Little Pink Book 2

Dad

My daughter is hard to look through. I don't love her; God knows I wouldn't after what she did, but her face, her face loos like that of the daughter I used to have. Do I know I'm right in doing this? Yeah. Do I understand that my baby is gone? Yes. Do I want her back, the way she was before? of course. Is it hard to remember that she's not my little girl anymore? Hell yes. My dad, he'd have beaten me senseless if I'd done what she has. He bounced my head off counters for lesser things, but I wouldn't have hurt my little girl like that. I guess maybe my dad did it right... Look how I turned out, and look how she did. But it's too late for her now. I look at her and wonder how she could do this too me when I've been so good to her. I worked so hard, I never hurt her, and when she tole me how awful she was, I hit the wall instead. She's lucky, I guess, maybe unlucky, living her life in a quest for "acceptance". A good beating is what she needs, but at 18, away at college, it's a lot of effort and a lot of legal trouble to assault a college student. Not to mention a "hate crime". As opposed to those crimes motivated by love. 

Damn whiny liberals.

Little Pink Book 1

Prologue

Sometimes, I miss you already. Sometimes, daddy, I cry for you. I cry because you're not going to love me, because you look right through me, because I'll never hear you speak to me again, because the look on your face in the pictures when I was born said I was the greatest thing- and now it's gone, because it was that easy for you to drop your only daughter. Because I've loved you my entire life, and I don't know how not to. And, Dad, sometimes, I can't wait to be completely rid of you, you racist, sexist, and most importantly homophobic douchebag. Sometimes, I'm just pissed off. I'm 18 and I can understand that things that are wrong actually hurt people. And you can't figure that out in 38 years? 

Fuck you.

Little Pink Book Intro

Okay, so a little while back while stuff was still pretty damn bad with my parents and all of that, I started writing in a little pink notebook. I wrote how I felt and I tried to place myself in the shoes of my mom, my dad, and my brother. I don't know how well it worked, but I made short, easy little entries pretty often. It was set somewhere a little more than a year in the future, and it really helped me humanize my parents when it seemed they were nothing more than obstacles to my happiness.

 I thought it'd make a nice little series of blog posts, so, I asked My halley about it, and xe said it could be a good idea. (I'm always very indecisive, so I wasn't sure how readable it would be. So, Anyway, now and again, I'll do an entry titled "Little Pink Book" and then a number, with the same graphic pictured above, and that'll be another piece of the book that is my take on how everyone feels.

Religion and Sexuality

This article will also be published on generation atheist so go check it out if you happen to read my blog, but not it.

I've grown up in an area with a church on every corner. This is not much of an exaggeration. There are two churches within ten minutes walking distance from where I'm sitting, and four within 20. I live in a place where church/state violations are brushed of as silly and people roll their eyes when asked to include religions other than christianity, and find it unthinkable to not believe in a god. a vast, vast majority of people around here are christian. My high school had between 400 and 500 people in it, and the number of (out) atheists was at 7, at the highest, while I was there. Most people attended a church every week, at least. 

 Luckily for me, somehow, my parents don't happen to be very religious. My mom is something of an agnostic, but went with the label "christian" for a long time, because she'd gone to church as a kid, and she didn't utilize her own mind very much until a few years ago, preferring to let my dad decide these things. My dad grew up in an abusive home, and tried to get religion to save him from it around age 15, and since, even though he's not gone to church or read the bible, has been a weird sort of religious that seems to mean he thinks that there's a god who wants you to worship him and believes a few randomized passages in the bible. I'm not really sure why someone with such an insanely cherry-picked religion that seems totally unique to him would feel he could criticize others, but he somehow finds a lack of religion laughable.

Enter- My homosexuality, and screw with all of my family relationships. I didn't come out until about a year after my parents decided they found out. It's all a little difficult to explain, but my dad heard rumors that I was gay, and kissed my girlfriend at school, then, I gave xem a goodbye kiss on xyr forehead one day, and he decided that he knew enough to guess that, yes, I am a lesbian, and I should never be allowed to talk to my girlfriend.

The only reason I could ever get out of him was that god said homosexuality was bad. This utterly insane man had somehow chosen the verse about stoning homosexuals to believe, out of all of them. He called me disgusting, and told me I was going to hell. He told me I wasn't his daughter anymore. And the only reason I could get out of him was religion. My mom just cried and said she loved me, but she wanted me to change so god would love me. I was so confused at the time. How was this random Leviticus verse the one that would send me to hell when none of us kept the sabbath holy, attended church, prayed before dinner, or even learned about the bible? But, religion around here seems to be all about intolerance.

