbalance. And no one who ever suffered the short end of the stick has patience for the longer end.

North Carolina Conservatives and the Bathroom of Secrets

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

We have an economic system that has, since its inception, maintained a wavering level of poverty, unemployment and homelessness. It’s called capitalism, and accordingly, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We have a large movement within the scientific community that, with or without any validity or backing or proof, believes the industries of Mankind are changing the climate patterns of this planet in exceedingly detrimental ways. The bees who seed the pollen into every fruit or vegetable we eat are disappearing. The scientists we don’t believe about the impact we have on our environment are injecting bacterial DNA into our food so that it can eat poison and multiply.

Why are we tax-funding a conversation about bathroom policies?

I know this could easily be read as a rhetorical question, but in seriousness. Why? It is completely, one hundred percent, legal to report any suspicious persons or activity in or around a restroom. Essentially, these big strong proud fellows whose daughters would wither on the vine without them around are, in the most costly and publicized manner, expressing a distrust in their own progeny’s ability to detect a threat and act on it. Because seeing a man in a woman’s restroom, whether illegal or legal, is threatening, and therefore completely within the realm of reporting to the administrators of a facility, the local police department, or even eventually local, regional and state government officials. But this is not the case. These complaints and reports are not rolling in. They are hypothetical. Imagined up by vapid, sexist fathers who are not confident enough in their own masculinity to have any faith whatsoever in a woman’s ability to perceive a threat. And that is all good and well, but we should not pay for their anxiety.

And that is what we are doing. Every discussion in the state legislature, every salaried position taking calls, hired lawyers, political ads, public announcements, social media managers and image consultants. I don’t want that. I want what little money we have running through state government to go to the procurement and security of three things. Food, water, and shelter. Apart from that, I have just enough faith in Mankind and its many daughters, to entrust each facility, building, each location, every single person who uses a restroom wherever they are, to save us some money and keep determining for themselves what is safe or not.

And seriously, what does the word freedom mean to our government, if not that. It is not a matter of winning arguments or proving points. This is not an expectation we should have of any government. Help us propagate food. Secure our water and instill plans for promised drought. Preserve our land, our right to shelter, and to defend what is ours. Apart from that, freedom means leaving cosmetic social issues completely out of expensive, politicized, tax-funded conversations. Especially ones that hurt our image, diminish our tourism, and further socially ostracize people who already felt out of place in their own bodies.

I don’t support a call-center republic. I don’t support holding signs and standing outside office buildings and eating cold McDonald’s while googling the rates of single rooms at the Red Roof. I don’t support marches, lining up to increase police budgets and the gadgets they get awarded to keep our movements thwarted. I say ignore this law. This ban. Any woman or man or institution who expresses supporting it, ignore them also. Pay attention to government when and where it supports us in the things we all need in order to be free.

Food. Water. Shelter.

There was a bill we paid to create this bill. There is a bill we are paying to have it repealed. And there was no fire, no damage, no outcry for help against an active threat. Ignore any human being who claims to be a leader, yet wastes even a moment discussing funding such asinine, clearly social, partisan, political agendas. Ignore anyone who, this day and age, with the issues staring us in the face, thinks we have time to waste checking birth certificates outside every ladies room.

It is a harmful distraction. And worse, expensive.