Ignorance shall be mankind's doom...

I know that ignorance is everywhere, not just in the Central Valley, where I hail from, but I was very surprised to witness so much of it in the house that I lived in for over 20 years.

I visited my mother for Christmas. As I'm driving into the area, putting on the layers of protection reserved only for when I go to visit my mother. Among the topics of this past weekend's discussion:

Proposition 8 and the fitness requirements of the police force. My mom has deduced that fat people should get special treatment if they want to join the police force (in keeping with the equal rights that the anti-Proposition 8 team has pushed for.) Oh yeah. Strong connection there.

My college career as a social science major (emphasis in women's studies) is too specified and won't help me get a job later. And my brief stint as a vocal performance major wasn't too specific? How about my two years as a trumpet performance major?

Dicks belong in vaginae. Not in lesbian vaginae.

Lesbians should pretend to be straight until absolutely necessary. My mom wanted to know why I'm so out. I explained that it tended to ward off the Christian right and, in general, people who won't accept me and therefore I don't want to waste my time with.

My mom told me that Dr. Phil said that employers look at Facebook (where I'm listed as interested in women.) Am I sure that I really want potential employers to know about...that?

"YES!" I told her (repeatedly.) "Because where I live now, no one has treated me any differently after finding out about me. If someone doesn't want to hire me because I'm a dyke, I don't want to work for them anyway."

"But Dr. Phil says..." mom began.

"Dr. Phil is probably a homophobe himself." (Isn't he from a red state?) "eHarmony doesn't help with setting up homosexual couples. Just because there's a 'Dr.' in front of his name doesn't make him an expert on anything."

"I just don't understand why you need to be so up front about it." And because I'm young and immature and haven't really learned to deal with people yet, I bit the bait and recounted the following story: I was at a party and started talking to a guy. He's an artist and I was very excited to talk to him because I saw a part of his exhibit at school. Anyway, he eventually turned sort of flirty, so I tried to casually bring up that I'm gay. And he looked like I just told him his guinea pig ran away while he was at summer camp.

"Why couldn't you have just flirted back and gone to coffee with him or something?" Hmm...do you mean: why couldn't I just be straight?

UGH. And on and on. Just recounting the conversation is exhausting. She has had 15 months, over a year, to get used to this idea, yet she has made no visible strides toward acceptance. Sometimes I wish she just would've been a normal Central Valley parent by cutting me off and kicking me out. So, since I've kicked myself out of her house, I think the next step is to just cut myself off from her, since she won't.