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Gayla · 06-28-2010, 04:11 PM

This has always been a hard thing for me.

My family is very blue collar. My mother and I lived with my grandparents after she and my father divorced when I was very young. My mother worked at a bank. My grandfather was a finish carpenter and my grandmother was a seamstress, doing alterations at, what I always thought, was, a fancy clothing store in downtown Austin. My Grandma and my Mom made all my clothes and taught me to sew. Grandpa bought me honey buns off the roach coach and left them on the dashboard of his truck so they were warm and gooey when he brought them home for me after work. He taught me to fish out of stock tanks and how to correctly run a plane over a piece of wood. We lived in a rural area. Ate something from the garden for supper every night. I rode my bike through fields, down long country roads, played in the creek with my friends and had no idea that money was anything more then the quarter Grandpa would give me on the weekends so I could go across the street and get a Big Red soda water from the Creedmoor store. I also had no idea that everyone in the world didn't live this way because in my, very limited, world, they all did.

Then my mother remarried. The man that I refer to as my father, built houses for a living. We moved around quite a bit until he decided to go into business for himself. He was very good at it. We lived in an upper class area of a mid sized border town. My last name was plastered on billboards all over town. We had "live in help". My first car was a classic. We vacationed out of the country. We had a "cabin" in the mountains. I went to the right schools. Etc, etc, ect.

At the very core, I am privilege. It affects everything I say, think and do. I carry a huge amount of shame for having grown up with money because it's been often seen as "bad" in my community. I've had to fight my own -ism's and be even extra vigilant about how they influence the things I do.

I know that here, on the planet, there are threads I avoid and discussions I side step because I honestly don't know if I'm capable of participating without letting my privilege show. I'd like to think that the work I've done over the last 25+ years has left me in a position that I can but I think I will always question it and fight against it and will never truly know.

06-28-2010, 04:11 PM	#17
Gayla Timed Out How Do You Identify?: Kinky Butch Top Preferred Pronoun?: I'm not picky Relationship Status: She makes me dance like a fool and forget how to breathe. Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: SF CA Posts: 3,229 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 877 Thanked 7,078 Times in 1,966 Posts Rep Power: 0	This has always been a hard thing for me. My family is very blue collar. My mother and I lived with my grandparents after she and my father divorced when I was very young. My mother worked at a bank. My grandfather was a finish carpenter and my grandmother was a seamstress, doing alterations at, what I always thought, was, a fancy clothing store in downtown Austin. My Grandma and my Mom made all my clothes and taught me to sew. Grandpa bought me honey buns off the roach coach and left them on the dashboard of his truck so they were warm and gooey when he brought them home for me after work. He taught me to fish out of stock tanks and how to correctly run a plane over a piece of wood. We lived in a rural area. Ate something from the garden for supper every night. I rode my bike through fields, down long country roads, played in the creek with my friends and had no idea that money was anything more then the quarter Grandpa would give me on the weekends so I could go across the street and get a Big Red soda water from the Creedmoor store. I also had no idea that everyone in the world didn't live this way because in my, very limited, world, they all did. Then my mother remarried. The man that I refer to as my father, built houses for a living. We moved around quite a bit until he decided to go into business for himself. He was very good at it. We lived in an upper class area of a mid sized border town. My last name was plastered on billboards all over town. We had "live in help". My first car was a classic. We vacationed out of the country. We had a "cabin" in the mountains. I went to the right schools. Etc, etc, ect. At the very core, I am privilege. It affects everything I say, think and do. I carry a huge amount of shame for having grown up with money because it's been often seen as "bad" in my community. I've had to fight my own -ism's and be even extra vigilant about how they influence the things I do. I know that here, on the planet, there are threads I avoid and discussions I side step because I honestly don't know if I'm capable of participating without letting my privilege show. I'd like to think that the work I've done over the last 25+ years has left me in a position that I can but I think I will always question it and fight against it and will never truly know.