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K2 out of a grain of sand
May. 11th, 2005 10:45 am(wherein I expose my geekiness as well as my overwleming vulnerability to microsocial forces)
I've got a long history as a classic geek: comic books, SF, role playing games, etc. I grew up around it, as a third generation geek, but there was also an immense pull towards the escapism, of a better time/place where things that troubled me would be no big deal, or maybe even positive. Over the years, I've broadened my interest, specifically in the world as I encounter it (people and not-people), and realized that I didn't have to stay in geek waters unless I actually wanted to.
So for some time now, I've been doing a semi-grown up role-playing thing. The social dynamics are weird, on the whole, but it's tended to be more manageable and worth it than not. (Well, OK, until a point, but I'll come to that later.) There were a core of folks that ran the gamut between friends and acquaintances, but all of whom at least paid lip service to my gendery requests and self definitions. I played a character of ambiguous and unknown (even to me) sex and gender; when asked, I'd always reply, "You haven't checked, so you don't know", which seemed oddly, and in retrospect, maybe stupidly, liberating. Others were free to intepret according to their own biases and interpretations, and it went pretty well, until...
At the insistence of one, a new person was brought in, and with him he brought in social normativity. In a very, very short time, my pronouns and gendery requests were generally being ignored, defaulting to whatever the newcomer used. The weight of the outside world seemed to come crashing in, only reinforcing that messed up idea I have about unequal force and the futility of meaningful resistance. People who had 'bought in' suddenly, it seemed to me, chose their own social comfort over respecting me, even though the numbers were, or should have been, 5 to 1. Of course, this carried over into the pretend world, too, and the pressure to 'choose', to define or be defined. The fun of just being, in a place where it didn't matter, is fading rapidly, to the point that it feels like I can face in pretend what I face in reality, which seems to kind of defeat the point of escapism. It's starting to bug me more and more, and yet there's no easy way to deal with any of this; it feels like if there was ever a time to easily redirect any of this, it's long since passed. It often makes me feel like I can get my social needs met only by playing by 'the rules', rules which I hate, which try to coerce or erase me, to fit me into safe molds.
I've got a long history as a classic geek: comic books, SF, role playing games, etc. I grew up around it, as a third generation geek, but there was also an immense pull towards the escapism, of a better time/place where things that troubled me would be no big deal, or maybe even positive. Over the years, I've broadened my interest, specifically in the world as I encounter it (people and not-people), and realized that I didn't have to stay in geek waters unless I actually wanted to.
So for some time now, I've been doing a semi-grown up role-playing thing. The social dynamics are weird, on the whole, but it's tended to be more manageable and worth it than not. (Well, OK, until a point, but I'll come to that later.) There were a core of folks that ran the gamut between friends and acquaintances, but all of whom at least paid lip service to my gendery requests and self definitions. I played a character of ambiguous and unknown (even to me) sex and gender; when asked, I'd always reply, "You haven't checked, so you don't know", which seemed oddly, and in retrospect, maybe stupidly, liberating. Others were free to intepret according to their own biases and interpretations, and it went pretty well, until...
At the insistence of one, a new person was brought in, and with him he brought in social normativity. In a very, very short time, my pronouns and gendery requests were generally being ignored, defaulting to whatever the newcomer used. The weight of the outside world seemed to come crashing in, only reinforcing that messed up idea I have about unequal force and the futility of meaningful resistance. People who had 'bought in' suddenly, it seemed to me, chose their own social comfort over respecting me, even though the numbers were, or should have been, 5 to 1. Of course, this carried over into the pretend world, too, and the pressure to 'choose', to define or be defined. The fun of just being, in a place where it didn't matter, is fading rapidly, to the point that it feels like I can face in pretend what I face in reality, which seems to kind of defeat the point of escapism. It's starting to bug me more and more, and yet there's no easy way to deal with any of this; it feels like if there was ever a time to easily redirect any of this, it's long since passed. It often makes me feel like I can get my social needs met only by playing by 'the rules', rules which I hate, which try to coerce or erase me, to fit me into safe molds.