So, my parents' reaction to my homosexuality was because of religion. My friends? Actually, most of them didn't care. That's why they were my friends. But my pool of potential friends pretty much evaporated at school. I lived a dangerous double life that, in hindsight, seems crazy to have attempted, but, I digress, the point is, at school, I was an out, proud, lesbian, and that people knew this made them look at me with disgust. No one wanted me as their teacher-picked partner for assignments, and it was hilarious to point at me and say "that's the lesbian" When halley (my girlfriend) was holding hands and walking with me, asking explicit questions about out (then nonexistent) sex-life was okay. Teachers looked the other way for the most part, because really, we deserved it for defying god this way. It seemed every way I turned, someone hated me for loving xem because their sky dad said so.

This caused a little shame, but luckily, most of the time, I just felt depressed that everyone seemed to hate me without actually thinking about it. But I did feel a little shame. I tended to laugh it off. And I labeled myself a "bad girl" because I wasn't listening to my parents for the first time in my life, and, even though I didn't believe in god, it was still something I was doing that was yicky, according to most people I knew. I thought maybe something was wrong with me, and I was terrified that there was some premise I was missing that made their logic make sense without god involved, and I lived in fear of debates, because what if they proved that it was bad? would I stop loving xem? could I stop loving xem?

But what ultimately saved me was my halley and my friends. They reminded me that loving hurts no one, even if imaginary sky dad says it does. I have one conversation I'd like to share with everyone reading, paraphrased to the best of my memory between me and a friend on facebook chat. We'll call him Jeremy. He's the kind of guy who is always joking about everything, so one night, as I was telling him I watched the spanish channel on cable at four in the morning and it was utterly bizarre, the conversation went little like this

Jeremy: well, there's basically porn on HBO at four a.m.
Me: lol. okay
Jeremy: yeah, so now you can watch all the naked girlies you want, and no one will know.
Me: haha. I'm too much of a sweet innocent little girl for that.
Jeremy: ... yeah, I'm sure you are. lol.
Me: well, it's not like I haven't thought about it. But sometimes, I forget I'm not a good girl anymore. haha. It's like I was for so long, I don't remember that that changed.
Jeremy: Brittany, you are good. You are sweet and kind and you loving a girl doesn't affect this. Anyone who wants to tell you otherwise is just a narrow-minded fuckhead who is jealous that you have someone who loves you.
Me: I think that's the sweetest think anyone's ever said to me. I didn't know you could get that serious.

And it continued. But that reminded me, without this nonsense god stuff, sexual orientation of any sort is okay, and it doesn't affect how good or kind you can be, so no one experiencing this should be ashamed.

Where to Start?

I love harvest moon games. The first one I got was A wonderful life, for the game-cube, and I've expanded my collection since then, to have played at least until marriage in quite a few of them. Now, these are cutesy games. There's no fighting and no violence. It's a peaceful, maintenance type game where you take care of a farm. You buy animals, water crops, build friendships, and, mostly in some of the newer games, you can fish and mine to add to your farming or ranching income. So, this game isn't for everyone, but I love simplistic relationship building, and watching things slowly upgrade after in-game years worth of work. (Just to be clear, nothing I say below is to demonize Natsume, Nintendo, or anyone else involved in the creation, nor is it a dislike of the game overall. I like this game, and gender and sexuality issues aside, if you're the type to like nonviolent cutesy stuff, you should totally try out these games.)


But recently, I've been upset by the utter lack of possibility for any same sex relationships and cross-dressing. The specific to gender clothing makes me even more upset because in the instruction manual for animal parade, under the section explaining differences in playing as a boy or a girl, in an attempt to be funny, there is a statement that the main differences are clothing followed by "(duh...)" This bothers me actually a lot more than the lack of ability for clothing thought to be specific of one gender. The fact that it is considered such an obvious thing that it would be unthinkable to cross-dress makes me feel like crying. And the same sex marriage, because I like being a girl. I like it a lot. But I also don't like to marry the guys on these games. No, I'm not sexually attracted to harvest moon characters, but I just plain like the feminine ones better. They're cuter, I like them more, and most importantly, I don't see why it shouldn't be a possibility to build romantic relationships with same sex characters. So what am I to do? Well, my compromise is to play choosing a guy, and suspend my gender identity for a little bit. It's not that hard. But that's not what I want to do.


