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Huggle A Muggle

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14:03 / 11.12.06

A muggle is a person without magical abilities in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy books and films.

Muggle can also refer to:

Muggle, a slang term for cannabis, mostly used in the 1920s and 1930s and associated with the American jazz scene
Muggles (recording), a 1928 recording by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra, derived from the above usage
The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, a children's book by Nancy Stouffer, who unsuccessfully sued J.K. Rowling for alleged infringement which included use of the name "Muggle"
Muggle Quidditch, a live-action sport played by fans of the Harry Potter novels.

Inspired by this post by Haus I'd like to have this thread as a place to point people who use the term to show how rubbish it is. Also Mundanes, Sleepers, Normals, et bloody cetera.
The idea that the majority of people are stumbling through life having the wool pulled over their eyes by teh conspiracy, or are trapped in a common sense reality tunnel, or are drones of the materialist hive-mind blind to the glories of teh majix is unfortunately all too common. Discuss or dismember here, or alternatively just ROTFL that Muggle=Dope.

14:33 / 11.12.06

the othering of any group of people based on questionable information about their perceptions, origin, or status is a dangerous tool that furthers the justification of separation and possible hostilities. To say someone "can't get it" "isn't born to it" is to firmly close the door on the possibility of deeper understanding and compassion.

To speak of other people without respect based not on their specific actions but on their stereotype is to dismiss their shared humanity. To reduce someone's questioning of your view point by dismissing their life experience is to shutdown what could be a very important dialogue.

Sadly in the attempt to improve one's personal status and self esteem many engage in devaluing others. Often this is a reaction to a perceived or actual rejection and instead of using it to free one's self from false/shallow perceptions of value many merely flip it.

the act of being expelled from the group and having to seek new definitions and new experiences can be the most rewarding personal journey any of us take. Getting kicked out of the nest and having to fend for ourselves may in part be due to some oddity we exhibited or some talent we needed to understand when no explanation lay closer to home. Often this rejection, exile, banishment, or simple misunderstanding is quite painful and those pushed away harbor some residual resentment.

"Fine. I didn't want to belong to your stupid race/social class/tribe/sex anyway..."

It's a knee-jerk reaction to place the blame for the misunderstanding at the feet of those who have hurt you and not to see how your own actions participated in the dynamics.
Other times specific individuals were truly horrible and those individuals should be rejected in return. The problem of Othering comes in when the specific case is used as a generalization to shun others who share common traits but not necessarily the harmful ones.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

14:45 / 11.12.06

Good thread so far.

When I was younger and thought I was somehow special and would never end up doing normal people stuff because I was smart and rebellious my friends and I delighted in messing with the mundanes (norms, muggles etc).

Looking back it was a pretty shit outlook to have.

If you have 29 minutes you should check out Douglas Rushkoff at Disinfocon 2000. The focus of his talk is finding the others. Pretty interesting stuff.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:47 / 11.12.06

Well, I thought that EmberLeo's skewering of the users of the term was absolutely wonderful, if a little cruel. Her description of Renaissance Fair employees - purveyors of an ersatz Renaissance peddled in a nation which did not even exist when the Renaissance was taking place, squeezing themselves into badly-researched corsetry in order to part deluded cod-nostalgists from their money, and then despising the ones who fund this sub-Knightriders farrago the most heavily by paying over the odds for oh-so-historical potato fries - perfectly undermined the presumptions of the small minds required to make for such a dismissive term a cozy nest. I can only doff my ahistorically feathered cap to her choleric gifts.

16:11 / 11.12.06

Not much to say on the subject right now becuase I'm busy busy busy, but I thought this thread should have a link to this earlier discussion on what to call "THEM". Only kinda related and didn't really get anywhere, but there is some interesting stuff.

17:10 / 11.12.06

I feel sort of embarrassed to even have to discuss the point. Of course we should not see ourselves as in any way better than those who have no affinity for magic. Of course those of us who do need a little gentle coaxing to open their eyes to the value of someone with a non-magical perspective should have it.

I love and cherish my non-magician friends and family. In passing, I value the perspective they give me with their non-magical way of looking at things. They keep me sane.

