Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Sematics

Couple of messages. First - reader who goes by the user name Des Ervin - thanks for your mail. Tried to respond but can't, mailer reply is Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table. Wanted to ask if we can use your mail as a ramble. Second. Phair. I know I still owe you a reply. Can't respond at the mo - my email being PITA - will as soon as I can. Lastly a good mate of mine - Nell Stark - and her partner have just been interviewed by After Ellen about a new book they've written. Worth a look. (Interview and book).

Next. Hanukkah starts this coming weekend so before I forget - Happy Hanukkah to our Jewish readers.

Right. Messages over, we now return you to normal programming. Not that I identify with the word normal in any way, shape or form, you understand. Normal is bland. Boring even. Normal is in fact anything but. Normal isn't even (mostly) usual. Normal doesn't mean straight. It doesn't mean not suffering from illness or disability. Normal is the word people use when they mean themselves and "not the other". The other being anything different, not the same, not them, and consequently scary.

Normal is the word that allows bigotry or discrimination to exist. Because the default for normal is white, Christian, middle-class, heterosexual male. Women, people of colour, other faiths, other sexualities, other gender-identities, people with disabilities of any kind, these are all "the other". But these others outnumber all those in the default group, which scares the living daylights out of them. And when something scares you the easiest ways to deal with it are by denying it scares you, or denying it exists, or admitting it exists but declaring that it's wrong to do so, and then by setting the various others against each other. Divide and conquer. Works every time.

I'm generalising here - I do that a lot *g*. Individuals may not feel this way, in fact they may even be appalled by the idea, (and I know lots of good folk who don't), but groups as a lump seldom even think it through let alone question it. And groups who don't question don't think - not thinking allows bigotry to flourish.

And I had absolutely no intention of heading down this road - I was planning on chatting about my new (second-hand) laptop (which isn't - yet - working). But when I typed the word normal my brain just headed off in this direction. Most probably because of this and this and this and this.

All of which scare me. We've come a long way in my lifetime but oh Lord not nearly far enough.

And on that depressing note. *g* Enjoy your updates, goodnight and may your God/s go with you.

Ze

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