Liberty and Justice for All - The Myth

On Monday, November 4, 2013, Luke "Sasha" Fleishman, an 18 year old student at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, California, was traveling through Oakland on an A/C Transit bus.  Sasha was sleeping on the ride home from school.  Richard Thomas, a sixteen year old student of Oakland High School, was also on the bus.  Richard thought it would be a good idea to set Sasha on fire.  "WHAT?" you say.  Why on earth would someone do such a thing, especially in the most liberal part of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area?

Well, as it turns out, Richard is homophobic and Sasha, who is biologically male, was wearing a skirt.  Sasha received painful 2nd and 3rd degree burns to the legs that will require considerable skin grafting.  Richard was identified via security camera footage.  He has been arrested and charged with a hate crime, along with aggravated mayhem and felony assault.  Sasha's mother describes Sasha as agender, one who does not identify with being either male or female.  Sasha prefers to be referred to as they instead of he or she.  Richard's mom, as to be expected, describes Richard as a good kid.

Today, Friday, several male students at Maybeck High chose to wear skirts to school in support of their classmate.

I don't understand this country we live in anymore.  It seems we are taking many steps backwards in our cultural evolution and as a society as a whole.  Back in the 1960s we started making progress towards treating blacks as equals but we are still not there.  In the 1960s we also started to progress in our attitudes about women and in 1969 LGBT rights came into the picture as well.  It used to be that one would rarely see a woman in public wearing anything other than skirts or dresses.  Now it is commonplace to see women in pants at least as often as in skirts.  

In the last few years something strange has happened.  Now there are people who, once again, want women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.  They want to force women to carry all pregnancies to term, even if conception was due to rape or incest; to prohibit women from using contraception; and to force women who were raped to share custodial rights with the rapist, not to mention, to leave the workplace to adopt the role of a stay at home mom.  In Texas and some other states, they have now made it very difficult for any married woman to vote.  What used to be referred to as the "radical right" has now become mainstream conservative.  

I salute Sasha and the students at Maybeck High for taking a stand, but our country is, unfortunately, not yet civilized enough for people with male genitalia to appear in public wearing skirts.  There are many cultures past and present where it has been socially acceptable, but not in Europe or North America in this day and age, unless you are wearing a kilt, and even then you can expect strange looks.  So, I guess I will continue to wear skirts only in the privacy of my home.  I find them far more comfortable than pants.  I'm not gay, I'm not transgender, and I don't know if I am a Scot, but I do know this.  The last thing I want is to be assaulted by some asshole who doesn't like the way I dress.  It is time for emancipation of everyone - men, women, blacks, Muslims, LGBTs, and anyone else with a difference.  Some of us are starting to get our freedom.  However, the fact that this incident with Sasha happened in the San Francisco Bay Area underscores that those freedoms are just not for all of us, not today.

Sources:  http://www.berkeleyside.com/2013/11/07...
http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_pride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men's_skirts