As a magician, heir to what we sometimes call shamanic tradition, I venture between the worlds on behalf of such others, so that I may bring back from my adventures something which may enrich all our lives. The shaman's role finds meaning in the tribe.

Alternatively, we can sit our room and imagine ourselves heir to the Great Mysteries. Sheesh.

20:00 / 11.12.06

Well, I thought that EmberLeo's skewering of the users of the term was absolutely wonderful, if a little cruel.

I'm trying to decide if I should blush or be annoyed or what. The "skewering" wasn't intended as a skewer at all. It's just me being as precise as I am able.

I work the biggest local Ren Faire (I live in the SF Bay Area), and have attended every single year of my life. I've definitely seen significantly less period Faires in other places (Denver and Las Vegas, specifically, though I had a blast both places), so I know regional expectations of historical accuracy will vary.

Of course we know it's not realistic - very few would enjoy it much if it was. We know damned well the folks who don't work faire, wouldn't be caught dead in a costume, and take it as an opportunity to get drunk are the ones who pay the bills. We also know they're incredibly rude to us on a daily basis, and many of them come to the faire for the opportunity to openly mock us in our own space. (This is less true of those who have returned repeatedly and have built up their pink-and-lavender costume. We like them - they're nice to us.)

I'll agree it's still generally negative, even if it's rarely said with anything stronger than mild irritation behind it.

"Mundane" in a Fannish context, in my experience, isn't per se intended to imply they suck, just that they aren't interested, and we shouldn't bug them with our obsessions and insanities. Logically, though, I can see why it would have a harsher, more excluding history. Fandom has been much less acceptable in the past than it is now, so the return-othering of those who had othered them in the first place would have been stronger. Indeed, I still see that strength of attitude in some of the older generation who don't understand why fans my age and younger don't identify as strongly with the community as they do.

Perhaps "Mundane" is merely an aging artifact of a division that's long since starting to blur. Around here the lines are so blurred, especially with how mainstream Sci Fi and Fantasy now is, that it's lost a lot of it's weight as a label.

--Ember--

20:48 / 11.12.06

If, for a moment, we accept the existence of mundanes, the problem quickly becomes 'who are they?' Is the person standing before you one of us or one of them?
I keep thinking about myself. How much time I spend thinking, pondering the mysteries, asking questions (i.e. a lot of time), and how rarely I talk about it to other people (very rarely). It's quite clear to me that I have no idea who I may be dealing with at any time. Are they really dense and unimaginative or are they merely keeping silent?

We can't read the minds of others and we should be extremely careful about judging them based on the small part of their lives that we actually know about. See the buddha in everyone, because they very well could be.

21:14 / 11.12.06

It seems to me that it's as much an assumption that such a thought was ever what crossed their mind.

It's also possible to be a little of both, I think. My sister laughs that to her "normal" friends, she's considered Fannish. To her Fannish family, she seems "mundane". And since both are relative, both are true.

At least to my perspective, it's not intended to describe the degree of creativity, but rather the direction.

--Ember--

02:33 / 12.12.06

i think intent is important, but i dont think it's everything.

if you had only ever heard the word 'mundane' ued by sneering alterna-types of various stripes, i can imagine it wouldnt matter how the person was using it this time round.

i've certainly often been in company where it was used to other, and i can't imagine i am alone in that.

04:45 / 12.12.06

Sure, but the reverse is also true. If you've only ever heard it used casually, it's a little baffling to hear such vehement response.

Hmm, I think slang in general runs that risk. What is a pejorative in one place isn't in another, and even where it is, it may not carry the same weight or meaning. True, there are some words I discard outright (being an upper-middle class white girl, I avoid racial slurs entirely), but there are quite a few others I merely monitor in context (alternative sexuality terms I will use only affectionately amongst those who have reclaimed their use, for example).

