Why do we breathe? It seems to confer organisms no particular advantage that they must rely on aerobic metabolism to survive. We could have come into being a different way. Yet every living creature I can think of relies on some variation of this basic process: the intake and expelling of air, water or some other substance as a sustainer of life.

To breathe reminds me of how inseparable I am from the world around me. It is not even just that “I” rely on this world to live; the very life processes that go on in my body rely on the action of outside elements, such as oxygen. Cut off completely from all that is external to me, I would die within, quite literally, a matter of seconds. The simple act of breathing renders “my body” part of one giant body; for if our body is all that is inside a certain boundary, how can the constant flow of oxygen into my lungs and bloodstream, and carbon dioxide out therefrom, not be considered “part of my body”? Which part of my red blood cells is part of me: the whole, or only that part that does not consist of oxygen from outside?

As I see it, it’s all part of my body. If the oxygen is “less my body” because it enters and leaves so quickly, are my skin cells, which rapidly die and are replaced, or the blood cells themselves, which live for an average of four months, also not my body? It seems to me that breathing is one way in which the fact that we exist as part of a giant networked organism is conveyed to us.

Maybe eating is another. Though it can be argued that a lot of the food we eat is taken from nature nonconsensually, some food is created specifically for the purpose of supporting life. Consider, for example, the fruit, which, unlike some plants that defend themselves from predators by tasting unpleasant, secreting poison, or dressing themselves in barbs and thorns, is specifically designed to appeal to the senses and to nourish the animal body, and which is in many cases cut off deliberately from its body (the tree or bush) when in a perfect condition to be eaten. The fruit, of course, and the consumption thereof, is an essential reproduction strategy for the plant; the seeds contained within survive their trip through the animal’s digestive system and pass unharmed out the other end, far from the host plant and already surrounded by their own natural fertiliser.

Sounds unpleasant, I know, but it works for the plant, and it keeps the animal alive. It’s hard to argue that the fruit was not invented by nature for the purposes of being eaten by animals, and thus is an entirely guilt-free food. We are meant, at least at this stage in evolution, to interact with our environment through eating, and to this end nature has given us sweet-tasting, nutritious foods that fulfil their purposes, both for the plant and for the animal, only when consumed.

Think again of the function of the fruit, too: reproduction. When an animal carries a fruit within its stomach, it acts practically as a surrogate mother for the plant. It’s quite unusual, when you think about it, and another example of the intricate interconnectedness of all life. We are, in many ways that we don’t even recognise, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, to many other things on this planet, in this universe. Many factors aided in our creation, and we will aid in the creation of many other things. That’s not just fluff: it’s simple scientific fact. Yet it is also a wondrous thing. Why should we not marvel at it?

I’ve heard it claimed that there are five Japantowns in the US, although Wikipedia doesn’t think two of them even deserve that title.

Being sort of a connoisseur of foreign cultures and very nearly a Japanese minor in college, I go to such places every time I get the chance, and it turns out that now I’ve seen them all. So I thought I’d present to you, the potentially curious, a review and ranking of all the Japantowns in the US, unless there’s another one that has escaped my notice.

New York City, NY
Rank: C

It may be a surprise to some, but America’s largest city has the tiniest, least-existent Japantown in the country. Until someone told me so, I didn’t even know that anyone considered it a “Japantown” at all– I thought it was just a Kinokuniya and an upscale dessert bakery. In fact, it is just a Kinokuniya and an upscale dessert bakery. It is still worth visiting, though; the Kinokuniya is the largest in the US by a significant margin. And the manju (dessert pastry) shop is expensive but very tasty and stocked with a whole lot of choices. Anyway, it’s definitely worth going to if you’re in NYC, but it doesn’t really make you feel like you’re in Japantown at all. It’s right next to Rockefeller Center and feels very Americanized.

Portland, OR
Rank: C

Portland’s Japantown is a grocery store. And there are some Japanese video stores across the street. It’s a very large Japanese grocery store, though, with a tiny Kinokuniya attached to the back, and it has not only food, but also random imports like tea sets and yukata and bento boxes and statues. The only reason it wins out over New York is that inside the grocery store, you can actually feel surrounded by Japanese culture (even if it is just the culture of a large and strangely-stocked grocery store); it seems like it caters to actual Japanese people. I get more of a feel of being in Japan from that store, but still, it’s a grocery store, with bonus Kinokuniya attachment. I’m not sure if you can really call that a Japantown per se, but you do feel like you’re surrounded by it, so maybe it counts.

