I was born without the gene that enables a speaker to put a fine point on a difficult topic: I'm blunt. And I'm unapologetically political. So when someone asks to "friend" me on Facebook--unless I've met that person with a protest sign in hand--I warn them that I use FB primarily for political activism. That's why there are no current students and so few former students among my FB friends--it just wouldn't be appropriate.
There's a time and place for everything. How many times have I heard self-styled "patriots" shout at protesters (sometimes at my husband, who is a Vietnam vet!): "People DIED to give you the right to do that." Damn straight! They didn't die to protect our right to sit home and keep our apathetic mouths shut. We owe it to them to speak our minds, to exercise the rights they fought to protect.
At least that's how I see it.
But I've noticed an interesting pattern among my some of my women friends. Half a generation before me, there is still great pressure to "be a lady" at all costs. Now this is not true for all of my friends, but I crash right into this attitude every once in a while. (I have a cousin, for example, who believes that ANY four-letter-word on a protest sign is more objectionable than ANY atrocity or injustice in the world.)
Case in point: yesterday I was "unfriended" by someone Donald and I met in a leisure class we took a while back. She seems like a pretty tough old bird who's led an independent life and now enjoys retirement funded by the fruits of her own labor (she built it!) along with Social Security and Medicare (we helped!), all while despising social programs and "socialized medicine." You know the type.
When she sent me a FB friend request, I gave her the usual warnings and disclosures. No problem, she said. I guess she thought she could take it.
She lasted right up until the RNC convention this week. She's one of those people whose world divides neatly into R-s and D-s, and I was definitely on the wrong side of her R, no matter that I don't belong to any party. She was mad at me and all the friends I rode in on. Apparently, she'd been repressing her anger for months because she likes me and my nice, acceptable posts about quilts, gardening, animals, and--best of all!--food.
In other words, she likes me when I act like a lady. I notice this in women about 10 years older than I am--I think it's because they came of age before the Women's Movement. They grew up being seen and not heard. They seem to resent women who don't adhere to the code of sweetness, and they lash out like wrinkly, old Mean Girls. Since the Women's Movement--to borrow a phrase from Green Day--"silence is the enemy." Being ladylike is not in my Book of Virtues.
And here's why: women marched, fought, and died to give me a voice to speak about things that matter, a voice to raise against injustice, violence, and corruption. I'm damned sure going to use it.
