My Personal Brand of Social Justice
Essay I
Eww, Cooties! (How I liberated the slide for girls and boys alike)
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| I remember it was a red free-standing slide. It was iconic to me and my views of feminism and egalitarianism. Of course, the slide from my experience was less fancy. |
Even as a kid, I've always had this
egalitarian notion. The first episode of this, as far as I can remember was
when I was playing with my classmates during recess. It was way back when we
were all first grade. A friend of mine barred all the girls from using the
slide. When the girls insisted in using the slides, he would shove them off and
even ask the other boys to help him out. I guess even in that tender age, I had
this sense of justice and I felt it was violated. I went to ask him as to why
we wouldn't let the girls use the slides. He said, with so much conviction,
that they were different and he didn't want anyone too different and weird to
play with him and his friends. He said that he was a boy and he would rather
play with his own kind. I retorted quickly with a mild violence. I walked up to
his face, starred him down and told him “Different? That doesn't make sense.
We’re all very different here”. It caused a rift between us for a while but it
cooled off after a few days, after all, we were all first graders. Children at
this point have not learned to keep grudges, well generally speaking. We made
peace later on and he told me that he didn't like playing with girls because he
was scared of the cooties he has heard of in the cartoons he saw.
Let’s look at the details of these
events. My friend was scared of cooties. Cooties, for those of you who were
wondering and too lazy to search it on the web is this kid’s myth about germs
or parasites that are said to be present in girls. If you think about it, my
friend’s reaction was valid. He was tenderly young and to be presented with
this threat would make him wary and avoid whoever had this threat. However, we
know that there are not such things as cooties. Human-loving parasites yes, but
not actual parasites that particularly reside in females. I found it ridiculous
as a young child. The multitude of encyclopedias and my early access to the
infancy of the Internet probably shaped my thinking to be critical of these
things even at that young age. I don’t know but what’s for certain, I didn't
buy into that cooties myth at age seven. I was also later affirmed when I saw
this cartoon that a boy was labeled as having cooties instead and girls feared
him. Powerpuff girls. Go figure. LOL
Even as young as seven, the seeds of
my egalitarian or even feminist views were growing. I look back into that
event, now armed with education, experience and insight. That tale of old has
become the core of future beliefs on justice and equality.
In later reflections, I recalled
that event. I realized that fear was a powerful thing. Misunderstanding can
lead to baseless violence and hatred. Fueled with ignorance and misinformation,
fear blazes enough to make people do the most heinous acts. Relating this early
experience with further experiences and stories of history, I realized it was
ignorance and fear that kept people separated. People receive bad information
about other people and create prejudices against them. From these prejudices
flow stereotypes and rots into racism. These prejudices, as you may know,
aren't exclusive to the categories of race, gender, sex, religion, what Game of
Thrones house you swear fealty to. Whatever sense of division or categorization
can indeed sprout to divisions, prejudices and violence. All it takes is fear,
ignorance and misunderstanding to make things worse.
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