Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace

Note: it has been a brutal time-consuming-spirit-crushing-soul-squashing month for me and as such we have been slug nutty (to coin a Frank Burns comment) to the point of not caring five cents of what other people think, do, or say, nor particularly caring on who I offend or why. You have been duly warned.

Happy Friday to one and all!

I have been for the most part, simply going through the motions of my day-to-day existence for the past few months. Because of that I have been pretty much on autopilot with my blogging and my lack of writing. But, since we're heading into a long holiday weekend coupled with the fact that I'm taking a vacation today has inspired me to take a crack at writing a halfway decent blog post.

So, here we go.

The other day, I happened to be reading one of my fave blogs Joey's Pad and for that particular post, he had asked the question: If you see/read something that annoys you greatly, do you speak up and say something, or do you keep quiet?

For those of you who are long time readers of my previous blog, you know the answer to this question. For those of you who aren't, the short version is that I have been known to speak up and voice my opinion on something that really bugs me.

Whether it's politics on the local scene, the national scene, crime fiction or gay marriage (to name just a few), I'm more than willing to voice my opinion and take those body shots that people throw at me for voicing my opinion. Afterwards, I'll hoist myself up by my own petard, and continuing traveling along the same road of weirdness that I've always travel on.

Anywho, the reason why he asked the question had to do with gender stereotypes, specifically pics of a boy's room and pics of a girl's room. Personally, I didn't agree with his well thought out opinion on gender stereotypes, but that's just me.

However, here's a question for everyone who has an issue with gender stereotypes. If you have a problem with gender stereotypes, would you have a problem with a country that by law enforces a gender neutral society. In other words, you aren't allowed to use the male/female pronouns nor are you allowed to correct someone who chooses to identify themselves as a gender other than what they actually are (assume for the sake of this post that we are talking about being naturally male and female, i.e. I'm a man, and if you're a female, you're a girl), and if you choose to correct or not go along with the program, you are harassed and threatened because of it (kind of like militant gay marriage advocates, eh?).

And no, I'm not making this up. This takes place in one of the Scandinavian countries although for the moment, the country's name escapes me.

To me, this is simply progressiveness/correctness run completely amok, turned upside and have its collective head driven deep into the sand like the old cliche of an ostrich sticking its head into the sand. Now, as an average person, do you speak up about something like this, or do you keep your mouth shut and live for another day?

For me, its a no-brainer. I'll offer my opinion, although it will fall on deaf ears simply because I live here in the States and this is happening overseas. But if you either live in the country in question or nearby, do you speak up, or do you stay quiet?

So even though you might have an issue with traditional gender role models, do you think this is small potatoes compared to what I just offered up that is a troubling offshoot to the non-traditional gender role models?

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.