San Francisco, CA
Rank: B

San Francisco’s Japantown is an indoor shopping mall, with a monument or two outside. It’s a massive building that I think is owned by Kinokuniya, although they just have a smallish store and a stationery shop. I really do feel like I’m in an upscale Japanese shopping mall when I’m in there, and it’s quite nice. I haven’t had the time to explore it as much as I’d like, since all my visits there have been cursory and rushed. Someday I want to go to San Francisco and spend my time just looking around in there. Last time, the potted trees inside had little strips of coloured paper with children’s wishes tied to them; I wonder if it was something from an elementary school nearby, or whether there was actually an event in the mall where kids wrote their wishes.

San Jose, CA
Rank: B

An actual town! My goodness! With signs pointing to it, and historic plaques, and banners on the streets. Well, street. Because it’s basically just one street. Apparently there are festivals there, though, and classes on ikebana or traditional drumming, and there are all kinds of shops– from ordinary things like hair salons and travel agencies and groceries to Japanese import merchandise shops. There’s this one place that has beautiful kimono fabric, and if I had a spare arm and a leg to pay for it, I’m sure they could make me a splendid kimono. Just looking around there is nice. There are a couple of stores with anime merchandise, although the selection is limited and they are closed on arbitrary days of the week. There’s a shop that sells various imports like kitchen items (I got my onigiri maker and bento box here), Japan-related books, greeting cards, chopsticks and chopstick holders, little zodiac charms… I’ve really found this store super-useful. There are also good restaurants in the area, and a famous manju (dessert pastry) shop that I would recommend, although it’s smaller and more limited than NYC’s. And there is a place that makes fresh tofu that’s about half the price of packaged tofu in the grocery store, and was made that very same day it’s sold. The main thing about San Jose’s Japantown is that it doesn’t really wake up until the afternoon, so a morning visit may disappoint with half the stores closed.

Los Angeles, CA
Rank: A

Okay, Little Tokyo in LA wins. It’s an actual little district, not just one street, and it doesn’t feel like the whole of it was carefully constructed to provide a “Japantown experience”, although there are a couple of plaza areas that, independently, probably were. One is Kinokuniya’s (of course), and one is a sort of maze-like hallway that has a diverse mixture of shops. They had everything from a dusty time-travelling electronics-and-miscellany store with merchandise dating from the early 1980′s to today, and a polished Sanrio store of cavity-inducing cuteness that was brimming with giveaways, lottery games, free stickers, and someone in a giant Hello Kitty suit. There were shops that specialised in anime merchandise, spilling over with gaijin anime fans, that had some things I wouldn’t normally expect to see like a small selection of cosplay clothing. There were supermarkets and shops that had strange mixtures of imports, air fresheners and hair accessories, and small corners of random anime merchandise with no consistency. There was a vistors’ center with an ikebana exhibit done by a local ikebana club, and an embassy, and a Japanese-American historical museum that I hear is worth a visit. The downside to it is that it doesn’t feel like a place mostly visited by Japanese people; I suppose it’s so large and well-known that it attracts a lot of others. However, there is quite a lot to see and do.

And, for the really culturally curious, check out the flipside: Osaka’s Americamura (Americatown) is a startling and fascinating look at how the Japanese see America. Apparently it’s a cross between 70′s disco and a FUBU store.

But partly because I do support these things, I think that when suggestions are made in favour of them that have flaws or issues, it’s good to examine those fairly– and the activist circles tend to shut down on that sort of thing, saying it distracts from the topic at hand. Personally, I think that can lead to problems of any suggestion in your favour blindly being passed without thinking about the impact it might have on others or getting to examine why reasonable, thoughtful people might not do that thing, so I like to deconstruct those things. And it’s not even always about coming down on the side of “this thing you’re asking of us privileged people is unreasonable”; a lot of the time, it’s really about “I can see why you want this, and I’d like to find a way for you to have it, but understand that a lot of people will find it hard”, or “yes, it’s right for you to have this, but here’s a little side issue that I think it’s fair to also address, because I don’t think it’s bad for people to have this contradictory thing, either, and we need to find a solution”.

This particular discussion is along the latter lines.

