In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I happen to find pamphlets incredibly offensive and wish you would stop trying to force them on me. Thanks.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
I happen to find pamphlets incredibly offensive and wish you would stop trying to force them on me. Thanks.
In reply to Daylan C (Forum Supporter) :
Don't forget, I have your address somewhere in my email. I'm thinking a pamphlet shower would be fun. 
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Somebody will forget to put them in the mail for about 4 months again.
I laughed out loud.
I totally deserved that. Touche' my friend. Touche'
Daylan C (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Somebody will forget to put them in the mail for about 4 months again.
Dude. I have some little stuff I've been meaning to send to Curtis since the Winter Solstice. Of 2018.
I think having friends or people you know or whatever that DON'T think the same as you, act the same as you, etc. is a great thing. Life is too short to waste it hating, and raising your own blood pressure.
I have my personal opinions, others have theirs. I have my way of living my life, others have their own. In my mind, it really doesn't make you any less or better of a man (Well i mean there are exceptions but you know what i mean).
Perhaps someones lifestyle doesn't exactly follow the path of mine, but so what? If we have a common interest, and you're a cool dude, then we're buds. Like/Love whoever you want.. I'm not gonna not be cool with a guy because he happens to like guys. Go chase some man booty my guy.
Thank you for writing this. It is honest and direct.
My oldest child is transgender. It isn't her "personal living habit" or lifestyle choice, it is who she is. It took a long time for my wife and I to get to the point where we understood, accepted, and embraced our child's true identity, but eventually we got there. Along the way we realized that our child had to be incredibly brave to tell the world "this is who I really am." It isn't a choice for her, it is who she is and to continue to deny it would have been far more painful for her. Along the way she taught my wife and I a lot about acceptance and love.
I also learned a couple of other things. One, anyone under 30 doesn't care whether your gender identity matches the body you were born with, or what your sexual orientation is. When she told her best friend in high school "never mind my body, I'm really a female," his response was "all your friends realized that a long time ago, we're still your friends." Two, when I stopped avoiding the topic and just told people "this is who my child is" it was like dropping a huge weight. And I found out that none of the people my age cared either. One said "oh, my brother is gay and I was the best man at his wedding." Others confided details about their aunt or uncle or some other family member. That's when I realized I had been afraid of nothing.
I have participated in many on-line forums over the years, and I'm glad I found GRM. It is by far the most supportive and encouraging community I have ever seen. There's none of the nastiness that often occurs when people are anonymous behind a screen name. Even before this discussion that was apparent to me, and I am pleased to see that the acceptance here has been overwhelming. You're into cars? Cool, that's all that matters.
My daughter is the kindest and most empathetic person I have ever known. She has been incredibly brave to be true to herself and tell the world who she really is, and if someone else can't look at the person she is and instead makes judgements based on ignorance, well that's their problem.
R56fanatic (Forum Supporter) said:Thank you for writing this. It is honest and direct.
My oldest child is transgender. It isn't her "personal living habit" or lifestyle choice, it is who she is. It took a long time for my wife and I to get to the point where we understood, accepted, and embraced our child's true identity, but eventually we got there. Along the way we realized that our child had to be incredibly brave to tell the world "this is who I really am." It isn't a choice for her, it is who she is and to continue to deny it would have been far more painful for her. Along the way she taught my wife and I a lot about acceptance and love.
I also learned a couple of other things. One, anyone under 30 doesn't care whether your gender identity matches the body you were born with, or what your sexual orientation is. When she told her best friend in high school "never mind my body, I'm really a female," his response was "all your friends realized that a long time ago, we're still your friends." Two, when I stopped avoiding the topic and just told people "this is who my child is" it was like dropping a huge weight. And I found out that none of the people my age cared either. One said "oh, my brother is gay and I was the best man at his wedding." Others confided details about their aunt or uncle or some other family member. That's when I realized I had been afraid of nothing.
I have participated in many on-line forums over the years, and I'm glad I found GRM. It is by far the most supportive and encouraging community I have ever seen. There's none of the nastiness that often occurs when people are anonymous behind a screen name. Even before this discussion that was apparent to me, and I am pleased to see that the acceptance here has been overwhelming. You're into cars? Cool, that's all that matters.
My daughter is the kindest and most empathetic person I have ever known. She has been incredibly brave to be true to herself and tell the world who she really is, and if someone else can't look at the person she is and instead makes judgements based on ignorance, well that's their problem.
You and your wife are good parents. Every LGBT+ kiddo should be fortunate enough to have parents as accepting as y'all. Mine have been phenomenal from the start as well. Many are not so lucky.
And yes, it's worth repeating that this isn't a lifestyle or a choice. It's simply who many of us are.
This is a great illustration that I've used at work (I run our LGBT+ employee affinity group in the DC office) to discuss how all of us identify in four distinct ways. I'd recommend everyone look at this and think a bit.
This Genderbread demonstration is PERFECT.
I'm proudly all over the board of those sliding scales.
R56fanatic (Forum Supporter) said:Thank you for writing this. It is honest and direct.
