Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"You're not a real photographer if you've never had to drain the water out of your tripod legs." -- Mike Johnston, on the Pentax-Discuss Mailing List, 2003-02-20.

I ran across a journal entry by starandrea in which she sounds apologetic for forgetting the phrase "moving walkway" and saying "slidewalk" instead. Okay, so it's mostly us fen, I guess, who'll have run across the word "slidewalk" before (uh, that's a Niven coinage, right?), but as starandrea says, "slidewalk" is such a good word for it ... So does that word actually confuse anyone, or does it so clearly conjure the right image that it might as well be/become the non-fannish word for such conveyances? Is there any reason to bother making excuses for not thinking of the phrase "moving walkway" right away? Or am I just soooo fannish that I can't see how "slidewalk" could possibly sound strange the second time one hears it? They've been "slidewalks" in my head every time I've seen one. Then again, I ran across the word years before I encountered the device.

The post was very much a "let one's inner child out" thing, and I followed a link bridgetester posted in a comment, to an entry by jadine two years ago, about airport dancing, which conjured for me a mental image of a world in which everyone was expected to break into dance at random intervals in public places, each at different times; and I liked that image enough to post a comment jokingly requesting that jadine create such a world for me. Then I thought about the arrogance of such a request, and while I was throwing in a "make it clear (I hope, since the tone was ironic) that I'm not really that arrogant" line, I also started thinking about what it means to change the world, and why anyone might do so for me.

Which reminded me that I have been changing the world, though I did it primarily for myself. Not entirely -- there's altruism in the mix as well -- but ... Well it's like this: many years ago, angsting about how I wished I could go out into the world dressed as I wanted to dress but society wouldn't let me, I prayed, asking God to alter the world for me so that I could go out into it as me. Well, you can call it "Glenn finally figured it out" or "God answered Glenn's prayer by whispering the answer"; either way, this came to me: a) I had to make that new world myself, b) I had the power to make that world myself, and c) maybe, just maybe, there were other people I'd never heard of, in other places, doing the same work. The first step was for me to go out into the world I already had, as myself, in the face of my society's disapproval. And it would be scary, and hard, and uncomfortable, and not everything I wanted it to be, but it would be better than suffocating myself in a closet (for closets truly are deadly rather than merely uncomfortable, which is worthy of a whole 'nuther entry sometime), and maybe, just maybe, it would get easier over time.

That didn't seem like really great odds for getting what I wanted, but it was better than nothing. And at the same time as I was thinking that, the existential moral argument came to me: if I were trying to make things as I thought they should be, I could complain about their not being there yet; but if I did not make the attempt, then I was just being part of the society I was complaining about and my complaint had no standing. That is, to put it in more obviously existential terms, I could not expect others to do what I would not. And that in turn got me thinking beyond myself: If enough other transgendered people had the guts to walk around dressed ambiguously or obviously crossdressed, then it would no longer be so unusual, and the world I wanted would exist -- I could go about dressed as myself. But I couldn't ask others to do the work for me if I were not willing to take that first scary step myself.

That's when it really did connect up as a "change the world" idea in my head. I would step out of my house in a skirt and take the stares and epithets that came my way (and hope like mad that no brickbats or bullets followed), and while I would not get the "walk about dressed as I like in peace without attracting extra attention" world I wanted, at least I was doing what I wanted others to do for me, and my doing so would make it easier for the next person, and the next, and maybe if any of my hypothetical great-grandchildren were also transgendered, they might inherit the world I'd prayed for.

I posted to Usenet about this, posts that I'll someday extract from old backup tapes and repost here, but this entry is getting too long to recap them right now. My speechifying online probably didn't do much good to change the whole world, but I did change my neighbourhood by my mere presence and visibility. The longer I was out, the less frightening it became; and the more people got used to seeing me, the less startling I became. The world I'd prayed for was creeping slowly into existence.

Twenty years later, we have new words like "genderqueer" and "intergendered", and mobs of younger people who act like it's no big deal. We still have people who stare at us, but more and more of them at least have a clue that we exist. Transsexuals are still fodder for Jerry Springer (or, more significantly, for bashers and murderers), so we're not "there" yet, but "going stealth" after surgery is no longer the only way for a TS to have a basically normal life, and being TS or being in the closet are no longer the only paths for the transgendered/intergendered. I get called names, but it happens less and less often. I don't think I can claim credit for creating the world all those genderqueer college kids inhabit, but I'd like to think that in some tiny way I helped. I did my part, and apparently a whole lot of other people I never knew stepped up and did theirs, and gee, maybe it'll be my hypothetical grandchildren (okay, grand-nieces and grand-nephews, more likely) instead of great-grandchildren who get what I asked for, because all those college kids taking advantage of what a few people my age did are in turn -- simply by taking advantage of it -- smoothing the way for the next generation, continuing the work. Automatic activisim by the ones who don't think of themselves as activists as well as by the ones who do.

So hey, maybe I've earned the right to ask (not demand, of course) that other people change the world for me in more frivoulous ways after all. #blink# Or maybe not, but at least I've got some world-changing of my own to point to. And I don't think the price of random public dancing will be as high as what I've paid for my freedom to be myself (yeah, there have been costs ... some painful). OTOH, until I'm willing to dance myself when I'm not holding a guitar, I'm still asking people to do what I won't, so my exhortations to dance carry no moral weight. Whoops.

But at the same time as that whole channel of thought unfolded, I was reminded that there's another aesthetic world-change I want, one that I feel more comfortable participating in: nancylebov's notion that highway rest stops should have pick-up bands. So the dance thing becomes a mere suggestion to all my dancing friends, and the highway pick-up band thing is a personal request.

Bottom-up social engineering can be done for survival, or it can be done for fun/beauty. Change the world.

I might not have fixed the brick; I'm not sure. That is, I definitely fixed the problem I was trying to fix, but I may have screwed up the calibration putting it back together. Guess I'll find out after I've shot it a bit.