Specifically, I want to talk about the role of human curiosity in treatment of minority groups. Because a lot of complaints about privileged people from non-white racial groups, disabled people, and other groups whose physical appearance or behaviour is in the minority involve actions that, I think, stem from simple curiosity: asking to touch hair, or about the origin of clothing or jewellery, is a common one, but also quoted, especially by disabled people, is staring.

We’re taught as children not to stare at others, even (especially) if they catch our attention. It’s simply not seen as polite, and for a good reason: no one wants to feel like their actions and appearance are being scrutinised. We are capable of gathering en masse and not being hugely socially uncomfortable because, in a crowd, everyone tacitly agrees to more or less ignore everyone else.

But how does this balance with the desire to satiate curiosity?

I know this must sound very strange: as if someone’s curiosity could ever outweigh the right of someone, especially someone who probably gets constant attention because of their appearance, to be left alone. It doesn’t really upset anyone to not satisfy their curiosity; at worst they might be a little disappointed. The black or disabled person, however, might feel the weight of a hundred stares per day, perhaps more, and this could be profoundly upsetting for them. Shouldn’t we do our best to alleviate that burden, not intensify it?

I do generally tend to think so, and because I know that in practice it’s extremely difficult to clarify to someone whether you’re staring in a good or a bad way, and that even if you could an overburdened person might not care, I try not to stare at people I’m curious about. But I also think that there’s something that’s being missed here: most human curiosity, when it comes to unusual-looking people, is not vicious or mean-spirited. It isn’t looking for flaws to point at and mock. It just wants to know. People have an inherent drive to learn which is triggered when they encounter something outside their experience.

I’m just wondering idly if, in an ideal world, people who wished to satiate that drive harmlessly could be allowed to do it. I don’t like making people feel uncomfortable, but I don’t like the fact that in order for society to go smoothly we have to pretend a lot of the time that we don’t care about things we do care about, or vice versa. I hold the ideological perspective that it should generally be okay for us to be ourselves, and that if we’re not explicitly seeking to cause harm, it would be ideal if society were better able to accept our lack of harmful intent (obviously depending on the circumstances: “I didn’t mean to cause harm by pushing that burning oil drum off a building onto that grandmothers’ convention” is not the same as “I didn’t mean to cause harm by asking about your father when I didn’t know he was dead”).

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take care with our words and actions, because right now we do live in a society where many of us have been conditioned to be easily upset, and we do need to be mindful of others’ feelings. But I suppose I dream of a society where people who have no animosity in mind can be honest, without causing offence. I’m thinking I’d like it to be okay for someone to be curious about someone’s physical appearance, and be able to look at them, possibly even admire them, and have that not bother the person. And I know that’s not really possible in this world right now; but at the very least what I would like is this, and basically, for all that I’ve waffled above this is my main point:

I’d like for it to be acknowledged ideologically that curiosity is okay, that it’s not a bad thing, and that even if we shouldn’t practice it in some circumstances for the sake of people’s happiness, it’s still a shame and a loss that we can’t.

Maybe it’s not a big loss. Maybe it doesn’t outweigh the desires of others to be left alone. But it’s still not ideal that society is this way.

(This brought to you, incidentally, by spending the last leg of my recent flight back to England next to a boy who, despite having only one arm and that being deformed, was still able to play his DS. I thought that was pretty awesome.)

As the blogger continues to say, specifically referencing the treatment of non-white people, “They make a seemingly impossible suggestion: that white folks must be aware of the fact that the experiences and cultures of people of color are different, but they must not fixate on those differences to the extent that the behavior becomes tokenizing, or discomforting, or – possibly worst of all – self-aggrandizing.” It’s hard to notice difference, be aware that this difference is meaningful and has made these people the target of abuse and oppression, and not subsequently have your actions stilted or distorted by that heightened awareness. It’s hard to be vigilant while being casual. It’s hard to treat people with special care while at the same time treating them just like everyone else.

I’ve been guilty of feeling uncomfortable when oppressed groups ask for this. If my attention is called to the fact that I should be sensitive towards someone because of their colour, I immediately cannot stop worrying about whether I’m doing it right or wrong, whether I’m doing too much or not enough, whether I’m going to be offensive, etc. This makes me socially anxious, and thus more likely to do stupid things. And I’ll be brutally honest here: I don’t want this to be the case, but it causes me to see the person as a little more threatening and a little less human. Not because I inherently believe anyone deserves to be seen as less human than anyone else, but because I feel thrown off guard by the panic-response of “how should I act? How should I act? Will they hate me if I don’t act right?”, and my response to that is to feel less comfortable and more defensive around the person. It has nothing to do with my believing any of the differences between myself and them make them bad, and has everything to do with the fact that trying to act normal when my attention has been drawn to someone is something I do not do easily.

