The Pervert Says: “Thank You.”
Sometimes you gotta get a little pop in the face that reminds you of what is important, and how much you take for granted.
I recently took a moment to dig up some folks I’d not heard from in a while. Social Media is a great way to soft-connect with long lost buddies. I am a pretty busy person, but online connectivity is my lifeblood, and so for that, I make time: Twitter, FaceBook, Blip, Tumblr, Gchat, YIM, MySpace (shudder) …on and on….all of these help me to feel connected, to form new friendships, and to rekindle old ones.
I’ve been spoiled. See, I’m super out out out. I have nothing to hide, and I have awesome friends and a pretty accepting family. That is mostly due to the fact that I have always been the white sheep of the lot.
I’d like to think that my friends are people who are educated, elevated, open, secure, accepting  folks.
And, by and large, I still do.
But one (former) friend declined to accept my friendship on FaceBook, because my photo would potentially cause them to have to do some explaining. They didn’t want to be associated with me. Now, the photo isn’t raunchy. But the photo does indicate that there is something about me that maybe isn’t…standard.
And the thing is, this person doesn’t want to be associated with that non-standard lifestyle.
This person…someone I met through the BDSM and Leather community… apparently no longer desires that association even peripherally in their lives.
I had a strange mix of emotions. I couldn’t pin them down. Then I thought “Well, this is insane…this person is partnered with someone else who is pretty fucking out, and THEY are affiliated with me on Facebo—“
Oops.
My bad.
Well, they WERE.
Once I found their partner’s page on FaceBook, I saw that I had been removed from there, too.
Now that hurt. Badly. For reasons I’ll not go into here.
I get that people have work lives, business associates, etc etc.
I am not criticizing your choices, so you don’t have to explain to me why you don’t want me or any other freak on your Twitter feed, or pooping up your FaceBook page.
That is your business.
But I wonder. If your family were racist, homophobic…would you avoid adding your gay friends? Your friends who were of whatever racial backround your family choose to revile?
I’m not going to fizz about that choice. A choice with which I STRONGLY DISAGREE.
This is, instead, a Thank You letter to the people who ARE and REMAIN my friends.
Thank you, teachers. Single Moms. Single Dads. Poly extended families. Physicists, rocket scientists, Trannies. Grannies. Sex Workers. Rabbis, ministers, Great Grand parents. Politicians. Big Bad Executives. Small business owners. Thank you, professors and construction workers taxi drivers, pilots, cable-car gripmen, IT goons, gamers and broke-asses…thank you for having the stones to say “Yeah, I know that pervert.â€
Thank you students, thank you dancers, masseuses, doulas, singers, actors, designers, Burlesquers, church ladies. Thank you to my sister and cousins, thank you to my Former Brick Prison inmates from Hunter. Thanks college peeps, former co-workers. Thank you, people I’ve never. Even. Fucking MET who are OK with having me listed as a “Friend.â€
Thank you.
Thank you for being accountable for having friends who don’t swim in the mainstream.
Thank you for not being afraid of what “People Might think.â€
Thank you high profile entertainers, low profile accountants, lawyers, doctors, writers.
Thank you for being my friends.
Thank you to the people who made a POINT of adding me to their “Personal†non-pervy / non-alternative accounts when I expressed how this stung for me. You erased that moment of shame and pain and help me transcend it.
I love you for being here. I love that you help me to be proud of who I am by being proud to be reflected in the fucking amazing tapestry that is my social network.
YOU keep me ALIVE and you give me hope that, yeah, I can make a difference because you are doing that. Every day. Your willingness to have my crazy life bounce and glint alongside yours means we are all together.
Thank you addicts, thank you right wing nutjobs…thank you , ex-lovers. Thank you gender outlaws, freaks, geeks, perverts, furries, gurus, millionaires, Christians, Buddhists, Pagans, Agnostics, Skeptics, fire-spinners, Burners and meat cutters.
Thank you, families, for trusting me to spend time with your children. Thank you for inviting me into your lives.
Thank you for loving me.
I owe you my lives.
Thank you too. I am very very glad to have found you on the intertubes. So very glad.
Thank you. For being awesome. My criteria for facebook friends includes having actually met you in person, generally (but that doesn’t include the bully from high school who has tried to friend me no less than 5 times, but does include some awesome people I met on the internet but not in real life. Always exceptions.) Other people’s facebook profiles or posts are not my responsibility, and if someone wants to judge me on that, then I don’t want to work for them, be friends with them, etc. But there is a reason my real name isn’t connected to my twitter, and why none of my social media (from facebook to fetlife) accounts are linked to each other in any way. I’m not that hard to find, but no one’s really looking.
This is a really long ridiculous way of saying that you’re awesome and people are, generally, ridiculous.
I should be saying thank you to you. From watching you, I’m learning it is ok being a “pervert” and have a professional life.
