I always make a point of celebrating Leap Day- there’s something marvelously quirky about a day that only shows up once every 4 years. Everyone in my office agrees that it should be a nationally-recognized holiday, complete with the day off. Think of the revenues it would produce! People could buy chocolates shaped like leap frogs and wear t-shirts that say “Leaping Lizards!” There could be special Leap Day bouquets and Leap Day pies. Leap Day discounts and Leap Day cards. Obviously, declaring February 29th a holiday is US’s ticket out of a recession. GENIUS.
…too bad it’ll be another 4 years until the opportunity comes again.
Be honest: The above comic, from xkcd.com, that’s you, right? If “yes,” you are so not alone. Everyday at work, I receive at least one email that makes my blood start to boil. The kind of email that demonstrates an appalling level of ignorance about my job description, or even the laws of gravity. The kind of email where I’d rather hurl my fist through the monitor and chew on a power cord than devote precious minutes on the civilized response that this person can’t possibly deserve.
It’s like that with blogging, too, right? You voice an opinion and inevitably someone takes you to task, even if it was just an idea you wanted to casually toss out as food for thought. As someone who takes conflict personally and also hates confrontation, I tend to self-censor a good deal. This only causes seething and bitterness, which loses friends, and ultimately, you become that angry old lady with 12 cats living in that house all the kids are afraid of. So yeah, not a habit I endorse.
Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about nonviolence and conflict resolution. Honestly, go read The Power of Nonviolence - it’s one of the best books I’ve read in ages. It reminded me of a favorite professor I had in college- he was awesome in every sense of the word. Nice to everyone, showed cartoons during class, and deeply involved with his work in peace psychology and mediation. I finally decided that I wanted to read some of his work, so today, I borrowed one of his books from the library. And because I recently battled with my roommates over dishes, I’ve also started reading Getting to Yes, a book that this professor once recommended to me.
The first thing I’ve read in the book he co-edited is about making the distinction between “conflict” and “violence.” Conflict is just two parties with two different positions. Getting to Yes points out that sometimes a negotiated compromise is better than the two original positions. Critiques and/or questions aren’t always attacks, and shouldn’t be treated as such. In contrast, violence is destructive:
It is the violence that we read and hear about daily. It is parents fighting, one spouse battering the other or their children; it is children beating up other children in school or gangs attacking customers at a gay bar; it is ethnic cleansing, it is terrorism, it is war. [via]
Violence occurs when one party believes that their interests and well-being are more important than another’s. To consider how this plays out on the web, I guess you really only have to look at the comic from xkcd. But I guess it all comes down to how you express your ideas, and abstaining from personal insults while you’re at it.
I must upset a delicate temporal balance every time I leave my house early to get to work early because every time I do a [bleep] train breaks down and I end up arriving to work at the same time I would have arrived if I had left my house at the time I normally do and now that I’m at work I don’t want to be here because, clearly, the universe doesn’t want me here and to make moods worse I’m staring at blog posts reminding me of depressing nonsense such as Saudi Arabia’s [bleep] reenactment of the SalemWitchTrial.
My roommate and I got started talking some nonsense about this guy, Harry Whittier Frees, who dressed cats up in bizarre get-ups in, uh… the name of art:
C:http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/brassgoggles/?p=473 me:vat is dis? C:See those kittens? In the airship?
me:cute?
C:My grandma sent me three of this guy’s books. One with puppies, one with kitties and one with bunnies.
me:holy crap http://members.shaw.ca/pelorian/index2.html#anchor121222
C:Yeah. the first three that person talks about
me:Emma does not know how good she has it
C:Perhaps we can show her the pictures and use those as an incentive not to scratch the couch
me:snort
hahahahaha
There have been some great posts recently, comparing the Deaf and LGBT communities. In An American Mom in Tuscany, Jodi quotes one of the commenters on her blog, Mark aka Drolz:
It was in the hearing world — the one where so many hearing people ignorantly assume I can’t possibly be happy unless I’m exactly like them–where I was under much pressure to conform. It’s in the Deaf world where I can belong, and effortlessly do so. In the hearing world I didn’t dare rock the boat because it was hard enough to keep up with everyone … ASL and the Deaf community give me an opportunity to express myself freely … I love pointing out that the Deaf community strengthened me to the point where I actually function better in the hearing world.
Jodi uses this as a jumping off point to discuss the parallels between Deaf and Gay community/identity. Others have used the “in/out of the closet” analogy to address the degree to which a deaf person embraces the cultural aspect of deafness.
In response to Jodi’s post, The Deaf Edge agrees with the analogy:
Gay by Nature, Proud by Choice is a slogan that us Deaf could borrow if you replace Gay with Deaf, because so many of us identify with that sentiment. You’re born with it, and it’s who you are.
Both posts are great- and I recommend reading them straight through, including a lot of the comments. However, it bothers me that both interpretations seem to insist on an either/or participation in the community. From Deaf Pundit again:
Then we just don’t know what to do with the proud oral deaf. They’re the bisexuals of our world. Not quite in the hearing world, but not quite in the deaf world either. They’re in their own world. Just like the gays and straights, we want them to just make up their minds, goddamn it and pick one side! But it doesn’t work that way, does it?
Then we have the semi-closeted deaf. They don’t use ASL. They use other communication modes and we’re annoyed at their refusal to just come fully out of the closet. A deaf person using SEE is like a butch saying, “I’m a lesbian, yes.. but I’m still going to wear dresses.”
These are the points I want to add:
Many people believe that sexuality exists on a continuum, not in rigid categories (such as gay/straight/bi).
Identities are constantly in flux, adapting to changes in environment, the company we’re with, etc.
People also express their cultural identity in different ways: not all gay men are flamboyant, not all librarians wear buns (actually, few do).
So what if we just acknowledge that hearing loss and cultural identity also exist on a continuum, evolving as needed? I would much rather subscribe to this idea than be an outcast from both the hearing and deaf worlds. It’s kind of a bummer to be ostracized.
P.S. One of Jodi’s commenter’s mentioned an article in the NYTimes from back in 1994- it touches on some of the same ideas that she was talking about.
