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McCamy Taylor

(19,240 posts)
Mon Mar 30, 2015, 02:20 PM Mar 2015

Born This Way

Why do we choke up when we see a stranger empathize with a gay couple denied service in a restaurant? Being kicked out of a Mexican eatery in Mississippi seems like such a first world problem. There are folks all over the world who are being murdered for their sexual orientation and the color of their skin and their religious beliefs. Why does this little--in the relative scheme of things---bit of discrimination evoke such a massive amount of emotion?

For all our rhetoric about the right to freedom and happiness, if you are born in the USA, you are expected to toe the line. This is true for men, who are told from an early age that big boys do not cry. And for girls, who are told that little ladies do not fight. Since sorrow and anger are two essential human emotions, we resist the social boundaries. We try to express our true feelings--our emotions of anger, sadness and love. And time after time, we get knocked down, slapped back, ostracized, criticized---until it seems that the only way we can survive is by wearing a mask.

And so, we enter adulthood hating the selves that we truly want to be. We enlist in the military and allow ourselves to be used as fodder for the latest war for oil, because being a soldier means that we are real men. We accept 78 cents on the dollar of what our male coworkers make and do not say a word or make a wave, we allow our children to grow up in poverty, because being a doormat means that we are ladies.

But secretly, we long to be ourselves---the true selves which society condemns. And so, when we see someone else, say a person of color or a gay couple or someone who is disabled or a member of a minority religion treated unfairly, cruelly, we react. We can not cry for our lost selves---we have absorbed society's criticism so completely that it now defines who were are. We have been incorporated into the machine, perfect little cogs and wheels which do not question their function. But in our hearts, we remember and know This is not who I am. I was forced to be this way. And so, when we see someone else who has the courage to stand up against those all too powerful social forces in the defense of someone else, a stranger, we say our quiet Thank yous. Because that person stood up for all of us.

All of us are Black. All of us are Gay. All of us are Women. All of us are Children. All of us are Disabled. All of us are Muslim. All of us are Different, squares pegs forced into round holes, our rough edge smoothed down, the wounds of our social indoctrination still raw no matter how old or successful we are.

Put your paws up, baby. You were born this way.



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