You are a treasure :-) (and I get extra points for putting you on my Linked-In contacts list when I was job hunting in NC. (LOL)
You really do. That’s awesome. :D I don’t even have a Linked-In account. :D
[…] you are my friend, I have a post for you On The Perverted Negress: The Pervert says thank you http://www.mollena.com/2010/02/thank-you/ […]
I’m proud to call you friend, at least in a virtual sense. You’ve helped me through some pretty scary stuff just by letting me rant to you when I know you’ve got about a million things on your plate.
One of these days I hope to meet you in real life, and I’ll be proud to call you friend then as well. *salute*
@bailey, I’m in NC too, on the coast. *waves at you from a couple of hours away* :)
.-= Panthera Pardus´s most recent blog moment of Zen on the net was…OUCH! =-.
.-= Panthera Pardus´s most recent blog moment of Zen on the net was…OUCH! =-.
Amen to that, Mo. My Facebook account transcends boundaries. I have my family on there, people I know in the leather community on there, people I work/have worked with in EMS on there… the list goes on.
I’m honored to know you, and have enjoyed your insight on things we’ve talked about privately and such. Good times all around, even if the topics were hard to discuss.
Cheers to you!
~Kat
S.F. Dyke Daddy 2000
It is my honor to be your friend. You can spend time with my kid anytime (next week thursday would work great!) ;)
One of the reasons that Facebook as a social network never worked well for me is because of the general college vibe that the place gives off. Honestly, I am gonna play devil’s advocate here for a second…
You know that employers scour Facebook (and maybe even MySpace still) to check up on potential employees as well as current ones, right?
While I dont agree with this kind of invasion of privacy (what I do on my off hours is none of thier goddamn business), I did take care of who I added for that reason. Overall, I disliked doing this and so this is probably why I have not used Facebook for some time now. I dont like limiting my social experience based on asinine reasons and the fact that this site (of all social sites) is where Im going to be pre-judged based on what my PERSONAL profile is about, rather than asked about it.
But…
I do think that sending you a note to explain why she was not adding you would of been the courteous thing to do. It would of explained that the motivations were less about excluding you (and other perverts) and more about protecting the image that her profile projects to any employer that might be nosy enough to look her up there.
I agree with you .. it is hurtful. Unfortunately though, I had a bad situation with it. I had a good friend who I happened to work with, friended on FB. He happened to friend lots of people from work, including our bosses (which I didnt really pay attention to). Bosses were then able to see my updates/comments/etc etc – and were watching me without me really knowing it. My friend was warned about associating with me, if he valued his job. It associated me to my twitter, my blog, my adult lifestyle activities – and in the end was part of the reason I was fired. Ultimately I had to delete my FB, my MySpace and my twitter accounts to disassociate me from the name/ID used –
So – while I agree completely with you, I have to side with friends being forced to decide who they can “friend” – its not fair or nice but sadly sometimes necessary – the risk is very high these days.
.-= pixie´s most recent blog moment of Zen on the net was…HNT ~ Bubblewrap =-.
That fully fucking sucks. And I agree: people HAVE to take into account threats to their livelihood.
I don’t consider the opinions of friends and family in that category…and if a person’s livelihood is not at risk…yeah.
Thank you for sharing that very sobering and important reminder.
xoxoo
Mo
.-= mollena´s most recent blog moment of Zen on the net was…HNT: Yeti & Titties. =-.
No.
Nor should they.
And nowhere do I even imply that this should be the case.
But every one can think about how their actions impact their friends.
[…] http://www.mollena.com/2010/02/thank-you/ <– my post on people who decline to associate with perverts. I'm grateful to have this lesson. # […]
I am out out (out^2, but not out^3 like you :-). My parents know what I do, but would rather not… and that’s okay. For me, there’s a line. I don’t want to force my sexual interests on people who would rather not know about them. To me, it’s about consent, and respecting that they haven’t given it. That generally includes my work and my family worlds.
On my Facebook, I have kinksters friended, I have sexuality educators friended, I have people in long-term gay&lesbian relationships friended… AND I have co-workers, family, and minor nieces friended. Because of them, I ask one question when friending someone… how “work-safe” will this person’s Facebook be?
Hate speech or graphic depictions of sex or sexuality are out. Reasonable cursing, alternative lifestyles, research-based sexual information, and light mentions of sex are okay. I have rejected friend requests from people who insist on talking about sexual/play technique on their Facebooks. That’s what FetLife is for.
To be clear, I’m not segregating my life. I have recently been cleared by the FBI for SBU materials (Sensitive But Unclassified – like Law Enforcement Only, or information about critical infrastructure). I work in a field that I might one day have to go through a background check for Secret or Top Secret/SCI clearance. I intend to fully let them know of all of my activities because I am not ashamed of who I am. But I will respect those who don’t consent to know about my sex life.
That’s y $0.02. Spend it as you wish. :-)