Taboo; or, I do not think that word means what you think it means...

[bellatrys]

If I were to claim that science fiction were a forbidden thing today in this country, that fans were persecuted and fandom prohibited in the public sphere, you'd wonder what the hell I was talking about. You might point to the fact that nearly all bookstores have SF sections, except for those few which are devoted to some highly-specialized topic,

Comments

It's Sunday afternoon,it's sunny,I've just had home BBQed hamburgers and I'm sleepy

[stardragonca]

...so I may be excused if I missed the point. What were the couple talking about on the way to Barnes and Noble?

How Christianity was "banished" and "taboo" now

[bellatrys]

from American public life, in those exact words.

I couldn't follow the whole conversation, even though they were right beside me, partly because they were talking rather softly, partly because Krystal across the aisle (red-haired, freckled, tall & gangly) was reporting so loudly to her mother on the phone about the great sale she and her fiance (short, dark-haired, dark-eyed, round) had just returned from, while Jose advised his own relatives to hurry down in alternate Spanish and English, alternating with both of them boasting about their 7-month-old's accomplishments, which was all very cute and funny (assuming you're not a Minuteman/Lou Dobbs fan, of course) but frustrating since I wanted to observe the persecution meme in the wild. I did hear enough clearly to be sure that they weren't being ironic, though; and it's possible that they were talking so quietly b/c they feared being "persecuted" on the bus if they were overheard...

Re: How Christianity was "banished" and "taboo" now

[fledgist]

Ye gods and small fishes. How is it banished and taboo exactly?

That was what I couldn't quite catch

[bellatrys]

due to obligatorily hearing about the liquidation sale of the year at the Armory and the precocious talents of Krystal & Jose's offspring.

I suspect I could probably fill the "how" in with a reasonable level of accuracy, but that would be nevertheless all conjecture based on hearing my own family/circle make the same claims of banishment and oppression for Catholicism specifically and Christianity generally for over a score of years...it all boils down to "Waaah! There are people out there who disagree with us, often with extreme opprobrium, and they're allowed by law to say so!!! And not everyone is talking about the things that WE are interested in, all the time!!! Help, help, we're being oppressed!" ()r, more accurately summed, "Mooooommmm!!! She called me a STUPID IDIOT!!!!")

[smurasaki]

If anything, you're understating the craziness of it. Well, that, or those ten or so large churches within walking distance of my home are actually products of my imagination...

well, yes--

[bellatrys]

I thought the argument was silly when it hinged upon publishers putting abstract book covers on SF (they're ashamed of printing it! readers are afraid to be seen reading it on the subway! Persecution!) during a time period when abstract art book covers were the fad on most genres, but I don't expect that there are anything like the circa 160 million/75% of Christians when it comes to fans in the US, and likewise there are more churches in this town than you can shake a stick at, many of them new little storefront outfits of newcomer ethnic groups not large and established enough to make their own besteepled structures the way that previous immigrant communities did - although the established ones are mostly still busy on Sundays too.

--However, those people going to all those churches we see in our neighborhoods are mostly not TRUE BELIEVERS, see!

[nenya_kanadka]

Hee. Excellent analogy. :D I may borrow it....

It gains its strength from being mostly true!

[bellatrys]

The Persecution-of-the-Fen (admittedly much smaller scale than the OHNOES! We are persecuted b/c we are not running the country since the late 1600s! mindset) I have encountered, enough that the parody isn't *totally* a parody, the dood who endlessly makes obscure Star Trek references to justify his every workplace argument while everyone else looks glazed was a real-life situation I witnessed, the irony of making the claim while going into a big mainstream secular bookstore expecting to be able to find the *exact* study Bible version wanted, at a reasonable price was as surreal as if I'd followed them declaiming about how SF or fantasy were so totally marginalized while expecting to find (as I would, unless someone has bought hte copy that was there last week) the hardcover of Castle Waiting...

Re: It gains its strength from being mostly true!

[nenya_kanadka]

There really are remarkable similarities between fandom and religion, going far past the borrowing of "canon" by one from the other.

The irony there is thick enough to make cutlery from, I think. (Sporks?)

Re: It gains its strength from being mostly true!

[fledgist]

The irony is thick enough to make machetes out of.

[violaswamp]

Now that's an analogy I hadn't heard before, but it makes perfect sense now that I think of it.

[bellatrys]

It was the fact that they got off the bus and started chatting with a total stranger at the stop who asked them where they were from/where they were going and said "We're going to Barnes & Nobles to buy her a Study Bible," - they were looking for a particular kind with all these notes and extras that was the right size for carrying around, and knew that B&N carried them - that made it all click

[voxwoman]

You left off And get off my lawn!

Well, these weren't so much the crochety type

[bellatrys]

They were more the "We are on an undercover mission for The Lord, untill we get THROWN TO THE LIONS, yay!!!"

Which was funny, 'cause they were a little older than me, but they had that Youth Group fervor about them, once you realized what they were saying. On the surface they looked perfectly normal, like any other residents or visitors here for non-missioning reasons; they didn't give off the starched and *hungry* salesman vibe that the missionaries of various denominations who accost me in the street generally do.

(And now I'm having horrible, horrible notions of writing a faux-serious Futuristic Christian Sci Fi Novel in which the Evol!Liberals of the FUTCHA!!! throw the Heroic Christian Protagonists to cybernetic robot lions in the dome city, and seeing if it could get published unironically by Tyndale House...Bad, BAD P@L!)

The missionaries of various denominations who accost me in the street

[stardragonca]

Whenever this happens to me,I invariably mysteriously lose my ability to respond in any language save Lithuanian,a language that I do not happen to speak.
So far,The Gift Of Tongues has been of little help in resolving this crisis.

Re: The missionaries of various denominations who accost me in the street

[bellatrys]

LOL!