Willfully Ignorant in Current Events

I just got off the phone with my friend Jenson. He’s my old penpal from Trinidad. He’s teaching at Cambridge in the UK. He’s currently doing research about the discrimination in the Caribbean. I think the events in the U.S are hitting us differently because we don’t have that white guilt and we’re both being vocal about it on our social media but we both landed on… different ends? It takes an event to start a revolution and that is what I think is sweeping western culture right now. He and I are both being active against racism but I’m coming at it from a more conservative standpoint and he is coming at it from a more liberal one. We both agree that black pain is being exploited right now. I want to listen to understand and have a conversation with someone who is not just going to character assassinate me. He thinks I am just flat out rejecting the Black Lives Matter message. I explained that I feel that this is making people overlook the real matters. It was a very enriching conversation, he knows his stuff and apparently I can hold my own, barely. It did not calm my anxiety, however. I have some homework to do and he is going to do his own. We have vastly different views and we did not agree on everything but I do believe that we can two things be true. He’s concerned because I am openly a conservative, he thinks it means that I am immediately not progressive. Not true! But I am the one who thinks that the far-left is the one that is regressive. He gave me some examples of where socialism does work but I’m still skeptical so I’m going to look into it. I have a lot to look into. We’re going to talk more often because he too wants a healthy conversation because we both agree that it enriches both sides of an argument.

We talked about racism in our countries and about what we bother internalized as gay men of colour growing up. How the standard was always for a straight white man. He holds colonialism responsible for feeling less than. I don’t know what life is like for a Trinidadian gay man but for myself, in my country, I am not agreeing to believe that I have to hang on to that belief anymore. I’m more future-oriented and he is more past-oriented. I’m more about the individual, he is more about the community. He thinks AOC is a godsend and I think AOC is a political prostitute. I think Candace Owens is the Godsend and he thinks Candace is the political prostitute. He and I are so vastly different from what we think but we still respect each other. He gave me some of his resources to check out and so I will do so. I need a more balanced perspective and to have actual discussions with somebody with different views than my own who are not chronically offended. Conservatism is just shiny and new for me so that is why I’m so hyperfocused on it. We’re going to talk again soon. For now, I need to get rid of this headache and get my prescription filled once I have control of my legs and hands. I can’t get my anxiety to stop.

I’m also trying to drag Peter Mackay on his Facebook page for jumping on the smear campaign against Derek Sloan over a real issue. They’re both campaigning to lead the Conservative party. Derek poorly worded his concern about putting children on puberty blockers but he has my support for actually having the nerve to bring it up. The media is labelling what he said as conversion therapy for transgendered kids. I just agree that we need to be allowed to diagnose a child with gender dysphoria before we sterilize them. I don’t think that’s unreasonable or backwards. Trauma and internalized homophobia could be mistaken for gender dysphoria and there are not enough steps at play here. I also don’t think it was hate speech to voice a scientific curiosity about what may cause homosexuality. I’ve wondered that myself. Trudeau is not going to lose the election either way so it doesn’t matter.

While I’m being an evil tyrant voicing my opinions, Jenson and I ended up discussing abortions. So there we were two humans without wombs talking about abortions. He’s pro-choice. I’m not anti-choice. I’m not out of touch with reality, there will always be a need for abortions. Especially if a woman was not given the choice to get pregnant, heaven forbid. I just refuse to agree that it is not terminating a human life. I’m pro-life in the sense that I think it should be allowed to want and advocate for women to choose life. Michelle Williams accepted her Golden Globe and told the world that she wouldn’t have won that award if she didn’t get an abortion. The whole world cheered and now young girls are going to believe that they will never win a golden globe if they have a child. Why can’t celebrities just stay out of it? Free speech, sure I can accept that. My mother was seventeen when she had me and people were trying to coerce her into getting an abortion but she believed that I had the right to be born. My cousin tried to take her own life shortly after she was coerced into aborting her first child when she was seventeen. Now she is pregnant with her sixth child. We shouldn’t be coercing young women into anything. Leslyn Lewis is another one running to lead the Conservative party and that is also her stance on abortion. I don’t know who I’m going to back just yet. Leslyn is getting dragged into identity politics as a black woman who doesn’t represent enough black interests. She is predicted to rank third.

Anyways, I’m not going to campaign to win your respect back but I do need to take a break from all media. This is just way too much information for someone who was willfully ignorant for decades.