Have you ever wanted to shake the collective discourse by the shoulders and scream “SHUT THE FUCK UP. JUST SHUT THE ACTUAL FUCK UP AND THEN CRAWL INTO A HOLE AND DIE WHILE CONTINUING TO SHUT THE FUCK UP”?
I’m in France right now. And France has a an Islamophobia problem. A Problem problem. It’s not the only country with these laws, but it makes it no less ridiculous that there is currently a ban on face coverings while we all are by law required to now cover our faces because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Liberté pour moi mais pas pour toi.
And now the western world is being bombarded with articles about if, when, and why we should take our masks off.
I was left bewildered the other day after reading someone’s blog post that was intent on debunking the right-wing talking point that has popped up claiming people are “addicted” to wearing masks (or even wearing masks as a trauma response, which was supposed to be a refute of the addicted take, but that was nearly equally silly). The blog post was so genuine and so wanting to convince the reader that no, please, there is no such thing as mask addicts, I demand that you be reasonable with this. It sounded about as normal as someone writing a sincere open letter to their cat asking it to please get in the cat carrier next time because it’s for their own good to go to the vet and we love them.
But you know that cats don’t read your blog, so you will get much more positive than negative feedback. And even if it was discovered by cats and picked up in cat circles, that would just cause it to be used as a talking point for more outrage, which would in turn make your position on cats going to the vet more popular with people, particularly cat owners, and perpetuate the idea that there is actually some sort of two-sided discourse with equally thought-out and tested arguments instead of one group of people who responsibly take care of their pet’s health needs and one group of clawing, hissing cats.
There are hundreds of reasons someone could be wearing something covering their face. They could be sick and don’t want to get others sick, they could be wary of getting sick either because they or someone they want to be around could be harmed by getting sick, no vaccine access, injury, pregnancy, they could consider covering their face to be part of their identity, they don’t want French people to assume they can kiss them upon greeting them, allergies, they work with sick people or chemicals, their face is cold, they just like it, or they could be a serial killer. Though I’m willing to bet most serial killers in real life do not, in fact, wear face masks. So hey, maybe we should be banning white men who don’t wear masks, if we want to be safe from serial killers.
And now I’m throwing myself into the jagged rocks of this discourse I so much want to have never happened in the first place because it’s so frustrating from a immunocompromised standpoint when we should already be covering our face holes in public and staying home when we could potentially make people sick but too many are forced to sacrifice their health and safety along with the rest of their community to be a Productive Cog in Mr. Wealth Machine and there is a want/need to remind people they shouldn’t be participating in eugenics. Mr. Wealth Machine loves eugenics.
See, this was not my point. I wanted to talk about the efficacy of ridiculousness-is-the-point fascist propaganda. But now I just want to explain to the cat how it is insanity to resist the carrier when he will be safer from getting his jabs at the vet, even though I know it’s probably a waste of time and will make me sound like I believe cats read blogs.
(Benny, If you are reading this: I only want to take you for a walk outside with the harness. I just need you to be chill with the sling bag so I can carry you. You’ve seemed only kind of okay inside the bag in the house, and I just want you to know that you being bored here makes me very sad and I want you to be able to do more things.
PS- Thanks for being so chilled about the bully cat that has been peeing on our front window. Thank you for not pissing anywhere like a French man in public in broad daylight all the fucking time because of it.)
By becoming what I sought to admonish, I can only beg of you to learn from me. Heed my warning. Give no goddamn fucks about someone wearing a normal fucking face covering because god damn it it’s a thing that millions of people use/wear every day. Go into the world safely and with your fucks thoughtfully considered. But also, give no fucks about the people who are giving fucks. Because they are perpetuating the cycle of wasted fucks. And god damn it now so am I. Someone, help, pull me out of this quicksand.
Or is it cat litter?
