The top ten things you need to know to stop being a complete sissy bitch.

I have to say that I always try to be positive, and with the exception of when speaking about Amanda, I exercise my mother’s good advice. If you have nothing positive to say, then say nothing. Wise words.

You will understand how writing this piece has been a challenge, and yet one I feel I have to complete. However, after considerable deliberation and talking with both Sylvester and Auntie Kittie, I have put pen  to paper. Auntie Kittie pointed out that sometimes you have to grasp the nettle and say that which needs to be said.

“It’s like that time in South Africa,” said Auntie Kittie, “when I had to tell a trans friend, who was staying at the school out there where I am a school governor, not to sun bathe naked. The grade 9 biology students are confused enough already!”

“No, Kittie,” I replied. “It’s not like that at all, but I still have to write it. There are some members that might need to hear it.”

If you do recognise yourself in the words that follow, don’t worry.  Instead unplug your pink earbuds, shut your pho hole and listen up. You might just learn something.

The top ten things you need to know to stop being a complete sissy bitch.

1. When entering a friends home, apartment, office or hospital room avoid clutching the door frame, looking about wildly and muttering, ‘Has this place been smudged? Something dreadful happened here.’
2. When offered a gift from a friend asking if it was ethically sourced doesn’t endear you to the person offering it. This is doubly true in the case of cell phones, fire arms, some types of vegetable and (surprisingly) coffee.
3. When invited to an event you don’t wish to attend don’t claim you have to go to a workshop for gender and sexuality activism. No one believes you, and we both know you’re going to be watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
4. Kale is not a ‘superfood’ and never has been. Don’t try and persuade dinner guests that it is.
5. While making small talk there is no requirement to point out that every celebrity, politician, absent friend or distant relative is ‘a tremendous TERF, you know, but don’t say you heard from me!’.
6. Never use the word ‘woke’, unless it is as the past tense of ‘to wake’. It may result in you being asked to leave. Should you not be asked to leave, do so anyway. Rejoin company when you’ve learned to speak properly.
7. Just because you read The Kite Runner dropping the fact into every conversation will not make people think highly of you.
8. If you don’t wish to eat meat there’s no need to claim that you only eat the flesh of animals that have been hunted. When Sylvester returns from a hunting trip there’s no need to ask him the details of where the moose came from.  Besides, you don’t wish to know if all that meat in the freezer was the result of an unfortunate incident with an RV.
9. There is no such thing as an ethically sourced Zuchini.
10. Zumba is not an Olympic sport, and going to a Zumba class doesn’t make you an athlete.

Feel free to add any annoying things you’ve noticed to the list in the comments.

I hope you find this list helpful.  Between us we can make the world a better place.

🙂

Fiona