My oldest child is transgender. It isn't her "personal living habit" or lifestyle choice, it is who she is. It took a long time for my wife and I to get to the point where we understood, accepted, and embraced our child's true identity, but eventually we got there.
Kudos on being the accepting parents you are. I'm not a parent, but I would like to think I would be like this. I think you can also give yourself a bit of grace here. It may have taken you a long time to embrace her revelation, but from what I'm reading, it wasn't because you had a problem with being transgender. I would think that it is simply a huge paradigm shift. You would have been fine with whatever gender a kid ended up being born from day one, it may just be that you spent X years knowing one thing, only to find out it wasn't really true. It sounds like you're OK with the transgender part, but maybe it's just the paradigm shift that caught you off guard. I thought my house was built in 1901 until I did some flooring and found someone had put a penny in the masonry of the foundation.... from 1919. It's not like I'm going to sell the house because it lied to me and it's not as old as I thought it was. I still love it. Don't care about when it was built. Just caught me off guard. The important part is that you are where you are because of your acceptance and grace. Good job.
In reply to Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) :
That's a really cool chart, thank you for sharing!
This whole thread has been mostly heartwarming. We've got a lot of nice folks here, and they're not afraid to tell the one shiny happy person why he's being shiny and happy.
I hope we all continue to be welcoming to everyone!
Brake_L8 and Curtis73, thanks for your thoughts. Yes, it was quite a paradigm shift, transgender was something that we could understand theoretically but when it was our own child it was tough. What finally made the mental shift for me was thinking through the question of why would anyone "choose the path" of being transgender when it was guaranteed to be difficult. That's when I realized it wasn't a choice or a lifestyle, it is instead a necessity to be true to yourself. Once I realized that, acceptance and understanding followed.
This isn't about me though. Toni, thanks for writing an honest and direct letter. You are a far braver person than I could ever be.
I personally don't care if your gay or straight, black or white, green or purple. If I am at a car show, HPDE, autocross, etc, I just want to talk cars. I have no problems with anyone or any sexual preference, color, or race being at a car show however with that said I also would be saddened to see activists make political statements at car shows and take away from what we are all there for, the cars.
Let me be the first to say, I don't disagree with anyone making political statements or protesting or whatever but I do believe there's a time and place for it and it's not at a place where most people go to escape all the hate and turmoil in this country currently. When I'm doing car stuff, all I want to talk about is car stuff....that's it. I'm not there to discuss political issues or do anything else. I don't go to a hockey game to discuss football and I don't go to a car show/event to discuss anything not car related. That's not to say that only gay individuals shouldn't make political statements at a car show, I mean I don't want to talk anything but cars. I love hockey (probably more than I should) but if I'm at a car show and someone wants to talking about how the Blackhawks (my team) are doing this season, I'd rather walk away because I'm here for the cars.
When it comes down to it, I think I'm trying to say that for myself (and I'm sure many others) cars are my escape from everything else in this world and while I have no issue with anyone who wants to be there, I want to keep the focus purely on cars. I don't have an issue with anyones personal sexual preferences or anyones race or skin color, I never have and never will. I just don't want the issues of the world to seep into one of my last escapes. I suppose some might call this sentiment selfish, and in a way i suppose it is but it's not an escape for ONLY straight people, it's an escape for EVERYONE and I want to preserve that for everyone.
SavageHunter11 said:I personally don't care if your gay or straight, black or white, green or purple. If I am at a car show, HPDE, autocross, etc, I just want to talk cars. I have no problems with anyone or any sexual preference, color, or race being at a car show however with that said I also would be saddened to see activists make political statements at car shows and take away from what we are all there for, the cars.
Simple question: Does the OP showing up in a dress constitute "an activist making a political statement"?
I get annoyed when an organization says that they're open to all, yet makes a point to differentiate the group. For example, I've never understood having a ladies class in autocross - they're simply drivers. What can't women do on-track such it requires a separate class?
Our company periodically invites guests to speak on relevant topics. An announcement for an upcoming talk was for an astronaut telling of his experiences... good so far, but then the company felt it necessary to point out that he was African-American. WTF. Why? An astronaut doesn't have a color or gender.
Another announcement was for a talk about hiring equality between male and female engineers. The hypocrisy was that the announcement stated that the female speaker was "passionate about hiring female engineers." She was guilty of doing exactly what she was complaining about.
There's plenty of blame to go around though. A group will demand to be treated equally, but then pulls the color/gender/race card whenever it suits them. Nope, if we're all just people, then color/gender/race doesn't exist, and cannot be used as an argument or classification point. And yes, I realize it may not happen for a very long time.
In reply to kb58 :
Yeah, but you also have a novice class. Similar to colleges using race and gender in admissions, there's "being blind to it" (which is always a lie btw, humans aren't blind), and then there's taking steps to acknowledge that there are differences between people and in general it helps everyone have more fun and feel more welcome if the folks who need a hand actually get one.
No system is perfect, all systems can be abused. But you have a separate autox class to include people not segregate them. Why the heck did they ever start CAM?
