We are all Prejudiced

Photo by Stephen Melkithesian

I often think while I'm playing a mindless game and I realized that prejudice isn't about black or white, it is about the face we see in the mirror. We think that people that are different from us is the problem. That's wrong. The problem begins and ends with us. We are the problem. Prejudice and racism begin with the mirror, begins with us.

The face that looks back at us from the mirror makes it okay pretend for others like us to make mistakes as long as they are willing to say it out loud. I think that is why my father's hidden prejudice was so devastating to me because I grew up thinking he was not prejudiced and he was a fair man. After all, he accepted all people as they came and judged them on what they presented to us. That is why I was behind my Uncle Bob's open prejudice. He spoke up and told you to your face he was a racist. But that was not the problem, nor was it a problem that my father was racist. The problem was that he hid in plain sight, that he spoke the words of moderation and equality; he was actually a racist like my grandfather and every other Archie Bunker type racist I realized that I had been prejudiced all along.

I said the words. I espoused equality. I opened my arms and what I thought was my heart when I was as prejudiced as my Uncle Bob who said the words and would admit no black people into his home (like Mom) or into his heart. I realize that I am as closeted as my dad and every other racist person who pretends not to be racist. We are all in the closet and we say the words and we make the motions, but we are not free of the taint of prejudice. We are all racist in our heart of hearts, just like I am racist in my heart of hearts. Racism goes bone deep. Always has and always will be.

We will make allowances for those who are not like us, those who do not realize that racism is as endemic as the color of our blood, tissue, and ... ultimately sin color... because we haven't faced up to the facts.

Maybe racism began as a survival instinct. By that reasoning, that is why Islam and Mohammed have reached so far into the heart of this planet, this world. Islam is as closeted, and hence Mohammed, as a homosexual pretending to be straight. Of course, Mohammed was a twisted dwarf who fashioned his god to look as twisted and deformed as he was. That is a twisted and deformed way of thinking ... and believing.  We are all twisted and deformed when looking out of the eyes of Mohammed as he looks from the mirror of his soul and sees himself (or at least as he sees himself) to be. No wonder Islam forbids the believer to deviate from Mohammed's words as written down in the holy book, the Quran. That is why believers must say the words exactly as he inscribed them without deviation. How else could Islam have crawled from the depths of his deformed and twisted mind in the Middle Ages (1400+ years ago) into the modern world in the 21st century? Mohammed's twisted and deformed thoughts are squirming and deforming out modern minds because Mohammed decreed (as a commandment from the universe's GOD, Allah) it.

In Allah's words of course.

The problem lies with the mirror, the image that we see and that we believe is right above all others -- our own reflected image.

Photo by Stephen Melkithesian

We are not dealing with a rational mind -- especially in the case of Mohammed. We are dealing with the twisted and deformed utterings of an epileptic who had seizures and wrote his twisted and deformed thoughts into the Quran. The Quran is a holy book given to use through the medium of a twisted and deformed dwarf whose mother died when he was six and from out of the covering shadow of his mother's untimely death when he was tossed into the world grieving, twisted, and deformed. He was intelligent enough to figure out that a moon god in the pantheon where he had his brilliant epiphany that a forgotten moon god was the Ruler of the Universe, a GOD for all that he saw and codified in his holy book and thus GOD's utterances as he wrote them down while patterning his religion after the only religion in the world -- Judaism.

When Mohammed didn't get the seal of approval from the GOD OF THE JEWS, he decided to cover his backside by declaring that all believers in the GOD OF THE JEWS (Jews) had to be destroyed, annihilated, wiped out of existence because they had the effrontery to deny HIM (Mohammed) the stamp of approval he should have had because he was Allah's anointed prophet. How dare they? They must die. They could not be allowed to taint his holy visions with their ignorance and refusal to grant him the seal of approval he so desperately wanted -- and needed. How dare they?!

Much like Hans Christian Anderson's tale of the foul mirror that the demons carried up to place in front of God's throne to show him the foul warped mirror image dreamed up by Satan in his noxious dreams before they broke the mirror, the shattered foul mirror Satan devised broke into a billion pieces and warped that lodged in Kay's eyes and heart sending him into the Snow Queen's clutches to while away the endless hours in the freezing cold of her ice palace attempting to place the ice shards into the word eternity. Eternity is what Mohammed has damned the ardent followers of his warped and twisted religion, just like Mohammed damned his followers to fashion out of ice shards the word eternity. 

