Watching Her Wake Up on Her Deathbed. Happy Birthday Brenda Annette Stanley 9/4/1942

One of the saddest things I’ve ever lived through other than Hurricane Harvey was watching my mother’s revelation of how WOMEN ARE VICTIMIZED BY LANGUAGE just prior to her death in August of 2012.

WOMEN are NOT CAUSING THIS: this is BEING DONE TO US.

People are INDIVIDUALS & no one person is single-handedly responsible for their respective language, yet WOMEN are held ACCOUNTABLE for the English Language every day. “Oh, it’s that GIRL, - that ENGLISH-SPEAKING WHITE GIRL.”

Today is September 4th – 9/4: Labor Day. My Mom was a Labor Day baby.

Just when we thought we had made it through AUGUST, the “gassiest month of the year,” we arrive at “dead people month.”

SERIOUSLY???

One more time, NOBODY IN MY FAMILY ever acted this way, spoke this way, communicated this way.

When we learn things, learning what NOT TO DO is equally as important as LEARNING what to do.

I began waking up to this knowledge in the mid-1990s & tried to tell the rest of the family what was going on. Five years after the death of my mother, it would be easy to sit back & say “I TOLD YA SO,” but there is NOTHING TO GLOAT ABOUT BEING RIGHT.

It is stunning. It is insulting. And it is WRONG.

WOMEN have been VICTIMIZED by Language, Communication & all of those insulting translations.

I come from a long line of BROWN WOMEN. My mother’s mother was born Brown. In Gastonia. I was born in SALISBURY. BURRIED??? Sa-lis-BURY???

Was I really born BROWN, GASSY & BURRIED???

A LANGUAGE VICTIM.

Please stop BLAMING WHITE WOMEN FOR LANGUAGE.

YOU are VICTIMIZING ME.

Thank You.