southern comfort?

[subjective]

lately i feel weirdly hesitant to say anything negative about florida and/or the south in general, because i seem to keep running into people who have never lived there or maybe never even been there who make sweeping generalizations about how awful it is. there's plenty that i hate about southern politics on the whole. i am critical of my roots, but maybe it's sort of like how you can call your sibling lots of mean names and then when the neighbor kids do it you want to deck them for disrespect.

my entire family (save one aunt in oregon) lives in the south (mostly florida & georgia, some in tennessee & alabama) & has for generations. that is where i grew up for 21 years. i had important reasons for leaving & i for sure have a love/hate relationship with the south, especially politically. but (again) that doesn't excuse the way other people talk about the south as if it is some homogenous, utterly backwards geographic area. the south is complex & complicated & please stop saying things that simplify southern people & history in this really degrading way. and i'm pretty fucking sick of non-southerners discussing the south in an overarching diminuitive way that (by default?) casts "the rest of us" as shining examples of progressive politics. the south is not your scapegoat, thanks.



that said, this is entirely fucked up.

Comments

[easilyirritable.livejournal.com]

Wait...so this whole adoption notice thing is happening in Tampa? I thought it was only on the east coast of Florida, around Palm Beach and such. Damn. At least I know it's statewide now, and I can do something about it.

I hear you on the "southern" thing. I didn't grow up in the south; I grew up in Oklahoma and Utah, two very conservative areas, and I've heard all sorts of ridiculous shit, to "how many wives does your dad have?" to "do y'all fuck your brothers?", so I feel your pain. I do find it amusing and ironic, though, to hear northerners discuss southern racism, because Massachusetts rivaled Utah, Florida and Oklahoma in the high numbers of racist people I ran into on a daily basis. The idea of the "northern liberal" is such a myth. Voting Democrat does not an anti-racist, -homophobic, or -sexist person make.