Eternity is what the Muslims will serve as they follow their prophet, Mohammed, into hell.

I would have followed Mohammed's warped followers into hell as well if I had not realized that racism begins and ends with the mirror -- a normal mirror not warped by the nefarious design of Satan. I am warped by my own imagination and my own closeted beliefs and feelings, not the warped design of my own fashioning. I am a racist.

There. I said it -- or at least wrote it for all to see and realize that I have finally admitted the truth, the truth that was denied by my father's own hidden truth -- he was a racist -- just as I am a racist.

Uncle Bob said it out loud. Dad refused to admit it out loud -- even to his own children -- he was a racist just as I am a racist. I am imperfect. I have always been imperfect and I am still imperfect -- at least to this point where I put it out into the world that I am a racist. 

I realize now that the only reason I tolerated my Uncle Bob's racism (just as I accepted Archie Bunker's racism because it was delivered in the form of comedy) is because Uncle Bob, like me, was white. He looked like the image I saw reflected in the mirror of my soul. That image accepts all things, even the warped and deformed, because he looked like me: he was white.

That is why I accept all things, because they look like me or are white.

That is also why I accepted the warped and deformed utterances of my mother because she was white. 

I fought her tooth and nail even though she was white because she was a racist. I accepted Dad's perfidy because he never said a thing. He said all the right things. He did all the right things. He was kind and generous and accepted all people; he couldn't be a racist.

Well, that is wrong. He was a racist just as I am a racist -- or was until I realized from where I was coming. All things are acceptable as long as the mirror reflects what you see as being just like you. That means the same is true, not only of me, but for all people. The mirror image you see makes everything acceptable.
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If you are black, you will accept all things because you see black in your mirror. That makes all things acceptable as far as you are concerned. Everything else is all right for you because it is black -- or red -- or yellow -- or purple with green polka dots -- because the image you see in the mirror is the same as the one looking back at you.

I apologize to all the wrong-headed people I criticized before I realized that I was a racist, too. I was wrong. I hope I am putting that wrongness right at last.

I was wrong.

I realize that now.

I apologize to all people (red, yellow, black, and white) for seeing you as wrong. I was wrong.

We all are wrong ... just not as wrong as a twisted and deformed dwarf like Mohammed. 

That is why I reject Allah and God and all forms of gods and why I am an atheist. I realize that we are all wrong because we cannot see or comprehend the reality of the universal being at the heart of all things. We can see and imagine a being at the center of all things, but we cannot really comprehend such a being because we are finite beings and, though we have a creative and vast imagination, we are not THE UNIVERSE'S GOD.

We are finite. We are human. We are wrong.

We are OH SO WRONG.

Here's hoping that we will finally realize that fact and not push our warped and deformed religious utterances on others.

I recently saw a documentary on how China deals with Muslims and Mohammed's followers -- they indoctrinate the Muslims and teach them  (brainwash them). I deplore using such methods on people, but hasn't Mohammed been indoctrinating his followers with their five times daily prayers? Where Mohammed succeeded with his CYA methods, warped and wrong-headed as they were and are, they and he has succeeded. He has demonized the Jews. He has brainwashed children and millions of believers in Allah. He has warped and deformed the mentality of the populace for over fourteen hundred years. He has obliterated and annihilated common sense and thinking/evolving for yourselves. He has set the course for Satan in his warped and deformed imagination for all eternity. He has placed the planet on course for destruction.

And he (or at least Allah in Mohammed's diseased imagination) has set our feet on the wide road into HELL for eternity (where we will remain for all time).

We will have no chance to free ourselves from ultimate destruction and will end up in Paradise or hell unless we examine our hearts and turn away from the abyss.

And yet we cannot because Allah declares it so (as Mohammed has writ).

That is all. Disperse.

Male or Female? They decide. You live with it.

Kazimierz Pułaski (Casimir Pulaski)

In this era of the #MeToo movement and the public outcry against the crimes women have been subjected to, we are finding out more in the graves and questions about who or what is buried where. It seems that women have been found in graves purportedly to be men's graves, throwing a monkey wrench into the debate. Sometimes the women have been found to be posing as men prior to the exhumation -- at least as far as modern historians and anthropologists are concerned. Now it turns out that these women are indeed biologically women, at least as far as the historical record is concerned, and their gender muddies the waters historically. Or do they?

