I’m a hugger, he says and leans in. I shudder, I can smell his breath. It’s not the freshest. I can smell his aftershave. It smells cheap. I can feel his stubble across my cheek. It hurts. I can feel his stomach flab. It is soft and almost engulfs me. He disgusts me. I do not know him. Why is he touching me like this?

I am not much for physical contact. But even if I were, I would not want to hug damn strangers. People I just met. Why the hell do some people think announcing “I am  a hugger” gives them the right to touch me in a way that we usually only touch close friends, partners and family. I am not a hugger. I do not hug strangers. I do not want you to hug me. Step the fuck back and get your clammy hands off of me. Who the hell gave you the right to lay your hands on me?

I get it. I see how these hugger types think they are jovial, warm, approachable, and quirky, fun, with it people. I am sure they believe proclaiming “I am a hugger” makes them somehow with it, cool, hipsterish, yogaish, trendyish, leftist, Burneriersih or something.

It does not. It is a cheap party trick. Without the party and booze. Whatever it is, I am not buying it. They think it makes them relatable. You know what, it does not. All it says is they are so needy and so uninteresting, they have so few words of wisdom in their vocabulary that they need to practically assault people to get to them. They are incapable of saying something worthwhile, instead they come too close, they leave all decorum behind, and they violate all sense of personal space and without remorse they breach my personal freedom.

Next time someone leans in with the “I am a hugger” I am gonna lean right back, with my strong runners leg up high and ready, and proudly proclaim, “I am a kicker”. Let’s see who wins that one.

If a group directly impacted by a phenomenon tells the world that please do not use a specific term, or artifact, or certain depiction, since it has historical implications that demean me and my family and my people, why, then of course I shall completely and unhesitatingly not use it.

I do not believe it is ever acceptable to make fun of or discriminate against people because of inherent traits such as skin color, sexuality, health status, socioeconomic status etc. I see no reason, nor do I find joy in making fun of people just because they adhere to any one religion. That said, I do find joy in pointing out logical flaws, lack of scientific thinking, bigotry and the overall uselessness and stupidity of religions. Criticizing religion is completely different from criticizing people.

Religion, and -isms of all kinds are more than fair game for commentary of any kind. -Isms and religions are sets of ideas, nothing more. Ideas are made to be criticized, even made fun of.  Especially silly ones, such as religious ones.

If a whiny person, especially a jacked up social warrior, high on some alkaline detox shot, tells me to stop eating, baking, printing, wearing, selling, or saying something because it is cultural appropriation, then it is most probably way off base. Making Mexican food is not cultural appropriation. Wearing braids or cornrows or what have you is a style choice, albeit a bad one, but it is not cultural appropriation.

Incorporating positive parts of another people and countries is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. Enjoying another culture’s food, baking it, even selling it is not a bad thing. It is praise – this food is so goddamn tasty I need to make it and sell it so the world can enjoy it too. Dreadlocks are disgusting, and should really be banned for that reason alone, but any hippie, regardless of color or culture, has the right to wear them. It is not cultural appropriation. If in doubt, do your research. Exactly whose cultural would dreadlocks be appropriation from? Listening to rap is something all people have the same right to enjoy (or tolerate) just as they have the right to listen to polka or bluegrass or blues or what have you. We can all wear what we want, Indian saris or tie dye, pants or ponchos, it is a matter of bad or good taste, not of stealing someone else’s culture.  Learning from other cultures, incorporating colors, art, food is a good thing! Appreciating and wanting to share what one has learned and seen abroad is a positive.