It’s as simple as noticing them by accident. Oh, I’m looking at them now. Should I be looking? Is that okay? Maybe I should look away. But then they might think I’m purposely trying to ignore them. So maybe I should look. But that’s going to look like I’m staring. It is impossible to act naturally once you start think about how you’re supposed to act.

But at the same time, the more I think about that statement– “The first thing you do is to forget that I’m [black/female/disabled/etc.]. Second, you must never forget that I’m [black/female/disabled/etc.]“– the more something about it does sink in and seem solid. At the core of it, this is what I do with my friends. I acknowledge that they may need to do some things differently from how I need to do them, that they may have special food preferences or social needs or squicks or cultural leanings that I have to respect and work with; but I don’t think of them as a collection of those needs and squicks and leanings, or stereotype them based on those. I just try to be careful of them and to be mindful of when they might arise.

The problem is that it’s trickier with altering the way you relate to someone based on their cultural group as opposed to as an individual, particularly when it’s an oppressed cultural group, because you don’t know their individual preferences, and you have to go on what you know about the culture, and most members of oppressed groups don’t like being stereotyped based on that. And you can always ask, but if you don’t know someone well, asking isn’t always easy, and may be presumptuous and annoying in and of itself. I am sometimes going to be casual with my friends and go, “lol, I suppose you don’t want the [insert food here], then”, because they’re my friends and I know them enough to know when I can do that without offending them, but taking the same tack with someone you don’t know well is likely to be problematic. It’s not easy; but then I suppose social reform never is.

I have a very intelligent, creative, fun-loving scientist friend who was put on the fast track for science at an early age. He’s very smart and highly educated, but he has only ever had cursory education in the humanities. At one point, he expressed distaste for the study of literature, saying that he didn’t see the point in learning about the symbolism in Jane Eyre and so on. I was stricken to realise that he had no idea that that was not the point of studying literature– that he didn’t even understand what the point was, what the whole discipline was about. I explained it to him, and it seemed that no one had ever told him why we study literature, or in fact what the study of literature actually is– that it’s not about learning things about specific books, but about knowing how to read things deeply and understand the metaphors and layers of meaning, as well as how the nuances in what we read (and watch) influence the way we see the world. He didn’t understand that a literature class isn’t meant to teach you dubiously-certain facts about Jane Eyre, it’s meant to use Jane Eyre as a tool to help you understand how to study literature. In all of the lit classes he’d been required to take, no one had ever taken the time to explain to him the point of the discipline or even how it was done.

I’ve seen similar stories from elsewhere– for example, much as I love the webcomic xkcd, the creator really doesn’t seem to take the humanities seriously at all– he seems to think they’re about putting on an intellectual hat and looking smart. My guess is that Randall Munroe simply hasn’t had any humanities classes that did a decent job of teaching him what he was actually studying in the first place. And this is by no means limited to the humanities; if everyone understood the scientific method and why we use it, creationists and pseudoscientists wouldn’t be able to get anyone to believe that their ideas were actually some kind of science.

A friend of mine who was homeschooled said recently that creationists were able to pull the wool over the eyes of homeschooled kids whose Christian parents didn’t teach them how science worked. I replied that it was hardly just a failing of homeschooling– public schools don’t teach the scientific method well enough, either. I went to a public school, and every year we had a little intro where we would go over the steps of the scientific method for a little while; we might even have a quiz on those steps; but it was the same every year, and it always bored me because it was always the same as it had been in previous years. Nowadays I realise that the problem is that we don’t spend enough time on the scientific method– kids memorise the steps, but they don’t understand why each step is important, why the method works, or why something that doesn’t follow those steps– regardless of whether or not we know it’s true by some other means– is not science.

This, I think, is the quintessential “failure of American education” that people go around lamenting and trying to fix via wrongheaded means. Diverting students’ learning time to memorising facts for standardised tests is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing; we need to divert their time back to understanding the fundamental basics of a discipline, the ideas behind it and the reason for doing it, the way it works, and what it actually is. It’s a failure across the board in every subject: very rarely are students taught why they’re learning a subject, or how the experts in that field go about undertaking it and how they learn from the methods they use. The perennial question kids ask, “When am I going to use this?” should be a ridiculous question like asking when they’re going to find it useful to know how to do their laundry. “You’ll understand how things work from this, silly, and you’ll know how to evaluate the world around you better every day.”