In reply to kb58 :
The general idea is that the bias inherent in society means that attempting to serve under-privileged groups gets you closer to equality. It is similar to the argument for affirmative action for college admissions. Sorry for not selling you a house where you wanted to live and defunding the schools where you were allowed to live. Here are 30 extra points on your SAT score. People are attempting to help where they can even if they weren't controlling the real estate market 30 years ago.
Autocross ladies classes are a topic for a different thread. On the surface, I agree they are pretty weird. They serve a real, useful purpose even if it is narrow.
The Genderbread is great (there is a unicorn too that is also equally as well done). It's great to use to talk to your kids (or coworkers) about these things that may be hard to understand for those who are cis gendered.
In reply to kb58 :
1) Ladies autocross class is a bit odd, but there is no requirement that they sign up for that class.
2) Seeing someone who is like you succeed is very, very helpful for younger people. So seeing someone who is an amputee win in the olympics, a person of color become an astronaut, etc.
3) You don't get why this is, likely because you're a white male and therefore don't see the world the way they have. In a perfect world, being a different color or gender or sexual orientation wouldn't and shouldn't matter when it comes to where you live, where you work or whom you socialize with. Unfortunately in the imperfect world we live in, those can still matter and pointing them out in a positive way can help people see the bias and work towards eliminating it.
Unpopular Opinion time-
I am a very religious person, and I adhere to a strict set of beliefs. At the top of those beliefs is one that trumps all others- I believe that God granted each of us the right to choose our own path in life. No matter what my thoughts on the matter at hand are, I will not allow my belief system to dictate how you live your life.
The only thing I ask in return is that you respect my right to a belief different than your own. In my experience, this is where the disconnect lies in society- the notion that if someone disagrees with you, they are a hate-filled bigot. It's unbecoming of any American to act in that manner.
Recon1342 said:Unpopular Opinion time-
I am a very religious person, and I adhere to a strict set of beliefs. At the top of those beliefs is one that trumps all others- I believe that God granted each of us the right to choose our own path in life. No matter what my thoughts on the matter at hand are, I will not allow my belief system to dictate how you live your life.
The only thing I ask in return is that you respect my right to a belief different than your own. In my experience, this is where the disconnect lies in society- the notion that if someone disagrees with you, they are a hate-filled bigot. It's unbecoming of any American to act in that manner.
I wouldn't think anything you said is unpopular, it makes sense.
To clarify - if you believe in a god, presumably the Christian God, then there is a belief that we are all created by this God and thus in his image, right? (I'm incredibly not-religious so please don't feel bad correcting or tweaking what I just wrote)
With that, it'd stand to reason that what all of us in the LGBT+ family claim is true, that this isn't a path we chose or preference or lifestyle, but simply a way we were made. Whether you think that's via DNA sequencing or however God did it or a mix of both.
I think those who are religious (or not, same deal) should believe whatever they want to believe. As you say, your belief system should not dictate how I live my life. Our country was founded on freedom from religion and there is a beauty in having real discussion with people who don't think the same as you.
That said, people who think differently than me are absolutely not hate-filled bigots! The people who believe that I'm trying to take a piece of their pie, when in reality I just want my own pie to eat that looks about the same as everyone else's, are the ones that I have a problem with. And I wouldn't put a blanket "hate-filled bigot" statement across all of those people, because many just need to have some frank, sometimes uncomfortable discussions to open their minds a little.
The hate-filled bigots usually identify themselves and it's not just about LGBT+ topics.
Recon1342 said:Unpopular Opinion time-
I am a very religious person, and I adhere to a strict set of beliefs. At the top of those beliefs is one that trumps all others- I believe that God granted each of us the right to choose our own path in life. No matter what my thoughts on the matter at hand are, I will not allow my belief system to dictate how you live your life.
i wish there were more people with your beliefs and less that hide behind religion to try and dictate how everyone else lives and loves
There's bad hateful people in all groups but most car guys, or gals, or androgynous people or whatever you are just wanna wrench and enjoy their hobby and could give two hoots whether you like guys or girls or neither or both or whether you are a guy or girl or neither or both. And yeah some groups of car guys have more of those people like the comment about muscle car guys old boys club but most don't rly care in my experience. And yeah, maybe it's not a "safe space" but that's because it doesn't have to be. It's not about any identity or anything it's just about cars. I go to a car meet and I don't look at other people's sexuality I look at people's seriously cool ass cars, sexuality doesn't even enter the debate (unless I meet a guy or girl that I feel I'd really connect with/want to ask out but that's a bit tangential). You do you, love your cars, and if anyone wants to hate on you I'm sure you'll find ten other car people to back you up
In reply to Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) :
I think this is perfect but so often there is some huge sweeping generalizations that it kind of needs to be said. Like us LGBT people are viewed as trying to force our beliefs on others when we aren't, and us christians are viewed the same (granted there is a vocal minority who do but). Or people who maybe don't agree on x or y are deemed nazis of hateful or people who dont agree the other way are deemed snowflakes and sjws and such. It's hard to find people with balanced views that account for everything
In reply to SavageHunter11 :
You put this perfectly, thanks
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