It seems these women are considered by our modern technology to be intersex, outwardly appearing to be men when in reality they are biologically women. It is rather a sticky wicket as far as modern society sees these things.

The issue is not only the identity of the skeleton but the public outcry that would have these intersex skeletons declared male or female and an end put to the whole question. That is not going to happen when women are denied their proper place in history (at least in the case of women being exhumed and found to be Viking warriors.) Will this too become a sticky wicket because the exhumed body appears to be female or the person who was interred passed as male though s/he is being considered intersex -- neither one or the other or both male and female in one body?

There are those, like talk host, Ben Shapiro, talks about how men and women are biologically determined and speaks out about blurring the gender lines. he forgets that all through history there have been men posing as women and vice versa and that is endemic throughout history. This gender fluidity is not new but has been around since the beginning of time. It seems that man-made gods do make mistakes -- or so it seems when intersex skeletons shatter our certainty about the factual evidence when male graves are exhumed and the male turns out to be female, as in the case of Casimir Pulaski the Polish soldier who fought in the American Revolution and is the father of the American cavalry, except that Kasmierz Pulaski's grave shows a female was buried instead of Casimir.

The point is that Casimir lived his life as a male, appeared to be a male, but was actually intersex, having the features of male and female. He had the soft features of femininity but had a mustache and male pattern baldness and his skeleton was definitely female. Casimir who has a holiday in his honor in Illinois and Chicago specifically lived his/her life as a male and is remembered for his exploits as an officer in Washington's army. No one questioned his gender or his identity as he was purportedly a male -- or at least posing as a male, specifically a male officer. He passed for a male, identified as a male, and was buried with honors as a revolutionary war hero, a male. It wasn't until now when his grave has been exhumed that his skeleton is definitely female. There's the rub.

There really is no issue, not in modern times, when the public at large accepts sexual reassignment was the father of the cavalry) the cavalry, and was buried with honors. That his skeleton proves him to be otherwise than he saw himself and passed for male doesn't matter. He chose his gender and lived his life as a man. He is who and what he said he was and his female skeleton does not change that at all.

Female Viking?
A 19th-century illustration of the contents of the tomb, which was quickly
identified after its discovery as that of a high-ranking warrior.CreditCredit
Evald Hansen/The Swedish History Museum 

Unlike modern times, a man passing for a woman or vice versa is something we expect and seldom say anything. This is not someone who is a female, decidedly so, who has chosen to take hormones and has had the surgery to become a male, but someone whose gender is considered intersex, having the features of a man, dressing as a man, and being buried as a man being found to be a female.

This is not one of those cases. This is a biological anomaly that has been discovered long after the fact and does not fit in with the male/female dichotomy of the past. Most likely, his parents didn't bat an eye at their son being intersex and accepted him as he was. He earned honors and excelled at being a soldier, fighting in the Revolutionary War, earning honors as a horseman, being so good at it that he created (surgery as normal, de rigueur.)

Would liberals, or others so inclined, change the history to favor the female skeleton found in his grave or will we simply let it go and let him be who and what he decided to be? I think it is possible that though we can change the physical appearance of a man to be a woman or vice versa, we should let history decide what had already been decided. We should accept Casimir Pulaski as a male and let history show him as a male, reserving our opinions to ourselves. What does it matter that Casimir was intersexed, both male and female, and let history remain as it was and is forever?

In a sense, Casimir Pulaski is a genetic oddity and there are many such genetic oddities that have been and always will be. Liberals can have this one since Casimir and his parents decided how to deal with his intersexuality and call him male. No one needs to change anything, just live with the knowledge as a fact we found out long after it mattered to him and his family. Nothing will be harmed nor should it be. Nor should it matter to historians, anthropologists, and #MeToo proponents that sometimes gender doesn't matter. It's all about who and what the person was when they were alive, not now that anthropologists and historians have discovered the world is far more complex and interesting than it originally was.