Children (and experienced children, aka immature adults) need to understand the motivation for learning, rather than just being told that learning is good; they need to realise how they will benefit. And when they grow up, they have to have actually received those benefits: an understanding of how to apply these disciplines to the world. That is more important than memorizing which atoms bond together to form what molecules, or the ear symbolism in Hamlet; those facts will get them absolutely nowhere if they don’t know what science or literature actually is. Surely, if we want more of our children to be interested in choosing a discipline in which to excel, we want them to understand what they are getting into and why all the long hard study will be worth it. But far more important than churning out little geniuses is to make sure that our next generation can evaluate things better than a confused sheep trying to figure out which flock to tag behind.

There’s a very strong feeling in our society*– so strong that it’s almost impossible to escape from– that the “victim” in any given scenario, the one who did not intend to take part in it, is the only one whose hurt is worth treating, caring about or even acknowledging. By contrast, we don’t attempt to heal the perpetrator of a wrongdoing, typically (and if we do, it is usually for the sake of making society safer from their wrongdoings, not for the perpetrator themselves, and puts definite emphasis on their being a criminal who needs reform rather than a victim). Instead, we often hurt them, restricting their freedoms or otherwise inconveniencing them in some way. This is so standardised in our society that we don’t even think twice about it, typically. Even if we don’t believe in punishment, it still feels natural to most people that there is only one victim of a wrongdoing and only one person whose injuries from it deserve treatment. The reasoning for this is probably twofold: firstly, the feeling that the perpetrator of a wrongdoing did what they did willingly, and so any injury that comes to them because of it is “their own fault”; and secondly, the lack of recognition, in general, that committing a wrongdoing could ever harm anyone.

But I think it does harm. In my opinion as a layperson when it comes to psychology, in the case of the non-sociopathic individual (that is, someone who is capable of feeling remorse for their wrongdoings), there will likely be any combination of emotional conflict, guilt, worry, fear, sadness, self-hatred, and self-doubt working their way through a person as a result of any wrongdoing they have committed. There will also possibly be, because of these pains, a tendency to escape these burdening feelings by redefining the wrongdoing as an acceptable thing in their mind, thus pushing a person further away from a mindset in which they are inclined to examine their morality. One could argue that “they brought this on themselves”, but when one commits a wrongdoing, do they really understand the full extent to which it can damage them? Furthermore, does not the idea that it is “their own fault” suggest a person who from the outset is naturally amoral, who has not been subject to negative influence from their environment but is simply inclined to be bad? And if even if the above two conditions were the case, does it then follow that it is wrong to help the person or to see them as injured when they are? If a cruel person were the victim of a wrongdoing in which they played no part, would we not still treat them as the victim?

I think because wrongdoing harms, that harm should be cared for and treated in all cases, not followed with more harm, leading to ever more twisted and corrupt individuals who feel outcast and unloved by society, falling ever further from its embrace. This goes against people’s natural tendencies very strongly; the victims of wrongdoing often feel that to be kind to the wrongdoer is an outrage, because their hurts are legitimate (i.e. in a form recognised by society; for example, we recognise that being the victim of violent crime often traumatises people) and they did nothing to deserve it (implying that it is morally good that those who do harm receive harm in return), and, perhaps, ultimately, because to treat the wrongdoer as someone in the same position as them, “on the same side” as them, when this person has clearly made themselves The Enemy to the victim, seems abhorrent.

But if we are to progress as a society we must abandon the idea of an enemy: of a human whose existence, whose health and wellbeing, are in opposition to ours and whose happiness is of insufficient concern that they can be freely mistreated. One’s opinions, one’s actions, might be in opposition to ours or even a threat to our very lives, but if we do not seek to recognise, consistently, that no human’s inherent being is in opposition to ours, that we are all on the same side in life, that we all deserve to live and be happy, the idea that the wellbeing of anyone who opposes you should be ignored will continue to propagate, and that is an entirely arbitrary and wrongheaded notion– as one should know the second they realise it immediately applies to each “side” in the eyes of the other. The inward flinching we feel at the thought of our “enemies” being cared for is a vengeful, divisive notion. The idea that it matters “who was hurt more” is a vengeful, divisive notion. There was hurt, and it should be repaired, that all humans may live better lives.

