an existential keekah

Sometimes people in this world make me sad.

I have a friend who blogs about her sex life.  I’ve always admired her for knowing exactly who she is and being comfortable to share such a personal aspect of herself in a blog.  I imagine there are folks out there who think she does these types of things out of a need for attention or a need to be the center or attention.  Maybe they think it’s because of past childhood hurts and/or abuse that she reveals such private, intimate details about herself and her sex life.  Maybe there are folks who think she does it because she is a voyeurist and it fulfills a need or desire.  Maybe there is someone out there in www land who believes all these things.

I believe she does so because she knows who she is and is damned proud of what that means… to her.

I admire the hell out of her, I honestly do.  It takes extreme confidence in oneself to face your true inner self, all the tiny little corners of your personality, all those quirks that the world goes out of the way to beat out of you with societal norms and say to yourself, “hey I love that about me.”  It takes extreme courage to show that persona to the world in any way and refuse to let anyone’s judgement make you feel like you have to apologize.  It takes kindness to use who you are to try and open up the world and share who you are in hopes someone else might learn from your own experiences.

This week my friend got fired from her job because her boss found out about her online persona.

It isn’t so much the fact that she was fired that upsets me.  Truth is, my friend knew the risks of blogging online and being so open about her life – her sex life, no less.  Despite whatever advances we think humans have made in this world, in this “day and age” – sex is still risque and not talked about in regular circles.  Americans especially have such a puritanical outlook on sex that it borders on ridiculous.  If you are a woman who enjoys sex and is not in the confines of marriage – well, you especially are viewed as less than acceptable.  Which was evident in the response my friend’s now-former boss had to finding my friend’s blog and in how she chose to fire my friend.  You can read my friend’s recount of the confrontation here.

You don’t know my friend and so you probably won’t tear up when reading her account.  You don’t know my friend either as The Beautiful Kind – a spunky, takes no prisoners, makes no excuses, no holds barred sexual dynamo – or as her “Clark Kent” persona, the other side of her who is sweet, kind, thoughtful and just as damn sexy as her TBK persona.  Because I know both sides of her, I caught myself choking back tears when I read how this boss-woman of hers brought feelings of shame to my friend, even managed to make her feel a need to apologize for who she is and what she chose to share with the world.  Which by the way had nothing to do with her job, thank you very much. (You bitch – sorry I couldn’t help it (no I’m not.))

That apology is the biggest travesty – not because my friend uttered it – but because this self-righteous, egotistical, bigoted woman’s words caused my friend to feel the need to apologize.

We all make mistakes.  But I can’t view my friend’s choice to blog as the mistake here.  And she certainly isn’t the one who should be apologizing.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 9:16 am and is filed under All About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.