We are all too often held back and de-individualized by the things we are afraid to say that we are into. There is rampant fear that people will laugh at us or hold some power over us through their ability to label us as one thing or another based on our ‘secret fetishes’.
When I was in High School I played role playing games with a group of kids from several different social cliques. Not many of us openly admitted to the gaming because we knew what people who didn’t understand would think. I remember one dude’s girlfriend would say to me, ‘you know it’s weird that you guys hang out in his room and do that all the time.’ She was against it. Other girlfriends accepted it as a minor inconvenience. One, purely out of love for her guy, even tried to play but it wasn’t really her thing.
Full circle, I teach now and a coworker recently made it known (proudly) that her boys were very much into My Little Pony. I immediately labeled them bronies and considered 47 different versions of trash I could talk. I wound up talking none at all, because I recognized that them being bronies was actually pretty interesting. I didn’t know any bronies up to that point and, for me, the act of learning about things I don’t know is actually kind of fun and helps me grow. I even tracked down an episode of the show on youtube to see what all the fuss was about. I’m not a fan.
I have watched every episode of Dawson’s Creek and am currently burning my way through the Gilmore Girls. Neither would be shows that people generally assume are watched by a black guy, but there it is. I can think of a dozen ways to label me based on that admission. Throw in the fact that I write roleplaying games and sci-fi as my passion work and the number is squared instantly.
Labeling makes life easier. It helps keep the society together (and quiet) by allowing us to very quickly form judgements and categorize people; it also is terribly defeating. We tend to make fun of what isn’t normally accepted and marginalize people because what they believe an or do aren’t mainstream and that make us different. Frankly I find the whole thing backwards. What makes us different is what makes us unique.
Some Thoughts:
- No ‘white whales’ chased or published today, so I won’t be reaching as far into my psyche for 1852. Instead I will regale you with tales of water and waste. 1852 was the year that the first public female toilet opened (in Britain). Meanwhile in NYC, the U.S.’s first public bath was opening, only a year after the first YMCA opened… There’s a connection there. I know it.