This is news?

I guess nothing else is going on in the world because the news channels right now are running extended stories on Caitlyn Jenner's new reality show.

I dunno. I wish Caitlyn well in her new life but I suspect she's going to have it far, far easier than most transgender people because she's famous.

There was someone on one of the channels talking about 'acceptance' and how the big thing Caitlyn needs is acceptance right now and I have to admit, I found myself thinking about a lot of the people I knew, self included, growing up, who weren't transgender or gay or any of those other things, but who also didn't get a lot of acceptance - I was made fun of because I was a smart kid who cared about grades. A friend of mine was made fun of for a learning disability. Another friend because she was markedly less well-to-do than some of the other kids in the school (the first time I ever heard the term 'trailer trash,' it was applied to her. And I remember thinking that she was kinder and classier than the kids harassing her, and that they were the ones being trashy). Later on, I had a friend of Korean heritage who got harassed for THAT.

Acceptance in this life is a rarity. People by and large are jerks to one another. It shouldn't be so, but also, people shouldn't act like there are just a few protected classes that suffer from insufficient acceptance. Part of the reason I'm such a loner now is that I was so rejected by my peers as a tween that I just "learned" other people my age don't want to be around me. That's not really true but it's hard to scrub that emotional experience out of your brain.

And it's not that we need more rules or laws or anti-bullying measures or any kind of top-down crap. What we need is individual people deciding on their own not to be jerks to other people. If you legislate what people can say to other people, they're just going to think those things harder. You can't change someone's heart or mind by forcing them. I don't have any good solutions to bullying or people being rude to other people - well, maybe if someone is a horrible bully to lots of people, throw them out of school (I really wish that schools had the authority to tell parents, "You need to teach your kid not to be a jerk or he or she loses the privilege of going to school here")

(And now they're on to Bobbi Kristina Brown. I guess the only stuff happening in the world today involves famous people....)