a thing i thought

dharmagun:

disclaimer: i’m not a historian or a sociologist only a person who has read things and observed and interpreted by my own understanding. i expect it’s all been said before. i’m writing it down because if i don’t i’ll go on overthinking it and arguing with myself until i am a semiconscious blob. ANYWAY

in 1894, Lord Alfred Douglas published an undistinguished poem called “Two Loves” that would have faded into (deserved) obscurity but for the phrase “the love that dare not speak its name.” even that would have passed with a yawn except that it was quoted at Oscar Wilde’s trial as a secret code for homosexuality. Wilde denied this, but it’s now generally accepted that that was its intended meaning.

so time passes, the world changes, there’s struggle, and a group of people can now speak its name, not always safely, not always freely, but there is the sound of voices. when we are acquiring language, we call the names of things–milk, truck, mama– and especially we say our own names over and over. we tell the stories of ourselves to ourselves and later to others with increasing refinement as our vocabulary grows. in adolescence and youth the imperative seems to be to fight for one’s own identity, to distinguish ourselves in the world so we can survive as individual personalities and paradoxically as part of a culture. we call our names and if no one listens, we call more loudly; we learn and invent new words so that we are known to and for ourselves, and listen for others using the same words so we know that although individual, we are not isolated.

i feel like right now things are changing massively, importantly, and that we’re in the adolescent stage of a new social identity; we’re inventing language daily to define ourselves and acquiring the power and volition to express it because now we can when we couldn’t before.  i don’t think this power is always used effectively or with discrimination and consideration, but that, in my experience, is pretty typical of adolescents. there are metaphorical and actual cliques and in-fighting and kids who sit at the cool table in the cafeteria and a lot of labeling and angry flailing as a growing generation becomes more articulate and invents itself as it has to in order to survive and effect change.

in the struggle to define ourselves, we’re going to come up against people taking different ways through the same process, and people who feel they’ve substantially passed through it and are in a different stage of development. attacking “others” is a harsh part of self-definition, declaring who you are by pointing out what you are NOT. every generation does it because every generation goes through a social-change adolescence, which is a pretty good thing for people to remember when they start condemning other generations.

in a way this is my defense of “millennials” as well as my consideration of dissension within the LGBTQ+ community. it’s too early in our current struggle for change to start criticising people for using language when they haven’t acquired a lot of skill with a massive new vocabulary that is in flux itself;  you have to live with it and practice it and say it until it becomes a part of the world. you can’t blame people who have felt silenced for yelling when they can. It’s part of a process that i believe will result in better things as a cultural body moves into its maturity. i believe that REALLY HARD.