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I'm sorry, this is terribly long. I kept trying to edit it down, and it just got longer and longer.
xk there's something reductive about defining the current focus of this thread to "don't call people mundane because the 'Lith doesn't like it" peer pressure.
That's not what I intended. I addressed something I percieve that hadn't already been discussed - that's not the same thing as discounting the entire thread because of this perception.
It's not a cut and dry don't it's a shared investigation into how we are interacting on and off board. Fair enough. I do have more to say on this perception, but given this, I'm not sure how pertinent to this thread it really is, and my post is quite long enough without it.
Trix: the two different groups being made up of peers. It is hard to judge the influence of either camp within the overall peer group.
It's true. The type of peer pressure that results from constant exposure, rather than direct instruction and implied or stated consequences is far more effective, because there's nothing for me to push directly against. So it's far more insidious. Moreover, you're absoloutely right that it's the kind of influence that must have originally got me using the word "Mundane" this way to begin with.
Quantum: I can see that in your circles mundane doesn't generally carry negative connotation but I can assure you to some people it would.
I understand and have acknowledged that repeatedly. Several people have listed the various potentially negative connotations of "mundane", from the dictionary and elsewhere. As I said before, I'm not resisting the idea that some people percieve it as offensive. I'm resisting the generalization that because it can be offensive, it must be offensive.
A paralell that came to mind: I can use the word "special" to mean very good and highly negative things. Context matters. Some of those things have connections to prejudices against people with disabilities. Does that render the word useless as a descriptor of people in a more neutral or positive light?
As Haus pointed out, the next question would be that of whether there was a non-pejorative usage, and if so how it functioned, and how it was clearly non-pejorative.
If that's been addressed directly, I apologize for failing to make the connection.
Haus did point this out, which I think is pretty valid: the issue of legitimation - that using this word with chums, who know one doesn't mean anything bad by it, helps to spread the use of the term until it reaches people who might be offended by it, but who are for whatever reason unable or unwilling to speak up
I'm going to have to think about it. That, more than anything else mentioned in this thread so far, may be the deciding factor for me.
It might, then, be worth asking people who precisely aren't your folks how they might feel about it, EL.
I'm already doing that here. If I'm looking to determine whether I should remove a word from my vocabulary, or simply limit its use to the exclusive presence of my folks, it's my folks I need the input from, because it's up to them, specifically, to tell me I need to include them in the list of folks who want me to avoid it until that list no longer includes anyone but myself. It's easy enough to not use it with random strangers.
I've gotten an interesting variety of responses so far. Some folks do mind, which I didn't know, and was why I asked. Some folks don't mind and think like me, and okay. But some folks don't mind because "Mundanes deserve it", and I'm not entirely comfortable with that. That, too, may be a deciding factor - the realization that it's not that neither of us mean anything bad by it, but that I don't, and they do, and are assuming I'm included in the precise nature of their prejudice. Even if I am that kind of prejudiced, it's not something I'm aiming to flaunt, eh?
Especially when used to distinguish magicians from non-magicians, a distinction rife with a history of derogatory labels. The use of muggle to mean real-life non-magick people is akin to the use of 'mudblood' in the Rowlingverse.
Muggle is not interchangeable with Mundane in my world, nor have I used Mundane (or learned Mundane) to signify non-practicioners of magic specifically. It's true that I've been known to slip, because the Pagan and Fannish communities are so heavily overlapping here - I consider it imprecise of me to do so, however, rather than an extension of the meaning of the word. I'm not sure how much bearing that has on this conversation, however.
I suppose I should take as much consideration of the word's other history into account as I would be inclined to for a new word I was deciding to take up, or not. I'm not sure if it matters whether the word means "not-fannish" or "not-a-practicioner". I have this sense that the latter is a more negative useage, but I have no idea why I would think so.
It is, admittedly, harder to drop an existing habit than to avoid picking up a new one.
xk: In the example of American Indian vs. Native American the person the label is applied to has potentially participated in selecting the label. That participation automatically changes the dynamic as compared to one in which the other group is not consulted.
I would argue that stereotyping is actually a sepparate issue from labelling, although they are obviously linked. It doesn't matter if the group in question is one they identify with or not. It doesn't matter if I'm in the group with them or not. It's still stereotyping to assume all the traits of a group apply to each individual member within the group, rather than actually allowing for individual variance.
Perhaps my real issue is entirely beside the point we've been arguing. So let me ask this:
How should I refer to the normal/average/mainstream culture as a group of people, for the purpose of referencing the tendancies of those people in constrast to my own tendancies?
Yahnaapaw said Higlighting difference over similarity is a means to create conflict in the wrong hands. and that's all well and true, if you're going from the assumption that different = bad. But first of all, I don't assume that, and second of all I've found treating normal people as though they are me makes them pretty unhappy - that's a much more immediate conflict than the idea that we're different, have different needs, and understandings, and should be treated accordingly differently.
So, if I don't have a point of reference on how to deal with somebody I don't already know and have personalized information for, where do I begin?
I do understand that, as xk has said, 'separate but equal' is often revealed to be a hollow offering. And especially with regards to the Law, which is where this phrase matters most, I agree that it's a bad thing. The only equality in a system that cannot completely personalize is to not categorize at all. But the human brain is not a legal system. It's a simple fact of cognition that we categorize incoming information. If we had to start from scratch every time we encountered something similar but not identical to something we've already encountered, we'd be constantly overwhelmed by raw data that we couldn't correlate. This is not suddenly less applicable when what is being encountered is people. It's all well and good to say, philosophically, that it's bad to emphasize differences, but on a pratical level it's utterly non-functional for me to fail to address them.
Do you actually dissagree that it is useful to differentiate between patterns one has learned for dealing with people that they share group traits with, and dealing with people they don't share those traits with? Because that's where this comes into play for me the most, and to answer an earlier question, it's absoloutely connects to resentment, and self-esteem, and a bunch of other stuff that was brought up earlier. After fitting so poorly into the systems (school, office culture, whatever) ostensibly designed by and for normal people, I am left with two choices: Despair at how much I suck as a broken-normal-person, or embrace that I am a healthy-different-person. (I do a lot of both, to be honest.)
How am I supposed to reconcile the fact that I am different, then? I've already been through the ringer more times than I can count trying to wrap my head around how to be what I'm not, to not be so different, and it doesn't work. Attempting to blithely ignore the ways in which I am different in an effort to embrace the ways in which we are the same doesn't work either, because then I'm just left unprepared for the consequences when I run into another difference.
If Different can't be Equal, and it's arrogant to think I'm the one who's better, and it's dysfunctional to think I'm the one who's not as good, what do I have left? And how do I address the collective tendancies of people-who-aren't-me without this risk of negative Othering?
--Ember-- |
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