As you know, North America has many long and empty stretches of highway. I was driving across one such lonely landscape very late at night recently, when something a little out of the ordinary happened. I really feel I should share it with you.
It must have been shortly before 2 am when I noticed some strange lights descending from the sky in my rear view mirror. They silently approached at great speed, and then pulled level with my vehicle and held station just beside me. At first I thought it might be the new Tesla my good friend Elon mentioned to me over tea last week. He’s such a practical joker, you really never know what’s coming next. Sylvester and Elon often get together to prank some poor sap, and I was wondering if perhaps this was what was happening. I was, however, quickly disabused of this notion as the lights rose above my car, and the ground seemed to fall away from beneath me.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “That’s not an upgrade they offered on my new Buick!” And I agree with you. GM needs to get in the game!
I found myself sitting in my car, in the interior of what appeared to be a large empty cargo bay. A moment later two (they always travel in pairs) humanoid figures appeared and walked up to the side of my vehicle and tapped on the glass.
I lowered the window and asked, “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” the taller of the two replied in perfect English. “May I use your phone?”
“Well, that depends,” I replied, doing my best to retain my composure. The rather neat little black dress I was wearing was a little formal for the occasion, I felt. But better to be overdressed in these situations.
The second alien, giggling, held two of his three fingers up to the side of his head and said, “E.T. phone home.”
“You’re a bit out of date, aren’t you?”
The first alien cut in, “Sorry, it’s just an alien joke. We do that sometimes.”
“Well, I don’t think your home planet is included in my calling plan. Perhaps you should try Virgin. I think Richard has some connections,” I replied sardonically.
Becoming a little more serious, the first of the two aliens continued, “I wonder if you could help us. We’re here on a fact finding mission. We’re trying to learn all we can about the very best of humanity, and the very worst.”
“How very laudable,” I commented.
The second alien picked up my sarcasm, and turned to his friend and said, “Can I get the anal probe now?”
His friend continued, “We’ve seen the best already. We’ve been to the Nobel Institute, the United Nations, The U.S. Congress, and something called “The World Cup Of Soccer”. Now we have to find the other side of the story, the worst the earth has to offer.”
“You mean you’re looking for the most craven, hypocritical, spineless and morally bankrupt people of the planet?”
The two aliens looked at one another excitedly. “Yes, that’s exactly right,” said the taller of the two.
I replied calmly, “But I thought you said you’d already been to the US Congress…”
The second alien looked steadily at me and said without humor, “Can I get the anal probe now?”
That, however, is not the main reason I’m writing today. I wanted to touch very lightly on the subject of pride, hypocrisy and general wrong headedness, hence the reference to Congress. We hear a lot these days about ‘TERF’ ideas. These are ‘Trans Erasing (or exclusionary) Radical Feminist’ ideas. I’ve been asked several times lately to comment about this, and what I think about it. While I acknowledge that some people don’t consider someone who has gone through gender reassignment surgery to have become a ‘real’ member of the opposite sex, I think this is to lose sight of the bigger issue. Some even consider those that do go through complete gender reassignment to have betrayed the LGBTQ cause. My opinion (for what it’s worth) is we should allow people to be who they wish to be — regardless of birth gender or subsequently assigned gender.
We can be exactly who we wish to be, and we can live with that — and we can let others live with that too. Those who climb on a soap box and impose their strict ideas on society are invariably pompous and self centered, whether they’re spouting right wing hate speech, or their own twisted version of feminism or some bent liberal thinking. We don’t need anyone to tell us how to think, we just need to let go of the rigid ideas and hold our own truths. If they work for us, then that’s great. Just don’t try and impose those ideas on others. And to be fair, I don’t expect the whole world to agree with me — and I’m just fine with that.
It is a remarkable fact that within the LGBTQ world Gay and Lesbian issues have been championed vociferously. Trans issues are rather a different matter. They are poorly understood, and almost the orphan child of a movement in which they have become strange bedfellows. And on that rather interesting visual note, I will leave you.
I’m ready for my probe now.
😊
Fiona
WRITTEN BYFiona Dobson
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