I heard once– sadly I can’t remember where– of a society where those who commit actions that the law defines as criminal are brought into a circle of their peers and told, by each, of their good deeds and the good things about their nature. Apparently, this society has a very low crime rate. When we continue to wound those who are already wounded enough that their sense of empathy does not hold them back from doing harm, do we really think we are going to save them, or are we condemning them immediately, categorising them as criminals and cutting them off from kindness, no longer conscious of their humanity or caring if they become better people? Have we already decided that they have broken the rules and thus are outcast?

Furthermore, is this morally good? If it is wrong to hurt, to take from another’s human freedoms, to punish, to imprison, is it ever right to do those things to anyone, at any time, regardless of what they have done to others? Is it right to do those things just because you’re the government? Is it right, ever?

Furthermore– and this is more a (rhetorical) question for me personally than anything else– is it spiritually right, by my beliefs? Is it right to divide people into “criminal” and “victim”? Is it right to perpetuate notions that humankind can be split into enemy groups, to perpetuate the idea that it is rightful for the victim to feel resentment and anger when the perpetrator of a crime is well-treated, to pit human against human and thus parts of the universe against itself– to say that opposing groups are not worthy of love, are not worthy of understanding, from each other, and that we should not attempt to facilitate this, that it is a lost cause? Is that not to deny that the very nature of the universe is a united whole?

*By which I mean Generic Western English-Speaking Society that I don’t really have a word for.

Even if one takes that statement literally, assuming someone who is right, that isn’t true; though your cause may be right, that doesn’t legitimise you to do terrible things in the name of it. It’s not okay to hurt others because you’re right. It’s not okay to ignore human rights because you’re right. It’s not okay to step on people on the way to your goal because you’re right. But another big problem I have with that statement is that we can’t apply that statement in this world, because in the vast majority of cases we can’t know we’re right. We think we’re right. We have our opinions on what’s right. But we usually can’t know we are right, and the last thing ads should be doing is stoking our natural inclination to assume that we’re right and stop examining ourselves.

I say this as someone who’s been right about some things (in my world, at least, it’s possible to know), and thought I was right about others. Both of these things led me to act pretty awfully.

Of course, I may not be right on this either. But that’s what I believe, currently.

The people this was linked from are arguing it constitues discrimination against rap culture, but what I see here is actually primarily another type of discrimination– that against names, particularly chosen names, that step too far outside society’s conception of what a name should be. I’m willing to bet that if the Times ran an article on, say, fanfic writers, or MMORPGers, or some other group that primarily goes by “handles” that don’t pass as names in this current culture, it would exhibit the same problem; I very much doubt “Raging Blizzard” would be given the title “Mr. Blizzard” (although I think that particular part of the article is a little naive; most multi-word handles, and, I believe, rapper names, are meant to be short phrases, not sets comprising a given name and surname that fit the “Mr./Ms. X” pattern very easily, and perhaps we need an entire other methodology to deal with this style of name. I see more of a problem in the fact that these people are not allowed to forget their birth names, honestly).

So as participants in a culture where handles and other non-standard names abound, what do you think of this article? I personally feel that a name is a name, whether it falls into a standard “given name + optional middle name(s) + surname”, or “surname + given name”, pattern or not, whether it has numbers in it or not. whether it has random capitalisation in the middle or not. I wouldn’t personally ever pick a name like FluffyCloud32 to represent myself, but if you would, and it has meaning to you, then I feel you should be allowed to have it. Any less would be to deny you a very fundamental, very basic part of your identity, and what surely should be considered a basic human right: the right to be called what you please, the right to have your chosen tag or descriptor, and no one else’s, appended to your identity.

Maybe it’s just me, but the use of the word “privilege” seems to say, “you shouldn’t have these things”, when the problem is not that some people have them, it’s that some people don’t. I do agree with the term where it’s used to denote things that one social group has at the expense of another social group; for example, it is unfair privilege that male characters are the heroes of most children’s stories, as men are often actively being chosen at the expense of women, and to make things fairer would require that proportionally fewer stories feature men. That is certainly a case of one group being favoured. But isn’t it more often the case that the oppressed group is disfavoured, seen as somehow deserving of fewer rights, fewer protections, than we would give to what this society considers the “benchmark of the average human being”: the white, heterosexual male?

