Random Thoughts from B.C.'s Mind

Third Space, Fifth Wheel (June 23rd, 1997)

Okay, this is going to be a bit of a self-pitying monologue.

If you've read other areas of my web page, you'll know that I'm currently interested in a notion of thirdness -- I try to situate myself outside of the either/or classifications that our culture offers. For me, this is a political act; I wish to deny the essence of those classifications, in the hopes that one day, other options will be generally accepted in our culture.

But a third space is a very awkward place to live. When you deliberately try to organize your life in a way that puts you outside of "normal", "mundane" classification systems, sometimes you begin to feel... well... like an outsider.

Part of this feeling might not even be related to my love of thirdness; the reasons might be far more banal. I'm not really a social butterfly, and I don't really handle light and fluffy conversation very well. I much prefer intense, one-on-one conversations with close friends. Unfortunately, I tend to be around people who engage in a lot of light and fluffy conversation, so I'm often in a position of sitting back, watching the conversation go on, waiting for some topic to come up, about which I have some thoughts. I'm also a very private person, and I often need to build up strong trust relationships with other people before I can talk to them unself-consciously.

For example, I recently got involved with a group of really nice people. I see them every other month or so, and they're a really connected group. One member of the group has routinely asked me "have you noticed X yet?" X, in this case, involves some very personal feelings. Well, not quite personal, but there's a lot of unself-consciousness involved in answering the question, and I haven't developed that trust relationship with this group to answer the question honestly. So I mutter out my "I dunno, maybe" answers, and deflect the question away from me. But at the same time, whenever I'm asked the question, I feel like my position as the outsider is reinforced. BC is the one who hasn't noticed X yet. That's not what I said, but that's how I imagine I'm being perceived.

It's at these times, that I really feel quite alien, and that's when the pressure to be just like everybody else hits me the most severely.

Here's another example: I consciously try to be a very precise person. I take in data -- the most useless trivia points are memorized instantly -- and I'll repeat that data with information about where I got it. I really hate mixing "facts" with "conclusions". I'm often reminded of a scene in Robert A. Heinlein's book Stranger in a Strange Land where one character is asked "What colour is that house in the distance?"

She replies: "On this side, it's white." The character has been trained for years not to draw conclusions, so that she can function as a special "unbiased witness". She only reports what she, personally, has seen.

In a lot of ways, that's my ideal. I feel like I'm less likely to be misunderstood if I speak precisely. I grant that it's a very stark, utilitarian way to use communication; it lacks poetry and feelings. And again, in many ways, it makes me unusual. People sometimes look at me as if I'm crazy to spend time clarifying a data point. Especially the source information. When a friend, A., recently had a car accident, another friend, B., informed me one day. I told C.: "A. says that B. had a car accident." After C. recently spoke with B., I asked her if she found out about the car accident.

"What is there to find out?" she asked.

"Did it really happen?"

"Of course, it did. A. told you about it, remember?"

At that moment, it was clear to me that I was engaging in an activity that normal people just don't do. I was looking for confirmation of A.'s story, to increase my confidence level of the data point. To C., this was weird behaviour, and her tone made it apparent that she felt this way. To her, my question was bizarre, and there's that feeling again: I'm just not normal.

On Gender-Free Language and Pronouns

I was recently re-reading Douglas Hofstadter's essays, "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness," and "A Person Paper on Purity in Language." Both of these essays can be found in his book, Metamagical Themas. Hofstadter engages in an interesting discussion about how to combat sexist paradigms using language. For him, the solutions aren't simple: he doesn't really know how to speak and write in a way that includes women without seeming either clumsy and artificial or reactionary.

The second of the two essays is a satire in which translates the issue of gendered pronouns into the domain of race. He writes from the position of a language purist who can't see why marvelous phrases such as "All whites are created equal" should be changed when it is clear that 'white' in this sense includes blacks. This essay makes the pronoun problem all the more poignant.

Gender Neutral Pronouns

While I'm on the topic, you should check out the Gender Neutral Pronoun FAQ.

Word Play

I've always loved word play. Clever use of particular words or sounds to achieve a humourous, and especially a profound effect just delights me. I also love well-conceived metaphors (a friend of mine, Paul McKone, once said: "I never metaphor I didn't like. Or as."). So it was a cinch that I'd like the TV series, The Prisoner. I heard someone suggest something about the opening monologue:

"Who are you?"

"The new number two."

"Who is number one?"

"You are number six."

The last line could also be interpretted as: "You are, number six" suggesting that number six has always been number one.

And then there's that enigmatic phrase "We want information." About seven or eight years ago, a comic miniseries came out about the Prisoner. A somewhat disjointed story, but great word play: at one point, the Patrick McGoohan character talks about things that we should be suspicious about: "Food. Drink. Speech. All society's tools. Everyone lined up and accounted for. In formation."

Friends versus Family

I was recently in Australia, where I got to catch up with an old friend. While I was there, I developed an idea about friends and family. My SO, L., has always been a family-oriented person, and I never have been. It has been the source of a lot of conflict, because I could never understand why her family wase always calling on the phone or dropping by. At the same time, L never understood why I spent so much time with my close friends. I have a lot of friends and they are very important to me.

While I was in Australia, I noticed the same conflict between my friend, A, and her new SO, G. A was like me: friends-oriented, and G was family-oriented like L. It was a rare opportunity to be able to see how analogous our two positions were.

However, there one area where the situations just aren't the same: I get new friends, and I have a pretty intense period where I'm getting to know them. L doesn't get new family members the same way.

Difference

Canada's (Liberal) federal government recently changed the bill of rights to extend protection regardless of sexual orientation (many people describe this as "to include homosexuals"). Cool. That's my first reaction. The law now recognizes what the Human Rights Commission has previously assured by precedent. Add to that, there seems to be more and more mainstream acceptance of gays in large urban centres, and things are starting to look pretty good.

But what I can never get my head around is the fact that all these battles for the legitimization of a particular difference seem to be won individually, and as a society, we don't seem to allow for difference in general. Sure difference in colour is okay. Difference in religion is okay. Now, maybe, difference in sexual orientation is okay. But if you have a blue mohawk, you're just not normal.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by B.C. Holmes. Last updated January 9th, 2000

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