It's no secret that I'm strongly social contructivist. I'm not an absolutist about it; I don't always come down on the side of nurture, but I don't think I can do much about nature, and focus my attention on the forces actually in play (I am, however, strongly opposed to biological determinists, for a lot of reasons).

For a long time, social constructivism drove me nuts, and was a source of much pain and frustration. If, as I believe, I'm a product of my time, culture and environment, why do I experience so much disjunction and alienation from it all? Why do I have such a hard time finding sufficiently similar people who speak a dialect of my native language, or even a place where I can relax with others in some flavor of knowing solidarity? Going around and around on this loop lost me untold weeks or months of sleep, and who knows how many missed opportunities. It's not a sustainable project, despite my stubborn insistence otherwise.

But it struck me today that I'm doing it wrong. If I do believe that I'm a product of time, place and culture (and I do), then I can't be alien, I can't be foreign, I can't be Other. I fucking belong here, as much as anyone else does. It's my place too, god damn it. I'm not a foreign body* to be attacked or expelled, just a different kind of native. If I experience difficulty communicating, interacting or integrating, it's not just my fault, and I'll fight anyone who means to suggest otherwise. I'm here. I belong here. And I'm not leaving.


*heh