Seems like I've always been a shit disturber. Really. When I was in high school, franco-ontarian language rights was my cause. I have memories of the evolution of my activism, from being unkind to english only speakers to experiencing not being able to communicate verbally and with my cultural understandings of body language, to advocating for multi-lingual access to language courses.
Market coworker, 25 yearls od, in Ottawa to learn english: "Ben la, on est au Canada, le monde devrait au moins pouvoir parler l'anglais ou le francais"
"Ca t'as pris 25 ans pour apprendre une deuxieme language, moi j'serais ben contente de lui en permettre autant avant d'avoir a en apprendre une 3ieme..."
Now I seem to have more shit to disturb. There's a pun here, as I start this blog while at the tail end of a gastro.
I get my politics from my parents, I've come to have to admit this after YEARS of ellongated teenage frustration. Both were political in their own working-class ways. My dad has a sense of social justice, and I hear tid bits of it when he talks about fairness (or what i'd call accessibility) in event organzing he used to do as president of the Optimist club, something I have dear memories of in my hometown of Vanier. My mom has outed herself as having similar feminist ideas, sparingly but always shokingly. "J'comprends pas poukoi on les laisses pas juste faire leurs jobs" when she talked about sex workers. Go Mom go. I'm a sexual health educator today, with a healthy sense of my body, thanks to her nude and non-chalant walks out of the bathroom. I grew up seing my mom naked, and I'd advocate for safe parental nudity anytime!
Despite knowing this, they have their issues, being human and all, and as only parents can, they have this magical way of pissing me off.
I think I'm just coming out of years of not allowing my parents to be humans. They should have been perfect, like all my friends parents, and I wanted them to be intellectuals and inspiring and funny and social and people with whom I could discuss political ideas.
But they werent. Instead, they taught me true survival skills, a sense of initiative and team work. I can do just about any job because of them. I know what I can do to be usefull when a group of people is working on a certain task. I have strong adaptability skills thanks to us moving around oh so much (I've been to 11 different schools thus far...). On that, I've gotten to experience living in a small town (when we were younger) and the city (when we became teenagers). Moving around so much, and meeting such a variety of people makes from strong communication skills. I feel comfortable around folks that are frustrated with just about everything (taxes, the neighboor, the government) and seem to feel powerless to change any of this or their own circumstances facing it. I can also chat it up with folks who spend 3000$, every year, for flowers on their front lawns. My parents spend their free time working on the house, I can't ever remember a time where there wasn't a renovation happenning, or at least some peice of furniture that was being stripped and stained or re-painted. I was never made to feel ashamed about how my body functions, it farts, it shits, it has zits in many places. "Ta marde a pu comme tout l'monde" is a famous sentence I heard in my youth. This, must've been my mothers way of keeping me grounded, and it did. My mom was always upset with my dad's assumption that dinner would be prepared, or that my mom would have a job that would allow for getting my sister and I ready to get to school or to make appointments... When I reflect on this, and the household chore battles I find myself in now, I certainly didn't give enough appreciation towards my mom for keeping it going. My mom disciplined us, which made her a target for the anger. She was the one making us do all the choresMy sister and I certainly did our share of household chores growing up (likely with a whole lot of repeated requests to get it done..), often what felt likew ay more than our friends were doing.. While I still beleive that there was an ounce of reality to this, I have often shared housing with folks that have no ability or pride in keeping a clean house. My mom swears that if she'd had boys, she would have demanded the same from them, and I wholeheartedly beleive her.
So, as they continue to be homophobic and continue on their gendered household chore ways, I gosta love them more. Point finale.
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