Violence rules, guns are cool, and we have guns…everywhere

(Apologies to Dead Milkmen for stealing part of their song)

When gun violence happens – like at the government ball field – we all act surprised. Gun violence is so rare!

Go look at the news. Not just local news, but nationwide.

Pick a day at random and do a quick Google search. I’ll wait.

Here’s mine. I searched for June 13 because after June 14, all the top news stories were about the two big shooting (government and UPS).

So let’s go:

Nevada: Three shot – two dead, one escapes, one survives

North Carolina: Man shot in the legs

Baltimore: Six dead, including two slain in quadruple shooting

California: Three robbers shot, two fatally, by California shop owner

This is only from the first page of results – four of the items that came up were not on topic. One was in Germany, one was about a shooting in the past, and another was about victims from a previous shooting being identified, and one was an aggregator of shootings over time.

You can look at this and say, hey, I could probably find a lot of news on Google. That’s true.

You can look at this and say, hey, I think that one of those was not a criminal act; it was a shop owner protecting his store. That’s true, too.

Another thing that’s true is that the dead people listed above had real lives. They were real people. They had real families. They were killed by guns. That's true.

** Important for you to know as you read this blog and get mad at me:

I like guns. I own guns. I shoot guns. I feel that guns do have a purpose and can be used as tools.

However. All that said, I can acknowledge and accept that there are problems with the state of gun ownership in the U.S. If you can’t, then please do a few Google searches of your own.

Pokémon Hunting for Bigots

Yes, I’m one of those people that’s still playing Pokémon. I always make sure to hit a Pokéstop and capture a Pokémon every day, and I’ve saving up tons of Pokémon to evolve so I can fire off a lucky egg and go up a level.

So I went for a Pokéwalk.

Normally I dig my neighborhood. Except for the loud neighbors across the street who sometimes put up a weird sign on the door that tells people to remove their shoes because the king of the castle doesn’t want their dirty shoes in it, and the other neighbors across the street who are constantly getting new dogs, neglecting them, and letting them get hit by a car on the nearby highway, then replace them with new dogs and start the process over again.

But those neighbors are outwardly and obviously unpleasant. No one likes a neighbor who’s always blaring music or screaming, and no one likes a neighbor who doesn’t care for their pets.

It’s easy to see their bad neighbor-ness, though.

On my Pokéwalk, I found a different type of neighbor.

One that I didn’t know I had.

One displaying a huge Confederate flag in their garage.

I know some people will automatically argue that the flag is Southern pride and there’s nothing wrong with the flag blah blah blah.

Those people are wrong.

I’m not going to be all polite and beat around the bush here.

If you’re still hanging onto the ideology of the Civil War…well, you’re a racist. Yell “states’ rights!” all you want. Just remember that one of those rights was the right to keep another human being as a slave. So fuck off.

Even then, I was, somehow, surprised.

I mean, I guess no one really knows their neighbors, and when someone flips out and shoots up their workplace or wherever, everyone who lived near them always says, “But they were so quiet” and “They always kept to themselves.”

And while I’m sure – well, hopeful – that not everyone on the block has a confederate flag in their garage, it goes to show you that you can’t know people from their outward appearance. These neighbors of mine are polite and appear nice when you bump into them. Walk past their house when they’re outside, and they’ll say “hi” and wave.

When it comes down to it, they are unpleasant.

When it comes down to it, they are bigots.

When it comes down to it, they are bad neighbors.

And this is why I’m a crazy ass feminist today…

Just found out about this today, but apparently, back on March 24, an appeals court in Oklahoma ruled that forced oral sex is not rape if the victim is unconscious from drinking.

Yup.

You got drunk, it’s cool to rape you.

No problem, bro.

The decision stated that “Forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.”

The court decided, in its wisdom, that since the statute listed several circumstances that constituted force but did not include a mention of incapacitation due to the victim drinking alcohol.

Jennifer Gentile Long, leader of a group that helps to prosecute sexual and domestic violence cases, pointed out that “Oklahoma has a separate rape statute that protects victims who were too intoxicated to consent to vaginal or anal intercourse.”

Since those laws do not include oral sex, however, it’s obviously cool to go ahead and shove your dick in an unconscious woman’s mouth.

I just. I can’t. There is no way in hell that this should be an issue.

Why do we need separate legislation for each body part? Why can a woman not be protected? Are we seriously a group of orifices, some of which do not deserve protection?

The best part of this situation? “Other defendants are nevertheless making the same argument in other parts of Oklahoma to avoid charges.”

Yup. You heard that right.

And the defendant’s lawyer appears to be okay with that. She thinks he should have only be charged with “unwanted touching” because “There was absolutely no evidence of force or him doing anything to make this girl give him oral sex, other than she was too intoxicated to consent.”

Double-think and alternative facts at their finest.

It’s not force because she couldn’t say no.

And, yeah, maybe he touched her when she didn’t want it, but, hey, that doesn’t mean it was against her will.

Because, I don’t know about you, but when I am unable to consent, I’m cool with a guy shoving his dick into my mouth and leaving traces of semen around my mouth (yeah, read the article – he didn’t even have the common decency of wiping it off her face).

So, to recap – Oklahoma is totally cool with guys mouth-fucking women who are unconscious from alcohol.

I don’t know about you, but I am *not* cool with that.

We were never friends

That’s what I’ll say if you ask me why I unfriended you, a Trump supporter. Because the truth is…

We were never friends.

Facebook has this weird effect. We feel connected to each other. We feel like we know each other. We feel like we’re friends. But…

We were never friends.

I made a mistake. I thought you wouldn’t choose to support someone so filled with hate and pettiness. I don’t care what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night. What it all comes down to is that you choose someone whose rhetoric was filled with hate, violence and misogyny. Even if you say that you personally don’t support those things, you support him. And if you support him…

We were never friends.

Guilt by association, maybe. But you are the company you keep. Hang around people who spew hate, and by allowing their hatred to go unchecked, you are part of it. Your silence is just as damning as their voice. Lack of action is action. “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Which means…

We were never friends.

Maybe we were acquaintances. Maybe we were friends of friends. Maybe we’d done business together. We were friendly. We weren’t friends. And now I’ve unfollowed you or unfriended you because…

We were never friends.

Don’t tell me I’m the intolerant one. Don’t tell me it’s discrimination because I don’t want to be your friend. Don’t tell me we can have a difference of opinion and can still get along. It’s more than that. It’s that…

We were never friends.

He publicly mocked a disabled man. He admitted to sexually assaulting a woman. He’s hiring on rich cronies who don’t care about the women, children, the poor, and the hungry. If you’re okay with all that, please know that I am not.

That’s why we were never friends.