I frequent a message board where people who are in the LGBTQ+ community talk about their issues and experiences. It's often quite saddening and enlightening when you discover the lengths many go to in order to do what they love and be who they are in a world that has not fully embraced them.
Today, I read a post by a man who during the day works as a FedEx driver in Detroit. He's not trans, and he's not gay, he simply came to the board to talk and not be judged for who he is and what he does.
He began by saying that one of his coworkers, a woman in her 30's, has a huge collection of stuffed animals and dolls that literally span every room in her apartment. Some are just for display, but she has a special group of them that sit on a hammock type shelf by her bed. These are her "bedtime babies", and as you can probably guess, she sleeps with them. Now, probably nobody reading this would think anything of that. Many single women (and some not single) have "stuffies" or "babies" they sleep with. Sometimes it's a teddy bear from childhood or college, other times it's a valentine gift from a s/o. Nobody blinks an eye at this, and if anything, it's cute.
The man who made the post mentioned above also has a few stuffed animals and dolls that he sleeps with at night. His favorite is a little pink teddy bear with big blue eyes and super-soft fur. He also has a doll with yarn hair, and a flamingo with long floppy legs. In all, he has 13 dolls and stuffies that he sleeps with. He keeps their hair/fur brushed and clean, and launders the ones that can be washed.
He lives alone, and from time to time he will have friends over. In the beginning, he would hide his shelf-full of babies when he had company, as his apartment only has one bathroom, and to get to it, you must go through his bedroom. He got tired of doing that, though, and so came up with another plan. He got a couple of damaged dolls and stuffed animals and put them on a table in a corner with a bag of poly-fil stuffing and a sewing kit. He would tell people that he re-stuffed dolls and bears to donate to the homeless shelter. They saw this as noble, praising him for his generosity, --not weird and creepy like the truth would have been.
Reading this man's post really got me to thinking how far we have to go in equality for all. Not just in basic human rights, but in understanding. Here we have a guy who could have simply denied himself something he wanted in order to not feel "stupid", but instead embraced it, if only inside his own mind and heart.
Why is it okay for a single woman in her 30's to sleep with a doll but not a single man in his 30's? We all know the answer to this is rooted in gender norms, and because of those norms, we are tempted to think "He says he's straight? Yeah, right." However, his sexual orientation is irrelevant to this. He says he is straight, and so that's that. What is important is the judgment we place on him.
After a couple of weeks seeing the couple of damaged stuffed animals on the table by the bag of stuffing, he became inspired to actually do the thing it portrayed. He began finding pre-loved stuffed animals at Goodwill that just needed some TLC and cleaning them up, adding new stuffing to them, then taking them to the homeless shelter/battered women's shelter. At the homeless shelter, sometimes he would offer a doll or stuffed animal to a little boy who was already "too old" for them. He thought "What if this little boy is embarrassed to ask for a stuffed animal, but if I give it to him, it's a gift he can choose to give away, or to keep?" He began pinning notes to them that read "To keep you warm at night." as warmth is something we all need, regardless of gender.
What if we treated ALL people the way he is making his own life an example of?
I'm rambling. I've begun to feel like very few people read these, as the blog site shows me how many times my posts have been read. (Some of them less than 3 views.) For the few who do, thank you. It shows I'm not talking to myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment