Post #1006347

I would really love someone to explain to me the logic behind judging people by the way they look. I guess we all do it to a degree, even if we don’t like to admit it. Like, that guy who looks like a zombie; drawn, yellow, two black eyes, no nasal septum because he has snorted too much meth, clear outline of a knife in his pocket. That guy comes to an interview for a childminding position, maybe it’s okay to have second thoughts about hiring him, know what I mean? There are extreme cases where it’s arguably acceptable to judge by appearance, and we all do it. I’m talking about the other stuff. Racism, genderism (is that even a word), that sort of thing. Why? I remember when I was young, I got a lot of stick from peers for liking glam rock. Early G ‘n R and Bon Jovi, Hanoi Rocks, Faster Pussycat, Helloween, Poison and, probably the best example, Tigertailz “Eww, they look like girls!” “You must be a poofter!” Hey. Their words, not mine. I grew up in an impoverished mining town in the north of England. Tolerance was not high on the agenda. My Dad was the sort of guy who thought garlic bread was ‘mucky foreign food’. His method of dealing with an injury was to spit on it and rub it with his hand. When I was about 7 years old, I crashed my bike into a fence. A piece of jagged, rusty wire ripped into the skin right beside my eye. I turned up at home with this piece of wire still hanging out of my eye socket, a massive gash and blood everywhere. My Dad grabbed the wire and just yanked it out. He soaked up the blood with a rag and told me to walk it off. That’s the sort of people who lived in my hometown. So when I started loving the music of those glam rock bands, I suffered a lot of name calling and derision. And I never understood it. It’s music. You use your ears. What difference does it make what they look like? How does the way someone looks make any difference at all? I don’t understand people whose minds work like that. #gender #racism