I know this is a hijack, but I just wanted to mention that until today, I had been reading your user name as Fretful Porcupine. I was stunned to see that I’d been reading it wrong.
Then I looked up porpentine on dictionary.com. The definition:
Now I can’t stop giggling.
I’ve always wondered about otherwise sensitve people having no compunction in calling someone a Nazi or a red neck or whatever, based on superficial reasons. The preacher at my wedding had a flat top, and a couple of my friends remarked about my being married by a Nazi.
I wonder if he had worn a burnoose whether they would have joked about him being a terrorist?
I once took Amtrak from DC to Chicago and my seatmate thought I’m Canadian.
2trew, I had nearly the same thing happen to me in 1999. I was walking to the bus stop and two guys in an old pick-up truck drove past me and the passenger leaned out the window and shouted “Heil Hitler” at me. The guys were both skins so I can only assume they were sattempting to show some solidarity with me as I, too, am the proud possessor of a gleaming bald pate situated above a nice black beard. It took me a second for my brain to process what I had just heard and my immediate reaction was to look around to see who they were yelling at. It took me about a minute before I realized that they had been yelling at me.
I almost threw up it made me so sick. I felt like I’d been violated somehow. To top it off, this happened on Front Street in downtown Santa Cruz, one of the most progressive communities in California.
To this day I get uncomfortable even thinking about it.
People think I’m anywhere from 16 to 20. WRONG! I’m 27. In any situation where carding is involved, I get carded. (Except for at one local casino where I’ve been just often enough that most of the door security people know me, so they just wave me through, which throughly mystifies the tourists.)
I’m starting to wonder when people are at least going to think I’m in my 20s…
Zabali_Clawbane and avabeth , I really appreciate your replies. Made my day. Thanks.
Yes, it was indeed the early 80’s. The very early 80’s in fact.
Haj
Yes, it was indeed the early 80’s. The very early 80’s in fact.
Haj
I have always had problems with people judging me by the way I look. I am of Latin American descent but I look like I am Middle Eastern. You should see the confused looks I get when I start speaking fluent Spanish. Some one once had the balls to tell me that he didn’t know Arabic people spoke Spanish.
I remember the looks I would get after September 11th. People would walk by me and say things like, “fucking towel head”, “go back home”, etc. It was terrifying.
These experiences taught me to not judge people by how they look.
I look younger than I am, which normally is a riot for me. I just love watching the clerk/guard (at the casinos) examine my ID verrrrrrry carefully, since it just has to be fake. I’m sure my sweet innocent smile doesn’t help any. (For the record, I’m in my mid-20’s.)
It’s also fun when I’m with my boyfriend: he jokes about how he’s going to be picked up for corrupting a minor when he’s with me since he looks more like his age (mid-to-late 20’s) and I’ve had people mistake me for anywhere from 13 ( :eek: WTF!) as recently as a couple of months ago to the mid-to-late teens. You should see the looks we get. It runs the gamut from ‘you lucky son-of-a-bitch-you’ to the ‘oh, the poor young dear, I wonder if she’s with him willingly’.
<< You suck. And not in a good way. >>
I am not madly butch, but many of the things I am most enthusiastic about to others are things like computers, building stuff, tools and gadgets, etc. I have reached the conclusion that I must come off as really butch when I see how shocked people are to find out I also love sewing and baking and stuffed-toys. They are also flummoxed by the fact that I can’t drive.
Swedes seem to think I am Swedish, or more likely “white and nominally Christian = almost Swedish”. They therefore happily bitch and whine about “immigrants” to me. Yer queen and her children are “immigrants” bitch, so am I, shut the fuck up.
I shared a house before with a skinhead. A SHARP (non-racist) skinhead. A gay SHARP skinhead. We lived close to a park that was often frequented by gay men (including him). People would often try to recruit him to come queer-bashing with them. Bizarre.
I am a geek. I love reading and computers, got great grades, blah blah blah. I look the geek part–no makeup most of the time, thick glasses, somewhat overweight due to a hormonal imbalance. I play the flute, I used to take ballet until I messed up my ankle/got fat, and I ride dressage.
I also curse like a sailor and have a healthy fanaticism for hockey, namely the Detroit Red Wings. I love the fights.
I think that says about everything.
Also, people have thought I was eighteen since I was twelve, though now that I’m actually eighteen it seems to have evened out. I dunno.
j_kat_251 and Gorgon Heap I want nothing to do with any of you really. Enough said.
Desmostylus: Dezzy dear, I’m going to call you dear, but do note the clenched teeth. TAKE YOUR FRICKIN HANDS OFF ME!! You in no way have persmission to hug me, and I do not desire a hug from you. I have no desire to heal you in any way, I only heal those friends that ask it of me, for free. How did you think I would react to your patronizing from on high, anyway? You were extremely offensive there, and I think you should re-consider your position on such things before you post. For me it was an innocuous statement. Where on earth did you get the idea that I go around healing everyone I see, with no permission. That’s an ignorant assumption. You know what they say of the word “assume”? Don’t assume, because it makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”.