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:04 / 12.12.06

Although we've mostly talked about the putting down of supposed mundanes in terms of it being a frankly lousy way to treat other people--which it is--I think there's another point worth bashing home here. The othering of those silly little muggles always seems to go hand-in-hand with a drastic faliure to engage with real life in any meaningful way. "School is for muggles" when you're 15 is one thing but you get people who maintain that attitude into adulthood. Jobs are for muggles. Mates are for muggles. Meaningful relationships are for muggles. Doing what needs to be done to ensure you have at least a subsistance income is for muggles. So you end up with these people who refuse to work in most jobs, refuse to claim benefits (because that's for those dead-eyed chavs, not great and mighty sorcerors) and end up living in a bedroom in their mum's house till they're 43, blagging money off their parents and anyone dumb enough to get involved with them so they can spend it on magic books, Franklin Mint wizard statues and vodka.

I'm certainly not suggesting that any magician worth hir salt has two cars and a four-bed semi in the leafy suburbs, just that we all need to keep at least one foot on the ground. Rejecting anyone who doesn't practice magic as a "mundane" really doesn't help with that.

09:39 / 12.12.06

To run with Mordant's point, muggling people who don't practice gets trickier and trickier if you consider what a vague blanket 'magical practice' is. Are hypnotherapists mundane, or NLP people, those who practice martial arts or yoga, scientologists and Ickeans? It quickly becomes obvious that it means 'everyone else who's not on our side because we know the truth', so you might as well just say 'them' and 'us'.
Here's an anecdote on the leafy suburb point though, in the sixties a guru was looking at a stadium full of Hippy followers and casually mentioned to an aide 'Look, these magnificent human beings with their infinite potential can barely hold down a job, they are better than that' and it got out to the followers. Cut to a decade or two later, he's looking out at a stadium of (slightly older and fatter) followers in smart clothes with nice cars, and he shakes his head at the aide saying 'Look, these magnificent human beings with their infinite potential are caught up with material concerns, they are better than that'.

18:08 / 12.12.06

I'm always sort of taken by surprise when people present magic as something lofty and grand rather than essential and freely available. Like art and reading, resources are there if you make an effort. Access can be dictated by leisure time... which is related to wealth in a lot of cases but not all when viewed in the context of prayer and religious activity. Being proficiant is often about time invested though talent like any other skill does have an impact.

I suspect the majority of being disrespectful to another group who-is-not-us is to offset the fear or memory of rejection and to improve the glory of us-ness.

18:10 / 12.12.06

muggling people who don't practice

All of a sudden, I read the word as a portmanteau of "mugging" and "huggling." We will beat you up AND offer you comfortable infantilization....

I may be the only person in this thread who learned the word as jazz slang first, which made Harry Potter interesting the first time around.

Isn't the underlying argument of this conversation veering into the "uncunt" thread's turf? Ways to discuss the not-into-all-this without the appearance of superiority?

21:44 / 12.12.06

I admit to being confused, because for all that I understand what's being describing in theory, that's not at all how I've ever seen it implimented in practice. I know a handful of people who use Mundanes to refer to non-fen AND Muggles to refer to non-pagans (including Mundane pagans and Muggle fen), and none of them seem to have any thoughts that they don't need a job, don't need love, don't need to keep a serious connection with the world as known by Mundanes and Muggles as they understand them.

From my perspective, this description of extreme othering in is either a Straw-Man, or a Slippery Slope. And yet I have to assume that you're actually encountering examples of this behavior somewhere, to have such a clear idea of it's existence?

On the other hand, there does indeed seem to be a need for some term to quickly communicate to a friend or collegue that this is not a good place to discuss last night's D&D module or ritual. So how do we efficiently communicate the concept of "Different" without automatically attaching an assumption of "Better"?

--Ember--

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:06 / 13.12.06

From my perspective, this description of extreme othering in is either a Straw-Man, or a Slippery Slope. And yet I have to assume that you're actually encountering examples of this behavior somewhere, to have such a clear idea of it's existence?

Dude, you have no idea. I know it sounds a lot like exaggeration for comic effect but I'm completely serious! Obviously one comes across the phenomenon a bit more on the net, but I have met real-life examples. Heck, I'm related by blood to real-life examples.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:00 / 13.12.06

Well, is my face red qua Ren Faires. Oopsy.

On the other hand, there does indeed seem to be a need for some term to quickly communicate to a friend or collegue that this is not a good place to discuss last night's D&D module or ritual.