Now, if someone dresses up in an indigenous dress and makes fun of that culture, that is bad. If someone does blackface, it is derogatory and plain dumb. The same goes for sexually stereotyping someone. or for making fun of handicaps. Taking someone’s culture and passing it off as your own is not ok. Taking someone else’s work, minimizing or even removing its heritage claiming it is your, is going too far, it is completely lacking in respect and even theft. The line should be pretty clear, but is seems activists want it moved and that the new rules are both ambiguous and esoteric. What is really the purpose of enlarging the scope of cultural appropriation? What is the goal? I am not sure, but picking fights, where none are to be found, where there is no ill intent, is always a negative. Broadening cultural appropriation, making it mainstream, making it ubiquitous is not the way forward, it is derisive and illogical and most of all it is inflammatory. Stick to what is de facto bad, and make sure the line is not crossed, but keep a line. When the line is unclear just teach, enlighten, question with the purpose of making things better, don’t attack and name call and scream cultural appropriation and bigot at some confused baker/singer/writer/philosopher who simply expressed joy in whatever craft. Attacking never achieves a positive. And I am confident most cases of what activists call cultural appropriation, are simple lack of knowledge or insight, so what is the point of attack and arguing? Who will learn from that?

Seriously, we are, we just tend to forget it all of us. Take our family, we are originally from Sweden. Swedes have never had to worry about healthcare, schools, day care, maternity/paternity leave, how to feed our kids and ourselves. Not really anyways, since there is always a safety net. We just have to remember that. We need to remember that no matter what, no matter how stressed we get about income, our kids, health, we always have a safety net. We will not go without proper medical care, without food and a home because the society we have created in Sweden takes care of us, like it or not. This makes us abundantly rich, in a world where most have so little.

For a while our family lived in the US and I got sick and my health care insurer decided to, out of the blue, terminate my coverage. All of a sudden we did worry, we worried a lot because it was expensive, it was tiring and stressful, for quite some time it remained so until we got things back on track. But for a while we were broke, we had no health care coverage, we had medical bills to pay, a son to feed and lots, lots of work to do, and no family to help. Being ill and not getting proper care is not a good way to live, and the worry makes all other issues grow, not necessarily in reasonable proportion. Stress makes everything so much harder and so much more difficult to deal with. But, no matter how hard things get we always know that as Swedes, we can always just move back to Sweden. We have our safety net, our cop out. We don’t want to live there permanently, and so far we have managed to get by on our own. We chose to live abroad, to pay for our own healthcare, the delivery of our son, for school and we chose to opt out of the Swedish maternity pay by not living there. It was our choice and the price we had to pay to get to live in the US, where we loved to live. Just the same it made us poor, in material terms. We lost all our savings and had to start over. The US, for all its good sides, is an extremely expensive, harsh country to get by in.

In our late thirties we wound up with no money, 100 k in credit card debt and in the middle of a (costly) adoption process. Life was hard; anxiety attacks, stress related, fear inducing panic attacks leaving us in the emergency room many times, crying fits, and uncertainty of where to go, what to do, how to do any of it! Being broke defines your life, making it sheer hell. But we pulled through. We are still not in the clear. We are still stressed, still tired, but we are working very hard to focus on the right things, on life, family, our son, living, rather than on what is not so good. We are also setting up a life that allows us to get things back on track rather than on falling back in the same old system, the same old stress that got us here in the first place.

So many of us complain about everything. And believe you me, I do get that things aren’t always easy, there are things to complain about, but after a while it gets monotonous. Yes, I hear you; your job sucks, yes your colleagues are dumb apes, yes you need to loose twenty pounds, yes you are tired of the gray skies, lack of sunlight, (the perpetual cold, gray skies of for example Sweden, that make me shudder just imagining them), yes, you are getting old, fast, your husband is a misogynist as, yes, no one appreciates you for the wonderful, fun, brilliant person you really are…. Or something like i, and I get it, but news flash, it is your life. If you don’t like it, change it. So stop the never ending rants and change what you do not like. Start by acknowledging that one: you are so seriously lucky, you have the basics met, the bases of the Maslow’s pyramid are laid, and two: you are in fact free to do what you want, you can do what you want and it is not too late to change whatever it is that is not working. First, do understand, on a deep level, that no one can do it for you. Stop complaining, start digging yourself up of whatever hole you are in by focusing on what you want and need to change to achieve peace.

If you chose to remain where you are, with the same old, same old that keeps you down and unhappy, the same old that you keep complaining about, then accept it and shut up. If not, change whatever you are unhappy about. Isn’t life just a tad too short to be stuck and unhappy?