If none of you can grasp that MORE THAN ONE religion has healing processes in which the healer visualizes the aura, than you are not nearly as educated as you think you are. Look at Reiki healing for one. Not to mention Pranic healing practices from India, or similar practices in China and Japan. I’m sure other pagans like Lezlers can verify this statement and provide more religions that practice aura visualazation in healing etc. too.
Visualization of the aura is not only a Shamanic practice used in Shamanic spiritual journeys, but a healing practice of body and spirit too. Kirlean photography puports, to photograph the “aura” or feild around living, and non-living things. The photographs are beautiful. I don’t know just what it is that the photographs depict, but it’s a feild of some sort obviously.
You three have made abundantly clear exactly what I was talking about, without ever having met me face to face. Pity too, you might have made a friend, and I am VERY loyal to friends. You might have found me an intelligent, witty, offbeat person that you enjoyed having a friendship with. I doubt any of you will find out, because I have been alerted to the apparant fact that you are VERY judgemental, hateful, and patronizing too. You embodify the spirit of this town very well, ignorance, hasty assumptions, and hatefulness.
Let me clarify the “Goth comment”. It may have been prevelant on the coasts up to a decade before 1989/1990 but it was certainly not mainstream enough to make Lifestyle type stories on television news etc. Certainly not well known enough to reach a small town in Central Kansas. Nor was I old enough to be able to do the odd jobs required to get the clothing and make-up to express myself that way. Thus my statement. I was punk at about 16, (in 1988) then slid into Goth.
I’m glad you feel better TeaRoses. 
Hang in there, you’ll find the right enviroment to grow yet. Do you have some sort of Pranic/Reiki type healing practices within your religion? I noticed that you either were not judgemental of what I said, or not suprised because you knew a little of such things already. I’d really like to know, I’ve been curious about this for some while. I imagine that if there are such practices, they aren’t used often. Reading books sometimes isn’t enough, because the authors don’t think of such questions to answer.
Really? Goth (or rather the Romantic Punk/Vampire Look/Trenchcoat Mafia thing - hadn’t been tagged Goth yet) made small town Minnesota as early as 1982. Possibly earlier, but I was certainly aware of it by 1982.
I can recall watching some silly Lifestyle type news story when I was about a Junior in high school about “Gothics”. They were wearing the Wine colored velvet jackets, ruffled shirts and sometimes leather pants with very “expressive” make-up, catlike vampires.
I clearly remember this, because that’s when I started buying things like a ruffled romantic long sleeved white shirt, various black skirts etc. I’d already been doing my make-up very like the “Gothics” in the first place, but I’d hadn’t really gotten out of the jeans and t-shirt stage with lots of bracelets etc.
It was in about 1990/1991 that the “black/raisin” lipstick hit mainstream. I’d been wearing it since I was 15, along with dark blue fingernails, or black and white patterened nails. (Wet 'n Wild brand makeup, and black eyeliner…heh)
Ironically I often wear jeans and a t-shirt now, but they are almost always black. Go figure… I don’t wear make-up as much now, but when I do it’s often “goth”.
Hmm, since it’s not too clear, I’ll add that I was probably the first person in my town, that wore the Gothic look to express themselves. I took a lot of hassle for it, quite a lot of it violent, either verbally or physically. (Like what you witnessed above from j_kat_251, only less “restrained”. I got beaten too.)
I don’t recall seeing any other “Gothics” in my town, or the next one over before the end of 1990/start of 1991. I’d seen a few Punks, but no Gothics. I got hassled as a Punk, though too. People would pull their toddlers behind them, and hide them from my sight when I went grocery shopping with my parents. sigh
Zabali_Clawbane, You’re goth enough. You don’t have to talk about it anymore. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t listen to Joy Division in 1979. Nobody’s calling you a poser.
People have assumed that I’m a Nazi since I started shaving my head in 1995. I’m not completely “white” either. I’ve been approached by National Socialists at malls and bus stops. I have friends and have dated women of all colors. In fact, I like brunettes with a healthy light brown skin tone best.
The most surprising thing to me is that people actually assume that I know what I’m talking about.
I must have missed the paragraph where Zabali says that she sacrifices young children on the atlar in her basement. Clearly j_kat_251, Desmostylus and Gordon Heap didn’t miss it. I’m a little shocked by their posts.
I get a lot of the old Because Youre White You Won’t Be Offended By Our Racist Jokes at work.
Ha! I get that also!
This is nothing compared to others’ experiences, but here it is. I am blonde, with blue eyes, fair skin and apple cheeks. My best friend (at the time) told me I look like a poster for Aryan Youth. I laughed it off, but inside I was :rolleyes: Another time she pointed to a travel poster for Germany featuring blonds in lederhosen dancing merrily, presumably to folk music. She tugged at my sleeve, pointed at the poster and said, “Why aren’t you on there?”
My best friend now is much cooler.
Sorry if this is a thread hijack…
I don’t know much about those types of healing. There are specifically Jewish healing ideas and practices but no, they are not well known. I’d really like to learn more about them about myself.
On topic…
I really feel for everyone here who has been judged by appearances. I can’t imagine how horrible it must be to have people assume you are a Nazi.
On a more minor note people often don’t realize that my mother-in-law is Jewish and they have been known to make nasty remarks about Jews in front of her, then get really shocked when she tells them.