I was reading the news today and thought about Kim Davis and how she thinks she's today's Rosa Parks. She genuinely believes that history will look back on her as a historic civil rights activist.

Then it occurred to me that if she were remembered at all - she'd be likely to go down in history in much the way Typhoid Mary did.

For those who don't know, Typhoid Mary was an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid Fever working as a cook. Typhoid Fever is transmissible via contaminated food - so her status as an asymptomatic carrier and a cook basically made her a mobile weapon of lethal disease.

Investigators found a trail of employment where she would work somewhere for a few weeks, an outbreak would happen, and she would immediately leave with no forwarding address. Several people she'd worked for died or their family members died as a result of the disease.

Doctors finally narrowed it down to her and discovered that the disease was harboured by her gall bladder and that removing it could cure her and make her safe. She refused to allow them to remove it, denying that she even had the disease. She was quarantined for three years, released only on the condition that she give up her profession as a cook and that she exercise basic hygiene to avoid transmission. She agreed, signing an affidavit to the effect.

Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) was also the holder of the
World's Most Effective Resting Bitch Face Award forty years running!

However, the job she procured as a laundress didn't pay as much as cooking, and she changed her name and returned to her former profession. Immediately more people became ill.

In essence, Typhoid Mary was informed that she was making people sick and killing them and adopted a, "You can't tell me what to do." attitude and continued on her merry way as a harbinger of disease.

If you inspire a PSA which could be retitlted How To Not
Be A Fucking Idiot, you have probably done something stupid.

It's cited as one of the cases which helped to decide what responsibility a public body has to protect its people. Certainly they couldn't force her to have her gall bladder removed - it was her body. Instead, the New York government did what it had to do, condemning Mary to isolation for the rest of her life on an island or until she'd consent to having the diseased organ removed. They knew they couldn't trust her. They knew that she would make people sick again.

This is how history will see Kim Davis - not as someone who brought about great change due to her heroic acts but as someone who brought about greater awareness through viciously wilful ignorance and denial.

(Check out the DF poll this week! It's been brought to my attention that my name is offensive (which I honestly hadn't really considered) and I'm proposing a slight name change. Don't start your shit about political correctness - I believe in treating all people with respect. Except assholes. Fuck those people.)

My blog post reminded me of another thing a lot of kids just don't get because they weren't taught to look for it.  I was reminded of the trend last year of young, well-meaning women holding up "I don't need feminism because I clearly don't get it" signs.  

I certainly can't speak for all of those young women - but I can be sure that a lot of them didn't think they needed feminism because they didn't grow up with the constant reminder of "what sexism is".  I know that I didn't.  When I was a teenager I thought I didn't need feminism because I saw feminism as "man hating".  Like many people, I mistook "feminism" for "misandry" and my mom was the kind of woman who threw other women under the bus with "she was dressed like a whore and asking for it" comments.  I won't make the same mistake with my own child.  My 5 year old already knows that the world is slanted to favour him and he's angry about it.  That's the kind of kid I want to raise.

There are a lot of parents who hide the world's events from their children. They coat the world in glittering sugar to make it easier for their children to swallow. We even tell ourselves that we're doing it for a good reason. We're protecting them from the horrors of the world, we say. It's better this way.

But is it? Does presenting a beautiful, serene utopia of a world serve to protect our children - or does it set them up for failure and disappointment? Are we doing our children a disservice by not giving them time and space to process the genuine horrors of the world before they have to deal with them on their own? The utopia we're selling them? It doesn't exist.

I've never been able to bring myself to lie to my son about big things going on in the world. At first it was just explaining what was happening. I didn't offer. I didn't call him over to teach him a valuable lesson, but if he happened to see me upset about an article or caught a glimpse of a news video - I'd explain. I'd explain in a concise, blunt, and very honest manner what was happening.

Then one day it hit me like a slap to the face. Most kids in the world don't get the luxury of that sugary coating because they're -living- that horror. Once that piece slid into place, the puzzle became -strikingly- clear.

This little boy doesn't get the luxury of assuming that the world is an essentially good and fluffy place.

Recently, I'd watched MTV's documentary on racism White People. Let me summarize it for you. Non-white people talk to white people about racism and white people are horrified, uncomfortable, and sometimes straight-up think they're being lied to about the effects that racism had on their non-white counterparts.

I wondered what the parents of those white kids had taught them about racism. I wondered if it was the blanket an oversimplified idea that "we're all the same" and "we're all colourblind". We're raising kids who don't realize that racism exists. They haven't been trained to see it, so they ignore it.

And I've got news for you - that's racism. Denying that racism exists. Is racism.

So, from a young age, I started pulling Xander -to- me when I was watching the news and the horrors of the world. I didn't want to raise a child who would look at his friend and say, "No, no, no. We're clearly the same. You haven't experienced racism because I don't believe in it."

I wanted a kid who -knew- what happened in the world and -knew- how to spot it. You can only fight back against something if you know how to identify it.

We've talked about police shootings of unarmed black teens. We've talked about religious wars. About Syria. About terrorism. Starvation, poverty, sexual assault, sexism, homophobia. We've talked about hatred.

There are going to be a lot of people horrified about that - but I really don't care. I know that I'm doing the right thing. I know that who I'm raising is a kid who is informed enough to be pissed off about the way the world is - and that is how you raise someone who will fight for change. I'm raising my kid with the plea on my lips, "Please help make the world a better place." by -admitting- to him that it isn't one now.

Because when we lie to our children - when we tell them that the world is a good place, what we're really saying is that we're okay with the way the world is right now - and we -really- shouldn't be.