The same is true of whether or not women were Viking warriors. No doubt, some of them were also intersex and their original gender matters only to nitpickers now that their skeletons have been exhumed and what we thought we would find turns out to be different than we originally expected to find. If a skeleton turns out to be male or female, the fact remains that during their lives they were who and what they were and we cannot change the past nor can we predict the future. Let them be and move on. Celebrate what they achieved and do not seek to tack a gender to their exploits or use them to further your gender cause now or ever.

Sometimes people choose to be inside and their appearance to the world at large should allow them to be what they feel they are and the manner they wish to be seen. Gender is fluid and we have reached the point where a person can choose to be whatever gender they decide. We have the surgical techniques to reshape their outward form to coincide with their inner truth and accept them as they are or as they wish to be. That is all and all about it. They decide how they wish to appear and we should applaud them for their deeds and exploits and not pin them to whatever makes US happy when it is the person's desires and wishes that are paramount. That is all that matters.

That is all. Disperse.

Free Will.

I've been castigated by people who are pro-transgender. I usually let them say whatever, even if it means calling me bigoted, prejudiced, and homophobic. That too is their right. I have my opinion and they have theirs and maybe the twain will never meet in the middle -- unless I break off the attack by not responding.

I take issue that LGBT proponents do not see the issue when I day transgender people step aside and let women have their say about being marginalized, ignored, assaulted, and told to step aside for some man who is finally getting his comeuppance and his dirty linen aired in the clear light of day. LGBT proponents tell me that transgender women are women too. I do not see transgender women that way. Transgender women have chosen to become women, they say. I say that is a lie. If transgender women have chosen to be women, then they would have been born women in the first place because that is what any woman did when she chose to incarnate in this life at this time, cried as the doctor smacked her on the bum to make her take her first breath as a kicking, screaming, living female baby.

LGBT proponents are deciding that even transgender women are women and chose to be women.

I hit the buzzer on that one.

If the LGBT proponents call foul on my view, let them do so. I was born a woman. I have prayed nightly as a young prepubescent girl to wake up as a boy. It never happened. I am a female. I was born a female. I have given birth to four male children. I am a female. I chose to be a female in this body at this time. I didn't choose to have surgery to have breast implants surgically inserted. If I'd chosen when I was eight years old to have something implanted it would have been a penis because to my very young mind it was the lack of a penis that put me in the nuisance category of life that gave my brother, five years younger than I, the privileges and benefits that I lacked by being born with a vagina.

No, I'm sorry. You don't get to become a woman simply because you agreed to have your penis excised, or split, scooped out, and refashioned into a vagina. I understand that your surgical choices were painful and you had to battle society for your choice, but how much of your choice is due to surgery and how much to the genetically modified food you have eaten that dumped estrogen into you body and how much due to the prestige of appearing to be a woman?

Bruce Jenner lived his whole life as a white male athlete until he chose to surgically alter his appearance to emerge as Caitlin Jenner. No, Bruce is not a hero.  No, Bruce is not a woman.  No, Bruce is not icon to be worshiped because he chose to have his penis excised, scooped out, and the remaining tissue turned inside out and be fashioned into a vagina. I applaud his willingness to undergo the pain, but I'm certain Bruce didn't stint on the narcotics to help him through the surgical pain. He chose the surgical pain since he didn't choose to become a woman before he incarnated as Bruce Jenner, male athlete.

I do tend to feel that biological males who choose to wear dresses and pretend to be women are as phony as drag queens smoothing on their stockings and filling their dresses with falsies or silicone implants are still like my younger brother who sometimes went out on Halloween dressed as a girl -- playing dress-up.

Try as they might, transgender females, whatever they chose to have done to appear female, do not understand or know what it's like to be a woman. Transgender women have not lived with the knowledge that no matter how smart, how talented, how savvy they are, they will remain marginalized because they were born women, shuffled to the back of the bus, and overshadowed, ignored, denied, and forced to be quiet no matter their station, ignored because they are after all only women -- or girls -- people not worth listening to because they are WOMEN and women are always emotional, cry at the drop of a hat, and not worth listening to unless they're on their backs.

No one ever faces that the reality of being born a female, a girl, a woman, a second-class citizen means the whole of humanity does not exist without having been born from between feminine thighs, nursed at feminine breasts, and told to sit down, shut up, and let the men talk.