So what am I to do about it? I could write the company. It's been done. Apparently, our american gaming rating system would take the rating up to T or maybe even M if they were in a bad mood. So, there goes half of their fan base. So, what? Do I talk to the ratings company? I bet they do nothing if I do. Besides, they'll say they just try to reflect the ideals of parents. It's this, this little stuff right here, that makes me so upset about discrimination. 


Yes, it makes my blood boil to hear about kids bullied to death over their sexual orientation. But those are the sorts of things that are (ever so slowly) disappearing, and being condemned by mainstream media and parents. It's the things like childhood exposure to gay love (not sex, or anything sexual, mind you, hand holding and the statement of love's existence) not being okay, or the idea of a guy wearing a dress being laughably insane that make me want to curl up and cry.


It's because I don't know where to start with this. What do you do to change an entertainment form based on cultural support based on an entertainment form? It's so circular that I feel helpless to stop it. But, I guess I'm not the only one who wants these things to change. And cultural acceptance in general seems to be the way to go. So, I guess for now, I'll make you love me and put a friendly face on homosexuality, and try to help gender-queer, inter-sex, and transgender movements do the same. And that, along with identifying as a male long enough to play harvest moon, will have to do for now.
     

LGBT Discrimination

I've never been beaten, or had things thrown at me. I've never tried to do anything and been told "you can't because you're gay". The discrimination is all unofficial. Sure they were just following the rules when giving Halley and me detention for PDA; We were literally breaking a rule, and they did have the right layed out in the handbook to call parents for anything they want. But, walking around, there are straight couples with detention for the same thing, and their parents don't even know about it. And there are straight couples doing the same things that we were doing, going unnoticed. No, they never made a special rule that said "lesbians can't display affection" but they did enforce the "couples can't display affection" rule unequally.

We also had an event in which Halley was told not to talk to any middle school students whilst tutoring about me. Not don't talk about sex, not don't talk about gay rights overall and how the kids should be supporting gay marriage, but that, even if asked, she was not allowed to say "I am a lesbian" and she was not allowed to say anything that indicated that, because "these kids are too young for that kind of stuff" I'm not sure what kind of stuff those teachers were meaning, but if they meant romantic relationships over all, I find it pretty unusual, as I can remember teachers discussing their husbands and wives since kindergarden, and most of the kids have parents, statistically, that are involved in one romantic relationship or another.

At a school sponsored after-prom event, we were told hugging wasn't allowed. Maybe that was overall, maybe I was overreacting, and they didn't see the other couples, but a few friends were hugging too, and never got told to stop. It just so happened to be only the gay couple that was  told there was no hugging allowed.

Do these things count as discrimination? I think so. Should something be done to stop things like this? I think so. I propose a bit more transparency and equal application of the rules, also, normalizing homosexuality can help, that way it isn't so surprising when it happens. Yes, we are a minority, we are not shockingly so, and personally, I believe in the fluid scale of sexuality, so, really, everyone's at least a little gay, and at least a little straight.

Introduction

Hi! My name is Brittany. I am 17 years old, and can describe myself in a lot of ways. I am as liberal as they come. I am a screaming advocate for peaceful, natural parenting, and a proud sister to 6 year old Joey. I try to care for him in the ways I would care for my own children, but sometimes his parents get in my way. It's hard to practice peaceful parenting with a child that isn't yours. haha. I am also a lesbian, and proud of it. I'm in love with My beautiful, precious girl, Halley. I am proud to be with her and love her so much. I'm kinky; Naturally submissive, but usually playing the dominant role, because Halley loves it so much. I'm a girly sort of girl. I love dresses and sparkles and pink and rainbows. I am an atheist, and consider religion frankly dangerous, therefore hate it. I do not hate religious people, though. I love some of them a lot and hope to "show them the light" so to speak. I am a total child at heart. I love dolls and kids' shows. Especially Moose and Zee on noggin. I have one new, special doll. She's 18 inches and her name is Lellianna. I love to play with her and be a mommy. Speaking of which, I am the type to want to be a stay at home mommy. I want to take care of my babies and cook and clean for my wife. I don't feel anyone should be forced to do what makes them unhappy. I feel I should have every right to work any place that offers jobs to people, but that I should have the right to opt out. I am a gamer and a let's player. I love the classic series like Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy. I also love Kingdom Hearts and have played quite a few other games. Shooters are not my thing and I am not even interested enough to pick up a controller for them. As for let's plays, Joey and I have started a let's play of majora's mask. If you want to find it, the channel is SissyandJoeyLP. Anyway, guys, I don't think I've left any of the main things I wanted to cover out of this, so I'm done!