I was enjoying Injun Joe’s hilarious disruption of Porky Pig’s frontier adventure on an episode of Looney Tunes when my father first introduced me to the concept of stereotypes.   I was five.  From that point on, under the tyranny of my hippie parents, my life became a constant examination of the prejudice already present in my tiny world, from my favorite games (“Smear the Queer”), to my favorite terms of derision (“Retard”), to my favorite tattle-tailing verbs (“My brother just gyped me out of $20!).  I have been hypersensitive to labels and the harmful perceptions that accompany them ever since. 

Oh yes, this happened.

Continue reading →