Hello again, Beautiful People. How was your Christmas? Did you enjoy the holiday? Cause it's okay if you didn't. Everyone has a right to feel a certain way about something. You are all free thinking people with your own opinions and thoughts. What's not okay is to almost force your opinion on others in an environment where you are in power and everyone else is essentially powerless. (Slight rant, sorry)
Last night I had a sleepover at my house with a couple of my friends. The last movie we watched before we fell asleep was The Danish Girl and let me tell you, it was a very good movie. For those of you that haven't seen it, it shows the journey one man (transgender woman) had to take to finally become the woman he always knew he was in 1920s Denmark. Maybe you have heard of her? Lili Elbe was her name and I found her story inspiring. But it also made me think about some other things. Like how far our society has come from those days and how far we still have to go.
Back to it not being okay to force your opinion on others.
Within the first week of starting Preparatoria, my class had recess taken away because we were being “too loud”. During that time while we were sitting around doing nothing, one of the prefects came in and went over some rules for the school. They were pretty basic. No bringing food into the classrooms, no crazy hair colors, no heavy makeup, short hair on boys. Nothing crazy.
But then he continues to say that he doesn't want to see any couples trying to hide or holding hands. Okay, that is understandable. He goes on to say that he especially doesn't want to see any homosexual couples doing any of that. That he doesn't have a problem with gays, but either way he doesn't want to see it. WHY?! If he doesn't have a problem and it doesn't matter, then he should NOT have felt the need to pretty much single them out and make them feel threatened and uncomfortable. I mean, I'm straight, I'm a girl and I'm comfortable with that. But just hearing him say that made me soooo annoyed and uncomfortable. We come to school to learn, not to be judged by who we are. If it was so easy for that teacher to make that comment, what's to stop him from being racist towards me? Or making some comment about my pronunciation in Spanish?
The suckiest part is that I really, truly wanted to say something but it was the first week and I didn't want to piss off a teacher and get in trouble. One teacher had already told us that what the Prefects say, goes. That their word is law. So I had bit back my tongue and swallowed my words, saving them for another day when I am ready to face the consequences of my actions.
I just couldn't understand why or how he was allowed to say that. Don't teachers take orientation courses for that kind of stuff? What was worse is that we had a (kind of obvious) gay boy in our class. It being the first week I didn't know how he would react to something like this so all I could think about was how it might affect him. (Sorry for the rant everyone, :) the whole situation was stuck in my head and caused some very strong feelings and words to pass through me.)
Thinking back to it, I wish I would've said something. Now that I'm finding myself I wish I would've been less scared of using my voice and resisted the pull to conform to what teachers `and other people who have authority over us want us to do. I believe my generation has at least a spark of resistance in them and growing that spark could lead to the wildfire that we need to finally be happy with ourselves. It just takes one person to speak up and start the conversation.
So next time you are in a situation like mine, DON'T be afraid to use your words to express what you want to. Even if the consequences are less than favorable.
And never forget, it is completely okay not to be okay. Goodbye, for now, dear friends.
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