Home is where the rant is.

[kiya]

I hate the word "flaunt".

I hate the way that it gets applied to people doing the normal things in their normal lives -- lives that happen to be non-mainstream.

I hate the way it treats certain minorities as some sort of exotic circus animal, where everything they do that might remotely touch on their minority status is a performance, a trick.

The word means "ostentatious exhibition".

My religion does not make me an exhibit. My sexuality does not make me an exhibit. I will not cavort for the entertainment of the members of whatever group is getting to be called mainstream. I do not hold a partner's hand to shock children. My Khepri pendant does not exist to titillate. My life is not on your reality TV. And no amount of cracking that whip and crying "Don't flaunt!" will make me back, snarling, like one of those well-trained tigers putting on an act of ferocity, back into the closet until the next show. (Performances at noon, two-thirty, four-thirty, and seven; admission fourteen dollars, children under twelve half-price.)

If you see the edges of my life that differ from the edges of yours, that's because I'm not lying to you. Not because I'm showing off my alienness or make a lifestyle of display. I'm just not willing to lie anymore -- not to inflate myself like a peacock of Difference nor pretend to be something I'm not. Lying is too damn much effort, and it doesn't earn back anything even remotely worth the expenditure.

Comments

[the-real-diana.livejournal.com]

You have a fantastic way of putting a topic that I've been thinking about for a long time into the clear verbage that I lack. You've given me yet another moment of clarity- THANK YOU!