Saturday, Apr. 18, 2020 - 10:14 pm.
Just a quick update, so I won't lose the habit of writing a weekly entry. Things do happen, though, everyday is just as eventful inside my apartment as it would be outside. I guess that's a perk of working from home *and* being used to having a life indoors. A lot of my activities are supposed to end up being published, even if they go unnoticed.
I do write a lot everyday. I make my comics to post once a week, not that more than ten people read it silently. I'm working on papers with Brother #3 about the pandemic and our authoritarian government (it's very much a dictatorship now). I'm currently writing a column about that for the digital newspaper. Then I try to amplify voices on Twitter about, again, what's happening in my country, and elsewhere regarding the virus, but I also speak about things unrelated to the pandemic, because we all can use a break, too. I talk to family and friends, they're all doing OK (except for a friend from the Phillipines who lost her dad, and a friend from Spain who lost his father-in-law, both to the virus).
One nasty, but eventually juicy, thing that happened this week was about a famous cousin of mine (famous nationwide in my home country, which makes him just another irrelevant nobody anywhere else). I haven't seen him in over a decade, but he's a model and life coach and whatever, and jumps from TV show to TV show, much like with his twin brother, who's also a celebrity, mostly a DJ.
Anyway! This cousin said some truly nasty things on a TV variety show about "being a man/macho during lockdown". There was a public outcry (GOOD), and even the human rights ombudsman issued a statement. Finally this asshole that I call my cousin issued a half-assed apology.
The juicy part came from the trans community through my friend Virginia. She knows a lot of trans women, most of them fierce activists and all of whom have been pushed to sex work in order to survive. So I learned from V that my cousin is a frequent customer of these women, they all know him. He's rude towards them and tries to get away with paying only half of the tariff, that cheap bastard, but he also seeks them desperately. Typical macho with a secret.
I couldn't care less about what makes people tickle. The horrible part is the hypocrisy, the cheating and lying, the mistreatment of those providing a service, and the public flaunting of a moral higher ground, the latter of which people like this cousin love to do.
In a way I feel sorry for him, because from what I was told it sounds that he's at least bi, but he probably feels disgusted with himself about that, as his religious family would feel if they found out. His wife is a badass surgeon, but she's also scarily religious. Everyone in his family is; his older brother is a pastor or whatever, he's always praying and leading some sort of cult with his wife. Hell, most of my country is scarily religious. So I'm aware it already sucks being a man, specially in a country like mine, having to go ridiculous lengths to prove yourself all the time, and it is worse if you're not hetero.
On the other hand: fuck that guy. We're related, but I wouldn't say we're family. And it's because of all that religious, conservative bullshit that I'm so happy to keep a distance from my relatives (and sometimes my mom and dad, mostly my dad; half of my siblings are quite alright and the other half is decent enough). This cousin is a grown man who should know better, but he sticks to disgusting yet socially celebrated views on what men and women *should* do. Worst of all, he doesn't even have the decency to pay fairly the trans women who keep his secret.
Ugh.
Anyway! That's the scoop this week. That, and the fact that my contract with uni came through! I HAVE INSURANCE OMFG. Bless my boss forever. The world is crumbling down, and yet here I am getting some job security, doing something that I enjoy (research, except for the recruiting participants part). I don't know how much I'll be getting paid, but maybe I'll be able to pay this forward making a donation to groups who need it. I'm thinking sex workers.