I've always loved the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Were I ever to reappear on stage again, it would be with those on my feet, in black leather capri pants, and a bandeau made from desert army fatigue material with a black satin underlining, an off-shoulder asymmetric model. One that reflects my hair, cut in an asymmetric style. Because that's the word that describes me: asymmetric. Am I some kind of size 3? Heck no. I was a body-builder. I had real muscles, and lifted real weights. Bulked, no, just really really strong. Hard. I'm a woman. I like it that way. And, my sunglasses. Neo style, from the Matrix. Long coats. Skirts cut on the bias, soft material, texture, wild to no jewelry.
My politics are the same. Fiscal conservative, social liberal. Somewhere between King (R) and Kusinisch (D). The old shoes I was given the choice to wear growing up just don't fit. Tell me where in either the Republican or Democratic party would I fit, exactly? When what I think is that we need money for social programs to help those who have worked, or who can't work, and still allow for businesses to have room to breathe without corporate corruption. Free markets, not ones that are manipulated into coiled springs that pop out of jack in the boxes when Pop Goes the Weasel is finished playing. More below the fold.
I don't much like the way we are forced to parse ourselves up to fit in society either. With the discovery of haplogroups (mitochondrial and Y), through DNA testing people know where they come from. Race, to me, is a non-issue because of it. The idea that the US Census still ranks people as white, black, spotted and whatever is repellant to me. There is no room for this in the light of science.
And the fundies attitudes on marraige, as anything other than a legal contract, is based on a shared belief system that has very little grounding in Western historical tradition. Right now I'm looking at the work of the seventh century poet, Hesoid, who because of the large population that could not be supported in Greece and the Aegean islands at that time, said that late marriage was the way to go, and one kid only, two will be pushing it (from Works and Days).
Moving forward in time, marriage among the Germanic tribes had always been a simple affair: you exchanged a ring. It was only after the Catholic Church began intervening in local affairs, plucking the peasants of their wealth, that marriage became a question of defining the third-cousin society. All motivated by economics. Now, we have the assertion that this is some holy union defined by God, into which only specific sets of people can enter. Everyone else can have "states rights" but is not allowed to be "married". To me this is just stupid. One of my favorite movies was The Guru, a Baliwood spoof out a couple years ago, in which the lead characters were doing a Baliwood version of "You're the One that I Want" from Grease. To this day, the movie is up there on my top ten, precisely because it echoes so many points of this diary.
And what about questions of sexuality? No matter how you "identify" it seems to me the labels might not be the best way to go. Identification after all, really means describing yourself in a way that enables you to find someone you resonate with. That alone, in this day and age, is hard enough. If you want to saddle yourselves with more flair by stringing a list of adjectives after your identification, be my guest. It's really bad that we have a populace for whom the idea of labels seems to be de rigeur.
How many times this campaign did I hear "Obama, he's not like us". Well, what in Zandru's Seven Hells is "us"? Of course he's like us. He is, to me, Everyman.
Even among Fundies, the stripes of individualism raise their ugly colors: the classic one to me is "I believe in the Bible absolutely. However I also believe that no one knows how long one of God's days was". Kinda took them slightly out of step with their church, but what the heck. Witness the chicanery -- the lying and brutality of McCain's hate smears, the falsity of Palin's adherence to this perfect mom model while behaving as she has in the past. Are you kidding me? Is this back to "do as I say and not as I do?" Or, maybe, they never left.
My point is: I don't care if you're a "straight-identified" male who digs wearing things from Victoria's secret, if you like yourself, and it turns you on, go for it. If you are a woman who likes the feel of her own hard muscle against iron, like I do, and digs smart musical guys with some education behind them, more power to you. If you like to cut yourself off at your neck and do the couch potato thing and have sex at Christmas, whatever. Or maybe you're gay or straight and just want to be gay on Tuesday, If you flip-switch and can make it all work out on Wednesday, more power to you. If you can actually see the humor in the whole situation and laugh about it that's even better. The deal is, find someone that you resonate with, because without that vibe, no relationship means a whole hell of a lot in the long run. It's no one's business but your own, and as long as you are a consenting adult that's the way it should be. Reason I like Rocky Horror Picture show is because all these silly avatars of ourselves are put right there, on stage, for us to see.
These old models and caricatures of world society leave me stone cold. From politics to sexuality, the shoes don't fit anymore. I have my Ruby Slippers firmly on my feet. My best wish for every one of us is that we all get our own pair, soon. We've built glass houses around these old constructs, and now its time to replace them with transparent aluminum.
Beam me up, Scotty.