In Praise of Shame

Anonymous asked: Sorry love this is ageist :( http://inpraiseofshame.tumblr.com/post/2420070419/cwnerd12-via-lgbtlaughs-fuckyeahsodomites
I know it is an old post and all, but I found your blog a few days ago and I'm just getting to know it. So far I have felt that you are so smart and sensitive, so I'm a little disappointed. I'm a cis gender bisexual girl and this blog helped me better understand many things, plus we share aesthetic sensitivity.
This post feels personally hurtful, by grandma was the best person in my family, most tolerant and caring. Also my trans friend as an super grandma, she protected him from his sociopath father and emotionally unstable mother, has always been supportive of him and so on. From my experience age has nothing to do with this question, my cousins ask me this very often. They are more or less my age, but they feel self-righteously entitled to lecture me on how life should be lead, because they have gotten married and reproduced.
Otherwise I think your blog is great, thank you so much for it.

Hi there,

Thanks a lot for your compliments. I’m really sorry that this particular image I reblogged came across as ageist. I’d like to add a little personal context, though.

I reblogged this from my best friend who I often whine about my family to, after a conversation we had that was literally about my grandma asking me almost every single time I see her when I’m going to get married (which if you’ve seen my latest personal post about my mum’s engagement, you’ll already know) so it was kind of an in-joke between us. Honestly, I didn’t even think about it as being because grandparents tend to be older people, and therefore older people must all be ignorant. I just found it ironic that I’d only just been talking about this very thing and then I saw an ecard that expressed my feelings exactly.

So for me it was a lot more “personally, my grandma does this, and this is how I feel about it - isn’t having to deal with your less-than-accepting relatives a trial?” than “aren’t older people so ignorant?” I should have probably predicted that it wouldn’t be read that way, though, so I apologise. 

Another thing; when it comes to posts that are several months old, (and this stands for anyone who might be going through my blog) they may well be fucked up and no longer accurately express my opinions. I know, in fact, that this is the case. I haven’t been a perfect saint for the whole of my life who was totally aware of every privilege I have and checked each one of them all of the time. You should have met me when I was sixteen; I was an absolute asshole.

I’m not someone who goes through and deletes every tumblr entry I ever made that I now disagree with. I think that’d be pretty dishonest of me. My blog is what it is and in some ways I regard it as something like a journal or scrapbook, where I can look back at the person I was at the time and how I’ve changed and grown since then. I fuck up and I’m not perfect, but I do try to make sure that I learn from my mistakes.

  1. inpraiseofshame posted this