{"id":1613,"date":"2015-11-03T14:11:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T14:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/?p=1613"},"modified":"2025-01-19T01:28:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T01:28:31","slug":"i-will-be-offended-if-i-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/?p=1613","title":{"rendered":"I Will Be Offended If I Choose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Listen, I get that I&#8217;m white and male and some privilege came with that.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t feel that way when I was a kid and the factory closed, my parents lost their jobs, and food stamps and the food pantry kept us from starving. It didn&#8217;t feel that way when I&#8217;d see friends with four or five pairs of shoes and I only had one. As I got older, when I was out on my own, it made me angry. I spent years being angry. I wasted those years.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually things clicked for me. I got my shit together, went back to school, stopped calling into work every time I felt like sleeping in or playing video games all day. I worked hard. This brought rewards.\u00a0Nobody gave me my vehicles, no one gave me my home. They were earned. My wife and I work hard for our stuff. There are times where the $3 paperback I picked up at Half Price Books a few weeks ago gives me as much joy as a ride on my far more expensive Harley Davidson.<\/p>\n<p>So it pisses me off when I see shit saying I can never be offended by something because I&#8217;m white and male and don&#8217;t know the struggle of other people. You&#8217;re right, I don&#8217;t know their struggle. But I can see some of it. I&#8217;ve seen some of the shit my non-hetero and non-white and non-male friends have to put up with and it&#8217;s pretty goddamned awful just from the outsider view.<\/p>\n<p>But this concept that if you are 1) white and 2) male, you can never be offended and if you are, you&#8217;re a sexist and\/or racist,\u00a0makes zero sense.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s disregard the newest trend where everyone has to be offended by all things at all times. If I see something that offends me, I will point it out if I choose. There are times where it&#8217;s not needed, because I can&#8217;t take someone serious that makes a racist\/sexist meme but doesn&#8217;t have basic spelling or grammar capabilities. But if I want to, I will. And if you get offended by my being offended, that&#8217;s just too fucking bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen, I get that I&#8217;m white and male and some privilege came with that. It didn&#8217;t feel that way when I was a kid and the factory closed, my parents lost their jobs, and food stamps and the food pantry kept us from starving. It didn&#8217;t feel that way when I&#8217;d see friends with four&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more navbutton\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/?p=1613\">Read More<i class=\"fa fa-angle-double-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1633,"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iowabiker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}