The reason men have nipples is because they were born from tissue put together in a woman's body and for a brief time while chromosomes and genes differentiate and gender determined with the suppression of a second X chromosome and the addition of a Y chromosome that biologically determines whether the gestating entity is born a woman (XX) or a man (XY). Yes, sometimes the connections between the chromosomes and the genes get mixed up (XXY, XYY, XXYY, etc.) and the parents decide which gender the baby will be in the case of a hermaphrodite, choosing to rear the entity as male or female because the doctor cannot say for certain whether the hermaphroditic baby is more male or more female.

As the child grows up, being raised male or female doesn't really count in the societal view even if the being has a penis and (not clearly obvious) a vagina. The end result is parentage children no matter what the parent choose to be seen as. The scientific truth is the hermaphrodite fathers a child or births a child no matter what the parents and/or the doctor decided when they were born -- or shortly after.

But there are few hermaphrodites born and thus fewer cock-ups in determining the gender of the entity born.

No, the problematic issue comes up later when "scientists" genetically modify food that contains sufficient phyto-estrogen or phyto-androgen to mix things -- and people -- up.

It doesn't matter to scientists whether the societal tag is taken from the LGBT lexicon or not. They've muddied the hormonal waters sufficiently already. It's up to the surgeons to take it from there -- and the psychiatrists or psychologists to handle the transition mentally and the LGBT proponents will handle the politically correct language.

I chose to be incarnated (born) a female and have fought my entire life to follow the protocol laid down by my mother, a dictate I fought against with my mother the entirety of my life. No, I will not play dumb just to attract a man.

No, I will not give up my further education and step aside for my five years younger brother because he was born a privileged male.

No, I will not shut up and refuse to say what I wish because girls should not put themselves -- or their ideas -- forward.

No, I will not spend my life deferring to a man because he is a male just because I was born a girl.

No, I will welcome blacks and Asians and anyone into my house regardless of your views because it is MY house.

No, I will not be prejudiced and I will acknowledge that my ancestor was a slave fleeing his master because that is who I am and what I drew in the genetic lottery.

I will not shut up and sit down simply because you're an adult and I'm a child. I have thoughts of my own.

No, I will not give up my intelligence or stop questioning religion, politics, genetics, and life just because you say so.

I have opinions. I have rights. I have free will.

I choose to exercise my free will at my discretion and not at yours or your friends' or your children's or your narrow-minded pronouncements. I choose. I speak. I am.

That is all. Disperse.

Review: Wolf Hollow

I read a sneak preview of Wolf Hollow and I was not impressed. Even so, something about the book stayed with me, nagging at the edge of my thoughts, until I bought a copy and finished reading it yesterday. I was impressed by the book.

Annabelle and her brothers travel from their grandparents' farm where she and her family live through the woods surrounding Wolf Hollow where previous generations of farmers in the area dug pits and baited them with poison to kill the wolves plaguing the region. The woods around the path are dark and full of shadows, the shadow of wolves prowling long ago and the shadow of an incorrigible girl sent to live with her grandparents nearby. Wolves come in the four-legged and the two-legged variety and Betty was a two-legged wolf.

Incorrigible is a pale word, a safe word to describe a predator and predator may be a little too strong to describe a girl who delights in bullying anyone -- and everyone -- she considers vulnerable. Betty thought she rendered Annabelle vulnerable by threatening Henry and James, Annabelle's younger brothers. That worked for a while. Annabelle offered Betty a penny that Betty threw away because a penny was not good enough. Betty expected more from someone who had as much as Annabelle did. Betty demanded something more, something substantial, and Annabelle would get it or her brothers would suffer.

Betty made good on her threat by seducing Henry and James close to her to pet the bunny she found. The boys were delighted, petting the wild bunny in Betty's life, a bunny she controlled with her fingers around its fragile neck. Annabelle shooed the boys off to school and faced the bully who responded by slowly squeezing the life from the bunny and throwing it down at Annabelle's feet. There was no doubt that Betty would hurt Henry and James if Annabelle didn't find something to placate Betty.

