evolution

In the dark ages, the period from 1955 until 1963, I learned that men are the bread winners, men are the creators of invention and innovation, men don’t cry, and men are the dominate species on this Earth. I watched television shows and movies where the heroes were men, heroic efforts and energies were created by men and men were deemed to be the ultimate leaders on this Earth. I witnessed via TV and film how weak men were nothing but ladies in disguise. Men who lacked real masculinity were like little females, I believe pansy’s and fairies were the terms written into scripts or dialogue to describe them. Men fought wars, men were elected to offices (with the occasional wife of a man filling in if he died), men were the center of the universe, after all Jesus was a man and so were his Disciples.  I was brainwashed to believe if a man did not find a woman attractive enough to marry he was weird,  I was wired that not wanting a woman to wed would be a disgrace to  society. The man never had to love a woman in the dark ages, he just had to indulge in intercourse and produce off spring, preferably more men for the future.

I learned how to repress refuse and relegate feelings of sexuality/masculinity into the dreams and desires of society which in the dark ages was a dominate force of coercion. Dwight Eisenhower was the President, things were black and white, male or female, right or wrong. Diversity was a bad word, conformity a fine existence, and difference made you a Communist. Men could drink swear and fool around; if women did so they were alcoholics, slutty or whores. Men had their faults but after all they were men rough around the edges,but they were rugged and did endure all the trials and tribulations sent their way. After all they were sons of Adam and remember it was his woman Eve who established evil in this world.

Then light came to America and it was the 70’s. All kinds freedoms emerged.The colored folk could be proud to call themselves Black and of African American decent. Women could burn their bra’s and finally become more then an appendage on the arm of a white man. Gays could actually climb out of a closet dress, act, work and become more then shadowy figures of an uptight white Christian society. Hate still existed but it seemed that a form of enlightenment shown above the ugly gray matter of bias, bigotry and baloney. I learned that being different was difficult and perhaps a bit dangerous, but in fact it was okay and in fact it WAS what originally made America great. Ups and downs three steps forward, one backwards of course in the preceding generations, but movement was good, kind of freeing.

And then in a year that seemed on paper so futuristic, so modern, 2010, the light of enlightenment began to dim and was replaced with rhetoric, vitriol, venom and vile so smothering that nothing seemed to shine through. Difference was a sign of weakness, diversity a drag on democracy, religion became a litmus test of patriotism. It was a year when facts no longer mattered, lies were bandied about like the air we breathe. Suddenly racism was heralded, misogyny a sign of being a better man, xenophobia an unwritten article in the Constitution and homophobia a lesson from the Lord, the guy who claimed America for the white heterosexual. It was as if the dark ages once again claimed the souls of many Americans. And in the proceeding years since, the ugly has become contagious, the ridiculousness rabid, and a loathing for fair and just  became an infection at the ready to kill. I will not permit the world in which I live to go backwards anymore. I will not relive a period of life where shame,denial, or rejection have any priority. The madness must end, and the sooner the sane realize that, regaining the upper hand of politics, religion and democracy the better this nation becomes. Evolution was well on its way, we cannot go back, EVER.