The coordinator at the GLBT health center contacted me and they finally have an LCSW supervisor for me! Having a goal will take away from the general dullness of my job. I’m doing data entry right now and I’m bitter about it.
I need to take advantage of more outdoor activities before summer is all gone. I went to Ginza festival at a Buddhist temple in Old Town. The temple is really big and had indoor and outdoor vendors, food and dancers. One of their priests (yes, this temple uses the term priest) did a Q&A session on Pure Land Buddhism and the temple. I felt cool because I knew the answers to some of the questions. I’m still liking Zen over Pure Land. I went back to meditation with a friend and will hopefully keep going and get past the horrible feeling of my entire leg falling asleep.
Favorite quote of the night from my Buddhism teacher:
Student: How are these precepts different from The 10 Commandments?
Teacher: You aren’t going to burn in hell.
Also, one of the articles we read today said that many people ignore the precept that says not to drink alcohol. Yay!
I had something I wanted to write last week about Buddhism but cannot remember what exactly it related to now. I know it ended with comparing Buddhism to The Song That Never Ends.
Back to festivals, after Ginza fest I went to North Halsted Market Days. I watched the ROTC perform (Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps), found an awesome new toy in Tulip that I desire and got into a huge argument/discussion with my friend over transgender people. I already knew she was more conservative/less understanding than I was concerning GLBT issues especially related to fluidity of sexual orientation and gender roles.
I believe sexual orientation is fluid (see Kinsey Scale) and that it would be super awesome if gender roles would move more in that direction.
She spouted some pretty ignorant statements about 1 homosexual encounter=100% homosexual, transgender is OK but not in my house!, bisexuals are just greedy and don’t really exist, it’s not OK for a straight man to feel comfortable around gay men…stuff that I haven’t heard/tolerated in some time. Maybe I do have friends that have similar beliefs but they know better than to voice these things around me. I will argue and in this case, I have many more facts to back me up.
The whole situation just pissed me off, reminded me of arguing with my parents when I was younger, crying when my dad said that the GLBT movement should drop transgender people because they were on the fringe of society, getting harsh feedback from a boss when attempting to educate high schoolers about Matthew Shepard. Even now, educating my coworkers about transgender people and realizing I have to start at “this is what GLBT is.” I have low expectations at work but pretty high expectations of my friends and even my family now. (My dad no longer holds the same opinion of transgender people and my PFLAG award is hanging in my old bedroom.)
So maybe the GLBT health center has good timing.