Floor Problem
Once upon a time there was a culture, and as you might expect, the people in that culture held beliefs about how life was for them.
The predominant notion, the one held by the mainstream of people, was that relationships were sort of like parallel lines, moving in the same direction, although that direction might change from time to time; there would be some zigs and some zags, but the lines never touched, and were not supposed to.
Something like this, if you were to draw it like a diagram:
This is fundamental to our culture, they said; this is the floor upon which everything else resides, so this is important!
Well, there were people who interacted differently, and experienced matters differently, and they were considered by the mainstream to be doing something they were not supposed to. These folks spoke with each other about their own experience and discarded the predominant notion, and formulated their own beliefs about how life actually was.
Relationships were actually like cells, and all cells touched adjoining cells and there was nothing akin to the untouching parallel paths that the mainstream folks liked to describe.
They began drawing this symbol and wearing it on their t shirts and putting it on flags that they carried at their rallies:
"What's WRONG with the mainsteam people?", some of them asked each other. "Why do they insist that reality is something it so obviously is not? We have shown them, we have pointed, and still they deny the absolute truth of the touching cells -- why?"
"Oh, they do it specifically because they hate us", came the answer. "It's a lie, since the truth is plain to see. The purpose of the lie is to have an excuse to condemn us!"
And in mutual support and solidarity, they embraced the understanding they had as the foundation of liberty and equality and all possibility of peace, so that lies like this could not bring them down again.
Then one day some other people who also interacted with a different pattern than the one prescribed by the predominant culture spoke up and said "Actually we do have the lines. We also have cells but for us the cells don't touch each other. They're separated by lines. We think you've got it a bit wrong. It's really more like this:
And the touching-cell activists frowned in disapproval of these new dissidents. "We support you for being hated on and attacked by the dominant culture group, but you really need to listen. You are falling into their trap by believing in separation. Your model would leave cells so that they don't adjoin each other and that is the real essence of what is bad about the mainsteam insistence on parallel lines that never touch. So you need to get over that, okay?"
Meanwhile, the mainsteam folks were quick to condemn the new dissidents the same way they had done for the touching-cell folks, because they were all threats to the essential doctrine of separate parallel lines. It was okay to zig and zag but not to touch!
Pretty quickly the new dissidents got mad and began saying that the touching-cell folks were lying and were full of hate, because the baseline truth was right there in plain sight if one cared to look, and this intolerance could not be excused just because the touching-cell movement people considered themselves outcasts and therefore social victims of the mainsteam.
This is, of course, a metaphor, and you probably already anticipate the visual punch line:
Before you say "Yeah yeah, blind men and elephants, etcetera, and 'why can't we all just get along' thrown in at the end, seen it and heard it before", the point is actually not so much "Gee why can't we just get along", nor is it "let everyone have their own reality and don't condemn anybody else", really. The point I'd like you to take back from this is that things look differently based on how the light falls on them and the angle from which one views things, but if, instead of contradicting what someone else is seeing, you get them to start there and move their eyes far enough to see how the other interpretation can be perceived as part of the same overall pattern -- then you have a chance of communicating.
And yeah, I had specific groups in mind. Of course I did. The mainstream view is the cisgender heterosexual patriarchal floor plan. The touching-cell folks are the second wave radical feminists. The new dissidents are the gender identity activists, including trans and genderqueer and nonbinary people.
I don't care who you are, quit holding on to the notion that in order for you to be right, they have to be wrong. Quit using their hate and intolerance as a reason for ignoring their perspective. Of course hate and intolerance is wrong, and of course their insistence that your truth is wrong is, itself, wrong. But be leery of the possibility that their hatefulness and their refusal to listen to you is being mirrored in your own behaviors.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
The predominant notion, the one held by the mainstream of people, was that relationships were sort of like parallel lines, moving in the same direction, although that direction might change from time to time; there would be some zigs and some zags, but the lines never touched, and were not supposed to.
Something like this, if you were to draw it like a diagram:
This is fundamental to our culture, they said; this is the floor upon which everything else resides, so this is important!
Well, there were people who interacted differently, and experienced matters differently, and they were considered by the mainstream to be doing something they were not supposed to. These folks spoke with each other about their own experience and discarded the predominant notion, and formulated their own beliefs about how life actually was.
Relationships were actually like cells, and all cells touched adjoining cells and there was nothing akin to the untouching parallel paths that the mainstream folks liked to describe.
They began drawing this symbol and wearing it on their t shirts and putting it on flags that they carried at their rallies:
"What's WRONG with the mainsteam people?", some of them asked each other. "Why do they insist that reality is something it so obviously is not? We have shown them, we have pointed, and still they deny the absolute truth of the touching cells -- why?"
"Oh, they do it specifically because they hate us", came the answer. "It's a lie, since the truth is plain to see. The purpose of the lie is to have an excuse to condemn us!"
And in mutual support and solidarity, they embraced the understanding they had as the foundation of liberty and equality and all possibility of peace, so that lies like this could not bring them down again.
Then one day some other people who also interacted with a different pattern than the one prescribed by the predominant culture spoke up and said "Actually we do have the lines. We also have cells but for us the cells don't touch each other. They're separated by lines. We think you've got it a bit wrong. It's really more like this:
And the touching-cell activists frowned in disapproval of these new dissidents. "We support you for being hated on and attacked by the dominant culture group, but you really need to listen. You are falling into their trap by believing in separation. Your model would leave cells so that they don't adjoin each other and that is the real essence of what is bad about the mainsteam insistence on parallel lines that never touch. So you need to get over that, okay?"
Meanwhile, the mainsteam folks were quick to condemn the new dissidents the same way they had done for the touching-cell folks, because they were all threats to the essential doctrine of separate parallel lines. It was okay to zig and zag but not to touch!
Pretty quickly the new dissidents got mad and began saying that the touching-cell folks were lying and were full of hate, because the baseline truth was right there in plain sight if one cared to look, and this intolerance could not be excused just because the touching-cell movement people considered themselves outcasts and therefore social victims of the mainsteam.
This is, of course, a metaphor, and you probably already anticipate the visual punch line:
Before you say "Yeah yeah, blind men and elephants, etcetera, and 'why can't we all just get along' thrown in at the end, seen it and heard it before", the point is actually not so much "Gee why can't we just get along", nor is it "let everyone have their own reality and don't condemn anybody else", really. The point I'd like you to take back from this is that things look differently based on how the light falls on them and the angle from which one views things, but if, instead of contradicting what someone else is seeing, you get them to start there and move their eyes far enough to see how the other interpretation can be perceived as part of the same overall pattern -- then you have a chance of communicating.
And yeah, I had specific groups in mind. Of course I did. The mainstream view is the cisgender heterosexual patriarchal floor plan. The touching-cell folks are the second wave radical feminists. The new dissidents are the gender identity activists, including trans and genderqueer and nonbinary people.
I don't care who you are, quit holding on to the notion that in order for you to be right, they have to be wrong. Quit using their hate and intolerance as a reason for ignoring their perspective. Of course hate and intolerance is wrong, and of course their insistence that your truth is wrong is, itself, wrong. But be leery of the possibility that their hatefulness and their refusal to listen to you is being mirrored in your own behaviors.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts