Matt & Eli

Well, I didn’t see anyone I knew at first desperate-look-over of the crowd, so I ended up taking a seat surrounded by two empty seats – one of which was quickly filled by a girl who smelt obnoxiously horrible as only a pothead can. However, despite the watering of my eyes and the murky discomfort settling down in my lungs, when I looked over and saw Mr. Clare chatting with some of the professors I was absolutely taken and reassured by his wide, absolute smile. My first thought was: what’s his disability? And as for Matt? Her voice stunned me because my first take had been that she, too, was a man. But both of these questions, pleasantly and grumpily, were answered in their own ways.

I, personally, really do find it ridiculous that we have labels that force people into strict categories: male or female, straight or gay, healthy or disabled – after all, before the straight and gay distinction men were sleeping all over the place and nobody had any qualms with it. In fact, in Rome (back in the day) wives were kept primarily to run the house and have children and it was the male/male relationships that really mattered and established you socially. However, when Matt mentioned her nephew the “pft” kind of thought did pass my mind: it would sound pretty ridiculous for the doctor to say: “Congratulations! It has a penis!” vs. “Congratulations! It’s a boy!”

I did have a strong reaction, however, to the story about the Latino boy who was shot in middle school – the fact that the reasons for the murder were prematurely ironed out to hate crime because he was gay really pisses me off. This was absolutely unfair to both him/her and the boy who killed him. I was actually discussing this with a friend of mine who hadn’t gone to the lecture but who had read about that particular case before and he quickly corrected me that it wasn’t a hate crime but one more of desperation as the boy considered himself harassed, stalked, and verbally/emotionally abused by the other boy. This ironing out of all the other complexities and layers that make us who we are strips us of our humanity – by chiseling that boy down to merely “because he was gay” this stamped his entire being with nothing but the word “gay”, forcing him out of his name, personality, hobbies, friends, familial relationships, race, religion, everything.

I did disagree, however, with Matt when she mentioned the definition of racism that she liked – racism: a vulnerability to premature death. I think that is far, far, far too broad a statement to link it directly to racism. Now, I know a lot of my disagreements on this sort of thing will be (perhaps not by my fellow Paideia members, but by “other people”) answered with: she only feels that way because she’s a straight, middle-class, white woman and thus can’t possibly understand because she obviously hasn’t suffered.

Let me make this perfectly clear: so long as hatred exists – we all suffer.

It stunned me down to my tingly-bones when Matt announced that being a black person meant that things (acts of violence and hatred) happen all the time. It stunned me down to the rest of my tingly-bones when Eli announced that every month at least one person is murdered because of transphobia (hatred of those who are transgender). I know this’ll just sound school-girlish but I don’t understand how anyone can live with themselves for being so grimed up and clogged with ugliness as to feel and act in those ways toward another human being.

Why don’t we just call each other human beings and accept that our differences are OUR differences – and maybe we like them.