Every lie Annabelle told her parents about her day from the first encounter with Betty demonstrated how far off the path she had wandered. Betty got worse with each day. Annabelle wasn't alone, not since Tobias told her he'd seen everything when he gave the tossed aside penny back. When Ruth, Annabelle's best friend, was blinded by a rock thrown at a local German farmer Betty blamed Tobias and Tobias took the blame for the wire stretched across the path that could have killed Annabelle's brother instead of cutting his forehead open. The lies and the danger increased, not only to Annabelle, but to Toby because he was alone, a casualty of World War I wandering about the area carrying three rifles strapped to his back, taking photos with a camera that belonged to Annabelle's mother, and living rough in a converted smokehouse. Betty claimed she was afraid of Toby and Toby was following her, and then Betty goes missing.

Wolf Hollow is as much about the power of lies as it is about the courage of a 12-year-old girl in standing up for a neighbor when the adults have already judged someone guilty. Lauren Wolk takes her time building the background for her coming of age story, illuminating the times and the characters in shadows and light, giving the reader time to get invested in the outcome. Even when Betty's guilt is apparent, Wolk allows Annabelle's feelings for Betty change and mature as Annabelle steps in to protect Toby. It is not only Betty's bullying that takes center stage, but Annabelle's strength and her relationships with her family and her friends that truly stand at the heart of a childish conflict that quickly escalates to affect the world where Wolf Hollow's history and presence remains. Wolf Hollow is a complex and deeply texture tale of truth and lies and how lies can quickly become a truth that can destroy as well as explain. 5/5 stars. Don't let the slow beginning fool you; there is plentiful meat on these bones.

That is all. Disperse.

REVIEW: The Midnight Rose by Lucinda Riley

Time hopping, reincarnation, and romance with a little last miute thriller thrown are the rage of late. The most recent entry into this compilation of genres is Lucinda Riley's The Midnight Rose. What begins with a 20-something actress filming in the English countryside while a 90-year-old Indian matriarch entrusts her legacy with her business obsessed grandson travels through the first world war in England, a maharajah's palace, and a young Indian woman coming into her own and crossing cultural and caste barriers for love.

Rebecca is a talented actress at the rising peak of her career. She needs to decide whether or not to accept her boyfriend's proposal of marriage as she embarks for her next movie filming in England. She finds the palatial Astbury Hall imposing and beautiful and quiet as the current lord of the manner welcomes her into his home while she is filming.

Anahita is an 11-year-old girl of royal lineage whose family has fallen on hard times. When she makes friends with the wayward and headstrong princess Indira, she changes her fortunes. Anahita, Anni to friends and family, becomes Indira's companion and is schooled in England along with her friend. Life is very different in cold and wet Britain, but it also offers Anni a chance to broaden her horizons and discover love -- and death.

These two young women are fated to cross paths through Anni's grandson who is trying to find out Anni's history and the truth about her son Moh's fate.

Riley cuts a broad swath through three continents and nearly 100 years of history in her attempt to bring the intricate tale to of The Midnight Rose  to life. The characters are interesting but come off a bit 2-dimensional outside of Anahita, Rebecca Bradley, and Ari, Anahita's grandson, Ari. These three are more richly developed than the rest, although there are quirks and some details that stand out in all the characters.

What is difficult to believe is the ending of the story, or at least the high point of a last minute intrigue that was not well developed or worked into the plot. The Midnight Rose is a sprawling book that could have been longer and fared better with all the plot lines. So much of the situations and relationships seem rushed and incomplete as though some of the details got lost in translation.

Outside of mentions of filming and sitting in Makeup, there is little information about the career that is central to Rebecca's life. The zenana in the Maharajah's court is more detailed and given much more time and attention. Much of the venues in The Midnight Rose are sketched in, but Riley seems more interested in life in India and Anahita than the rest of the characters and plots she attempts to weave together. Riley wastes no time in using every trick in the romance guide in setting up and breaking up the relationships and little of that is useful or believable.

However, I did enjoy much of The Midnight Rose, even though the actual rose plays a cameo role -- a very small cameo. The first part of the book is slow and doesn't really get moving and interesting until about a third of the way through where it plods and loses its way a bit in the middle only to go racing through the last part of the book. Anahita's story is fascinating and her view of London and the world outside of the British Raj is predictably difficult and clannish. The book could use a few hundred more pages to do the subject justice and give the characters room to grow and evolve. I'd give The Midnight Rose 3/5 stars for effort and some wonderful historical details.