On Otherness
May. 12th, 2009 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
compilerbitchMy name is Sarah, but I am Other. I am, if you like, cut from different cloth. My archetype had some versioning issues. When god handed out the Normal, I was looking the other way, daydreaming about something more interesting than queuing.
I’m not Other by choice, though my choices have played a part. In some sense, if you’re already Other by dint of the universe declaiming Fiat Weird! at your conception, then adding a few extra Other points doesn’t do much more harm.
Otherness can be entailed in many ways, but at the heart of the matter is that it’s kind-of a Hamming distance from the default, privileged, white, Christian, male, middle class norm. As that distance increases, privilege decreases, and Otherness becomes unavoidable. Ultimately, it’s actually difference in Hamming distance that matters – it’s quite possible to be more Other than Other, and to be more privileged than privileged.
I’m Other as a consequence of quite a few things. My Hamming distance is pretty large. I’m trans, poly, kinky, bi, pagan, female, both queer and genderqueer, bright enough that many people have an issue with it. They are the big ones, but there are more.
Otherness isn’t a special club. There isn’t a secret handshake, or a newsletter. Beyond the bonding that occurs between veterans comparing battle scars, there’s not much in the way of community either. Being Other makes you a specialised taste, so whilst finding love is only made a little harder, finding lovers really is a lot more difficult. Not impossible, just harder. The same goes for finding jobs and housing.
Being Other puts you well down the privilege hierarchy. Stating that fact is typically interpreted as whining. Sure, I’ll whine. I’ll also adopt a characteristic None Shall Pass attitude should anyone try to use their privilege as a way to bully or control me.
Though I do not choose to be Other, I could choose to appear less Other. I could fake my Hamming distance down toward more acceptable levels. I could have chosen to not transition, and kept my perceived cisgendered privilege. No wait – I’d be dead by now if I’d done that. Suicide, most likely. Scratch that one. And, before I transitioned, people read something off about me anyway, so I still had much of the same difficulty. If anything, transitioning made interacting with people easier – for them, more than for me. Being genderqueer for me basically means being OK with not being a standard-issue, cookie cutter stamped out Acme Model 1 woman. I’m female-identified, but I’m not that. Not even close. But, my Hamming distance from cookie cutter Male is far larger, so I deal with what I’ve got. So that one’s not really a choice either, I couldn’t fake it even if I wanted to. I could be in the closet about being queer, poly, bi or kinky, but all that would do is make it even harder for me to find community. I could fake Christianity, but… no wait, I really couldn’t. Most variants would reject me out of hand, some would try to hammer me into a mould in order to crunch down that big old Hamming distance of mine. Some, very few indeed, would accept me with open arms, but there would still be the slight problem that, um, not actually Christian, and I have principles about lying about that kind of thing.
So what’s my point here? What’s the moral lesson to extract from this? What do I Want?
Ultimately, respect is good. It’s always good, and always a good thing to suggest, in the same sense that a doctor telling someone with bizarre symptoms to drink plenty of water is a good idea because, well, everyone should always try to stay well hydrated. But, seriously, to have Otherness respected is a rare thing. To have it Understood is incredibly special. Was I to ask for my hundred percent, that would be it.
I’m not Other by choice, though my choices have played a part. In some sense, if you’re already Other by dint of the universe declaiming Fiat Weird! at your conception, then adding a few extra Other points doesn’t do much more harm.
Otherness can be entailed in many ways, but at the heart of the matter is that it’s kind-of a Hamming distance from the default, privileged, white, Christian, male, middle class norm. As that distance increases, privilege decreases, and Otherness becomes unavoidable. Ultimately, it’s actually difference in Hamming distance that matters – it’s quite possible to be more Other than Other, and to be more privileged than privileged.
I’m Other as a consequence of quite a few things. My Hamming distance is pretty large. I’m trans, poly, kinky, bi, pagan, female, both queer and genderqueer, bright enough that many people have an issue with it. They are the big ones, but there are more.
Otherness isn’t a special club. There isn’t a secret handshake, or a newsletter. Beyond the bonding that occurs between veterans comparing battle scars, there’s not much in the way of community either. Being Other makes you a specialised taste, so whilst finding love is only made a little harder, finding lovers really is a lot more difficult. Not impossible, just harder. The same goes for finding jobs and housing.
Being Other puts you well down the privilege hierarchy. Stating that fact is typically interpreted as whining. Sure, I’ll whine. I’ll also adopt a characteristic None Shall Pass attitude should anyone try to use their privilege as a way to bully or control me.
Though I do not choose to be Other, I could choose to appear less Other. I could fake my Hamming distance down toward more acceptable levels. I could have chosen to not transition, and kept my perceived cisgendered privilege. No wait – I’d be dead by now if I’d done that. Suicide, most likely. Scratch that one. And, before I transitioned, people read something off about me anyway, so I still had much of the same difficulty. If anything, transitioning made interacting with people easier – for them, more than for me. Being genderqueer for me basically means being OK with not being a standard-issue, cookie cutter stamped out Acme Model 1 woman. I’m female-identified, but I’m not that. Not even close. But, my Hamming distance from cookie cutter Male is far larger, so I deal with what I’ve got. So that one’s not really a choice either, I couldn’t fake it even if I wanted to. I could be in the closet about being queer, poly, bi or kinky, but all that would do is make it even harder for me to find community. I could fake Christianity, but… no wait, I really couldn’t. Most variants would reject me out of hand, some would try to hammer me into a mould in order to crunch down that big old Hamming distance of mine. Some, very few indeed, would accept me with open arms, but there would still be the slight problem that, um, not actually Christian, and I have principles about lying about that kind of thing.
So what’s my point here? What’s the moral lesson to extract from this? What do I Want?
Ultimately, respect is good. It’s always good, and always a good thing to suggest, in the same sense that a doctor telling someone with bizarre symptoms to drink plenty of water is a good idea because, well, everyone should always try to stay well hydrated. But, seriously, to have Otherness respected is a rare thing. To have it Understood is incredibly special. Was I to ask for my hundred percent, that would be it.