by JILLIAN SWORDS
Contributing Reporter
I’ve been hanging out in England as an exchange student at Keele University for several weeks now, seeing as much as I can and trying to make sure I’m not fulfilling everyone’s worst idea of the Ugly American (note: cutting yourself off after cider number two or three at the bar usually helps this).
At first I was in a complete state of nirvana when I realized what a refreshingly comparatively liberal and open-minded society it is here in the United Kingdom; I’ve lived in the South all my life and most of the traveling and living abroad I have done has been in Central America.
I was a tad in awe of how stubbornly apolitical my professors are able to remain while teaching about inflammatory topics like Victorian gender roles and the Crusades (some say boring, I say deliciously argument-inducing).
Another exchange student from the Netherlands I was hanging out with, after cautiously testing the waters to find out if I was a supporter of Gov. Sarah Palin (a mere “no” wouldn’t suffice), warmed up sufficiently and announced she had never met an American before who found the idea of marriage so laughably superfluous.
It was a great time, mine and political England’s dreamy-eyed honeymoon period.
England is still eye opening and wonderful and historical, but needless to say the proverbial eyelash batting is over.
No matter where you are, there are going to be people who couldn’t care less about social justice or equality.
There are always going to be college kids who care more about nail polish or parroting their parents’ beliefs or chosen, lazy ignorance than thinking for themselves, taking a stand about something one way or the other and getting involved.
There are always going to be people who don’t keep up with the news and know less about their own country than visiting foreigners do (I’m not saying the States doesn’t have a disproportionately high percentage of people like this).
There will be “feminists,” and there will be feminists.
There will be people who say men and women or blacks and whites or hetero and homosexuals are “equal” to make people feel more comfortable, when they know perfectly well they will never do anything to stand up for that statement.
There will be women who, realizing that Palin-bashing is en vogue, vehemently declare that the governor stands against everything for which women have ever fought.
This is right before they go back to flipping through the glossy pages of the newest magazine that will instruct them on how to have the hair, body, fashion, and sex moves to attract and please men without grasping what intolerable hypocrites they’re being.
There will be people who just can’t understand why you’re so upset over a news article about the hundreds of rape survivors in the Congo who have been so violently abused they no longer have control of their own bladders and are completely ostracized by their families and communities for something that was completely outside of their control.
There will always be the professor who ends up insisting that the domestic “ideals” that kept 18th-century middle-class women locked in the home as subservient carpets for their husbands empowered, not shackled them, and that maybe such ideals have a place in today’s society.
Whatever forbid that people everywhere aspire to something greater than fitting into the pathetic status-quo of slugs that only cares about themselves.
If you want to use your religion to justify going out and trying to help others, I guess it’s better than nothing even though most major religions have helped create the unacceptable disparities existing everywhere today.
If you’re not religious, then don’t you want to have some semblance of lasting purpose beyond going through the motions until you just don’t exist anymore?
I recently heard a Mark Twain quote the other day that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”
It doesn’t hurt. Whatever it is going to take to get the existing and future generations to open their eyes and give a crap about each other needs to happen. Soon.
Jillian Swords, an Appalachian State University student studying in London, is a contributing writer. She will return to The Appalachian in January as a news reporter.
