Back in 2020 I wrote two articles that a friend of mine very strongly disagreed with.
The first was an open disagreement with COVID related mask mandates (though for
anyone who makes the personal choice to wear a mask I fully support their decision)
which even knowing full that as someone who designs and sells
masks in their online
store I have something to gain from the mask mandates. Something that she has more
than once suggested I was in the wrong for believing, and was nothing short of angry
for me voicing my opinion on publicly. Let alone on a platform that the entire world can hear me from.
Closed minded, narrow minded, stupid, backward, all this without her even having read
the article, and had she read it with full
context she might have understood where I was coming from, when ironically when I told her
what the title Discrimination-vs-Discrimination
which was very much intended to be full aknoweldgement that somebody gets Discriminated against
either way it's just a question of who and I happened to be siding with peoples spiritual
freedom (granted partly because of my own spiritual beleifs) was that was enough to stop her
in her tracks.
It wasn't until I talked with someone else, and contemplated what they said an only partialy
related topic I found the words for what I needed to say regarding that whole mess.
My friend has her own creative streak, and I know she would be happier being in a situation
where she could follow through and finish with some of her half done creative projects. I
didn't say this to her, but:
That being the case perhaps she should consider the idea that I could have suggested what
she was saying was the same as suggesting that if she started her own business she should
be forced to in the normal course of doing business custom make something for people who
believe that because of her spirituality, or anything else about her, she shouldn't get
to keep breathing for the express purpose of them defacing her, her ideals, or even killing her.
Thankfully my friend stopped at words and insults, and I never did say anything even remotely
like that to her. I would also like to point out that I certainly don't beleive that should
be done to anyone.
I whole heatedly, unashamedly, unapologetically, stand by what I said knowing full well I have
something to lose for my words. As an artist I have more than once felt labeled, stereotyped,
and isolated because I didn't live up to the stereotype or label that didn't fit or wasn't true
about me personally. That is in addition to having felt that way for my age, any number of
other things.
For other things I have expressed in conjunction with my art, where after
publishing an article making it very clear that believe that art should
not be funded by government I happen to have entered espdigiart.com into
a certain rather large (yes it starts with G), high profile search engine and then mysteriously had it find
absolutely no results after previously having found my website on that
same search engine. Now while I am sure people could point to any number of reasons that might be the case
I find the timing rather intresting.
Ironically that same article made it to second on at least one, I think
even two other fairly well known search engines at the same time under the search
should art be subsidized. This within the first year of me starting
espdigiart.com, and while second place isn't as good as first place by any means I
have to admit for someone with no experience to speak of who didn't do anything beyond write an
article, and enter some very basic meta data that seemed like
a pretty good result.
What's funny is that I have to wonder if I had just said what I do not believe all to get favorable
search results would I have been given as much. I will never know because the day I try that tactic
is the day I will have something to be sorry for, and it's not something I can imagine being willing
to do.
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