Panchito‘s Diary

Hear me out.

School was supposed to take care a big chunk of the education of children, its a very simplistic, irresponsible old fashioned system. One we grew up in. Now imagine this being even worse, more mediocre, more ignorant and conservative. Well, that was the reality of our parents. They went to school like 50 years ago. At that time queerness was officially a mental illness, there were still beheadings going on France (maybe I made that up, maybe not) and the global politics were witch hunting communist, the world almost fell into a nuclear apocalypse and ur parents were learning about how the world works.

So those people, that learn how to read books written by even older generations. so this “knowledge” from about 100-200 years ago. was also written by white males (if ur dating a white male, shame on u). Now, this writers did not needed sources, they just wrote what the vibes were around, so a lot of pseudo-scientific racist, macho, dumb shit was the base for the whole system.

Now u can ask the internet, it will still trow a lot of pseudo-scientific racist, macho, dumb shit, but it will also show u the information that once was not available to anyone, the information that is inconvenient for the political sphere of the moment. Now u can find the “forbidden” books. The ones that lead u into reflexion and alternatives way of living, no im not talking about hippie shit, im talking about anarchism, pleasure culture, human nature, social awareness, equality, tales about atrocities done by the “heroes” of history, books with actual education in them. Now we have access to that, out parents did not have it that easy.

So now we try our best to be nice, to be supportive, to be militant, activist and change the world for the best!

And then comes family dinner, and ur ignorant parents spit the most racist curveball offending almost everyone that u love and care of.

So what do we do?

well, I would stand up, say this is bullshit and made them feel bad, maybe in a bad day ill just leave, other day maybe ill laugh because its a very ridiculous situation, and this unwanted confrontation has never a predictable result, because it always surprises me. So I’ve came up with an idea.

let’s educate our parents as they were supposed to educate us.

Mama why is the sky blue? Because the reflection of mass of water into the ozone layer, or maybe because the blue sky paint was in offer at that time.

Mama why are those man kissing? Because they might like each other. Maybe they are greeting each other, maybe they are sharing intimacy, or maybe if they dont kiss their lips will fall out of their faces, u might kindly ask them if u want to know more than an assumption tho.

Mama why are the immigrants taking our jobs away? They are not honey, they are as jobless as u are. We are all just pawns in a game that we do not decide who lives or dies, it does not matter if we are the black or white pawn pieces, we are literally disposable, so maybe instead of asking that question, we might question “why are we loosing out jobs?” that ill tell u, its because we are like a Capri sun, when we are empty after having given it all, then the “bosses” will just burst air in, trow us to the ground, step on us to explode, laugh and then go get another one that is cheaper.

Mama are u indoctrinating me? no my lovely dove, im educating u. I dont want u to think like me, I want u to question everything so u want build ur thinking on information, empathy and understanding.

Personally I dont want to become a parent, I have a lot of work to do on myself and my already existing loved ones. But if u want to educate someone, begin with ur intolerante parents. Educate with love as u wish u were educated. Let’s take our chances and use them to be more kind and try to make things better. But of course, only if its in our capacities, we might need to emancipate us first of the role of “kid” and that’s hard, they might have hurt and neglected us, and its hard to take distance and hate that part of them, but to love them is even harder. because we will need to confront them, forgive them and then we might have the energy to try to educate them. But parents as children, did not choose to be ignorant. They just dont know yet, and we have te opportunity to give them a very polite and hopefully not ignorant answer.

For me to come out as a Non Binary to my mom, I had to lay the ground, teach her about empathy, queerness, love, labels, independence and my ways of thinking. So when I asked my mom if she knew what a NB Person is, she told me: just a person. Then I knew she was ready and told her: Right answer, also am I.

Outing yourself to your parents its like telling a kid that Santa does not exist, they will find out eventually. But we can decide how they will experience this.