Why Natural Initiations Are Not Enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FOzVKadCDQ Do women need formal initiations? Life provides us with natural initiations. We can't avoid it. Maidens don't ask to be born. Birth is their initiation. The 1st Seductress has menstruation thrust upon them. Mothering...
When You Can’t Do It Anymore
We all have that moment when we feel we can't do it anymore. We realize that something in our lives is an overwhelming and total wreck. Maybe we're a hoarder. We always knew it, but now it's in our face. We feel the weight of it, how it is sapping the life from us,...
Create a Chatting Bench to Inspire Connection
I just learned about chatting benches! They are benches with signs on them to invite people to talk with strangers. Chatting benches are found in England, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland, Ukraine, and the United States. Chatting benches are also called talking...
Your experience when you were little is very reminiscent of mine too.
It is terrible, the “what are you?” questions. It makes my soul cry and cringe a bit to hear it again. For me, it was multi-layered. It was not just about questioning only my general ethnicity, but the specifics of the “Asians.” Like “what kind of Asian, and what region, based on skin-tone, because only “lighter skinned Vietnamese” could possibly come from the north and not the south. That kind of ignorance and insensitivity, that I had to tolerate. But the “what are you” was also in question of my gender. When I was little, I was very androgynous, ambiguous and a shape-shifter. Simply tossing my hair left or right or under a hat made a difference. And I also love wearing what style clothes I like, whether boys’ or girl. It doesn’t matter. Look at nowaday with all this “unisex” and “everybody collection” stuff. Who cares! Clothes does not define gender or sex! I enjoy the versatility and full spectrum expression and cared very little about having to “appropriate present” myself as a specific gender to the general public.
The questions are not even asked as a genuine way to get to know or learn more about someone that comes as a poorly asked question. It was simply an insulting way to satisfy their curiosity and assert superiority and power. “What are you”, an animal, extraterrestrial, a thing.
It is truly sickening in the stomach to think about.
I imagine, if I had answered “earthling,” I would be laughed at, mocked at, and thrown rocks at.
😔 More kindness is witnessed amongst the wild animal kingdom than the human one.
So sorry that you experienced that. Thanks for sharing. I hope that people will read this and begin to think about what they are saying. Seeing all creatures from a heart space, a space of inclusion, may change our language.