Difference and Marginalization

At a certain point in my life, I began saying something that other males around me were not saying. Something that men in general had historically not been saying. I was stating that certain things were true for me personally, and in making this statement I was contradicting a whole lot of what men in general had said about male experience, about being one, what it was like, what it meant.

Did this mean that I was different?

What if, in saying these things, I was actually speaking for all men, saying things about the male experience that never get said but which basically all men, not just me, have to confront in their lives?

Or maybe I was not speaking for all men but for a minority of males, a hitherto silent minority, a group of males who were different from the rest, a group who didn't yet have a name and a voice?

Or perhaps I was only speaking for myself and myself alone.

I didn't know. I spoke without knowing.

I've received my share of dismissive reactions. I'm a special snowflake. I'm a boringly normal hetero cis guy who desperately wants to be edgy. I have a lot of nerve using a slur term ("queer") that was hurled at other people, as if that were my right. I've been told countless times that I lack any relevant difference. Meanwhile I've only now and then been told that what I say is true for me is true for them too.

Marginalization is a word you hear bandied about quite a bit these days, especially in MOGII (aka LGBTQIA)* communities. It literally means to exist right on the margin, or edge, of things, pushed to the side.

Well, here's what marginalization is like. It's when most of the time you get treated as part of an undifferentiated group you don't consider yourself to belong to, and the rest of the time you get singled out as weird and peculiar, and treated and thought of as such, with your difference defined by other people as they see it, without any input from your own self-definition.

And yes, it is edgy.


* MOGII = Minority Orientation, Gender Identity, and Intersex. LGBTQIA = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (etc/other) and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Agender. I like MOGII better.


———————

This LiveJournal blog is echoed on DreamWidth, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.

————————

Index of all Blog Posts