Well, it's entirely possible that in certain situations one might not want to talk of magical practice for fear of hostility, or about Dungeons and Dragons for fear of open mockery. However, in the only situation I can think of where speed is absolutely of the essence - that is, when somebody is about to blurt out such a statement in the presence of the potentially hostile individual - "this is a mundane" is unlikely to avert the response, I'd hazard, and that is not how your ren faire exemplars appeared to be using it. In other contexts... well, how does one explain quickly to another person that a third party takes two sugars in their tea?

12:18 / 13.12.06

In My Mind I use 'straight' (as opposed to freak rather than gay) but that's not terribly useful. Maybe mainstream or something similar might work, but I don't often need to refer to people-who-don't-practice as a group, I just call them 'people'.

12:33 / 13.12.06

I don't get it. Do plumbers need special names for people who aren't plumbers? Do artists have a collective name for people who can't draw?

It's just an activity. It's something you do. It doesn't make you special or different. It might alter your outlook on certain things and shape your personality in certain ways, but no more than the experience of being a policeman or paramedic would.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:59 / 13.12.06

I bet most plumbers have never encountered that look of blank staring confusopanic on someone's face down the pub when you try to mix friends. But yeah, point.

13:07 / 13.12.06

From my perspective, this description of extreme othering in is either a Straw-Man, or a Slippery Slope. And yet I have to assume that you're actually encountering examples of this behavior somewhere, to have such a clear idea of it's existence?

dude, 5 minutes in Salem MA. True they have the flair of carnie folk talking about the marks but it's invasive.

Being a pagan and calling people Xian in religious dialogue infers a certain disrespect not found in calling people Christian. Being religious/magical and calling people Muggles/Mundane is to infer they don't have anything of their own. How the fuck do we know that their life isn't rife with magic and spirituality just of a profoundly different flavor?

It's not black and white, it's a spectrum. If you believe everyone has access to/is the sacred than everyone needs to be treated with respect and often imposed labels are not the way to go. Defining what someone isn't dismisses what they are.

13:25 / 13.12.06

no more than the experience of being a policeman or paramedic would

Actually, policemen *do* have names for non-policemen -- they call us either "civilians" or "citizens." I've heard city planners and other people in government who deal with the public use "citizen" in an almost pejorative way. I suspect the same is true for EMTs.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:32 / 13.12.06

I bet most plumbers have never encountered that look of blank staring confusopanic on someone's face down the pub when you try to mix friends. But yeah, point.

I went drinking with tree surgeons the other week. I certainly felt "othered", though not deliberately so.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:33 / 13.12.06

And by electronics engineers for non electronics engineers. And reportedly by nurses for non-nurses and salesmen for nonsalesmen. And by Adecco temps who got sent out on that horrible litter-picking job last fortnight for the temps who didn't get that job etc. Lots of people use terms like that and apply them to lots of other people; doesn't make them terribly helpful.

13:34 / 13.12.06

What word shall we use for non-tree-surgeons?

13:44 / 13.12.06

truggles

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:46 / 13.12.06

Wow, it's amazing how accidently losing the first sentence of your post makes the whole thing look ludicrous. Oh well.

13:55 / 13.12.06

It's OK Mordant, we'll come up with a name for all those non-ludicrous sounding people. Grayfaces?

14:06 / 13.12.06

Not-of-the-body?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:11 / 13.12.06

Who's "we", EARTH SCUM?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:17 / 13.12.06

Did rude boy just call me a truggle?

Motherfuggle.

Unconditional Love

14:48 / 13.12.06

Zombies! run!

16:27 / 13.12.06

Zuggles!
Mordant, you are Invader Zim and I claim my five pounds, and I further propose that instead of 'Muggle' the preferred term should be Puny Human or stinking earth-baby.
The Muggle labelling reminds me of the Neo conceit, 'I yam teh chozen one and so r my mates, everyone else is teh sheepletons and cannot see the Troof coz of teh matrix/conditioning/lack of hallucinogens'.

16:42 / 13.12.06

ok I went to go get a Zim image and instead google'd up a Zim/Dib slash image.
My adult childhood is now scarred and I'm retreating from this unholy thread post haste.

RIDE THE PIG, GIR!

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