I just see a lot of people instinctively railing at the “privilege” label, and since the same concept can be conveyed, in my opinion more accurately and without any loss of information, by saying “women are underprivileged” and listing what society’s unfair standards with regards to women are (e.g. “I do have to fear walking alone at night”), I wonder if it might not defuse potential derailings of topics, and give a clearer perspective of what’s really going on, to say that instead. “Privilege” to me feels like an obfuscating word, a word that doesn’t really get at what the problem is but just comes off as taking the opportunity to yell at the people who have the things you don’t. And while I can understand anger, it’s not the most productive thing ever, especially if it’s detracting from the real issue: women lack the security and fair treatment they should have in this society.

Only tangentially related, but is it only me who actually cringes and turns away at provocative exploitation of what’s been termed “male gaze”, such as the gratuitous underwear shot in the second image on that page? Do others find that sort of thing (whether using male or female body parts) actively attractive? I hold no criticism of those who do– I’m merely curious– but it personally makes me feel like I’m being made by the direction of the images into someone whose gaze is predatory and exploitative, and that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I don’t want to look at people that way, whether male or female, and when I’m forced to– because the provocative parts of someone’s body are all that’s in the shot– I become squeamish. (I also have a huge problem with shots that show the character’s chest and torso but not their face; objectification much? Final Fantasy X was unfortunately quite bad with this.)

I picked these two for a specific reason, one that struck me as an important criterion while searching through the available books: they present the non-standard families as incidental, rather than the focus being on the gay or lesbian family and how most people think they’re “strange” but it’s eventually revealed that it’s okay to be different. While I think this message may be valid and useful in some contexts– I think it’s positive, as in the case of The Different Dragon, to tell children “some people might expect you to be tough and strong, but it’s really actually fine if you’re not and you shouldn’t feel social pressure to be so”– I think that GLBTBBQ literature for children runs the risk of overdoing it to the point where a child might feel, “wait, you keep saying it’s okay but it also definitely seems like it’s strange and a lot of people don’t like it; this is kind of discomforting”. I’m trying to put my finger on the difference between the two, and I think it’s that if a child is capable of taking away the message that X thing is okay without a demonstration that a lot of people don’t think it is, then there shouldn’t be such a demonstration. If you just portray a character who’s gentle and kind and liked by others for being so in a young children’s book, children might not take away the message that it’s okay to be gentle and kind– it’s too subtle for them– and they probably won’t feel too comforted when those who think they’re weak for it bully them. But if a book shows that a character has two mommies, that’s all it needs to do; you don’t need to point out to the child that having two mommies is non-standard. If other kids in the playground say “having two mommies is weird”, the child will think back to the book, where it seemed normal enough. I suppose it’s the difference between a character trait, which a child is less likely to pick up on, and a physical difference that is very obvious; two mommies are obviously two mommies and not a mommy and daddy, but a young child might not be able to grasp the concept of “this character is gentle, and therefore it’s okay to be” without some context.

Anyway, my ultimate feeling on this is that framing a behaviour or lifestyle you want a child to think is okay as “abnormal but still okay” should be avoided where possible. And I tend to dislike seeing it in adult literature, too, partly because the “everyone hates us because we’re female/gay/etc.” story has been done so many times before, and partly because in these stories, the marginalised group is still marginalised, at least at the beginning. And I don’t know about you, but I really prefer to read stories where the groups I’m part of are accepted and normative than ones that re-represent the struggle we’ve already gone through to be recognised; if I’m part of a group that’s misunderstood, I already know that we’re misunderstood, have already heard the story and been upset by it, and would prefer to explore different options and possibilities rather than retreading what I already know is true (usually followed by Marginalised Group A becoming non-marginalised, but only at the expense of the Oppressor group and a lot of “we told you so!” crowing, or worse). This sort of fantasy is probably cathartic for some people, but I really don’t enjoy the sort of vicarious vengeful smugness we’re supposed to take from it, and I think it engenders a backlash response that I don’t think is any more useful than the original prejudice. I’d rather explore completely different solutions to the problem, or imagine worlds where the problem doesn’t exist and see what we can learn from those to apply to our own situation.

(I also want to say that I feel it’s more female-positive to write about a society where gender is treated as incidental than to write about one where the undervalued female class must wage war, but I admit that I don’t really have the right to define what counts as “female-positive”. I would like your thoughts on the matter, though.)