Hey You! [my personal pronoun]

Tags

mainsplain, male, mansplainer, peronsal pronouns, poetry, Politically correct, pronouns, social media, white, white male, Workshop, Writing, Zoom

I attended a writing workshop yesterday. On Zoom. It was hosted by the University of Manitoba which is, according to that search engine and map, 3,178 kilometers from my home and a 33 hour drive. The proposed route leads me across Quebec from Montréal to Timmins ON, a route I would never consider driving in winter let alone summer. So make that a 40 hour drive. But I digress. I attended a pretty good workshop I probably never could have attended before the pandemic.

I’ve come to love Zoom. I am on calls every week, and it’s my only contact outside my home and Pete’s Fruitique in the City Market where buddy calls me Buddy: “Hey Buddy, is that everything?” I find myself wanting to tell him my name: “I am not your buddy.” Like a woman saying, “I’m not a deer!” And then last week a young lady was in the checkout line ahead of me and buddy said to her, “Hey Buddy, is that everything?”

Over Zoom, I’ve come virtually face-to-face with people in Ontario, Mexico, Portugal, Egypt, New York, Tennessee, North Carolina, Victoria BC, Toronto, Nairobi — I bet nobody else has had a Kenyan Cow bomb their Zoom meetings! — and now Winnipeg (and wherever these participants lived.) *One of them actually lives in my city. I didn’t know them and made friends with them on Facebook during the call. They could literally be my neighbour, met 3,178 km away.

Anyway, the Zoom writing workshop was on poetry and was led by a graduate student who I believe identifies as gay. His bio contained several LGBQ keywords, and… whatever. He seemed qualified to lead it, so I joined. Honestly, I don’t care about people’s sexual leanings. What you do is your business, and what I do is mine. It’s something we don’t need to talk about.

The session had about a dozen participants: the young, gay-identifying leader who had a trim beard, more than a single screen of participants I would describe as female, a couple of pictures with no picture at all but with female names, and me, the now senior-citizen-white-male. I like to know people. I am a people watcher. I am a people voyeur. I want to know everything about everyone. So I typed the full names (some used only their first name to keep stalkers like me off their tail) into Facebook search to see what came up. The first thing I noticed when I began reading the participants’ names were pronouns in parenthesis after their names, such as “Janet Smith (she/her).”

Cute, I thought, but why? I could find suitable pronouns to match their names/pictures, couldn’t I? I acknowledged that my visual cues might be incorrect, that one of these John-identified-females might actually identify as… whatever. Like sexual leanings, your personal sexual identification doesn’t concern me. Then, as my mind tends to do, I played out conversations that might take place where I might use these pronouns. “She said this, but I disagree.” I shook my head. These were conversations I would not undertake.

The leader gave his — his was his chosen personal pronoun, or I would have written their — housekeeping rules. Good leader! I rarely give any rules in my meetings. In fact, I tell participants in my prompt-writing there are no rules. Anyway, he said please pick your personal pronouns. I watched the remaining screen names expand to include “(she/her/they/etc.)”. I wasn’t sure what he was asking. Pick my own pronouns? The Paul Simon song, “You Can Call Me Al,” played through my head. I did not change my name.

This was a new experience for me. I assume the participants who had their pronouns already designated were familiar with this exercise. Extrapolations ran through my head. Is this some new practice being adopted in social media? I haven’t seen bracketed pronouns in any of my social media circles: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Zoom. Should I look closer? Is this a trend? If I ever get business cards printed, should I add my pronouns to my name and title? John Hanson, Writer. (Male binary he/him/his) My brief research since then indicates this is more of an academia and workplace practice. I am not involved in either.

The leader scanned his screen, probably saw that I had no personal pronouns designated, then went into a spiel about how to change your name in Zoom. And he/him looked right at me on the screen! I bet he/him thought I was the socially ignorant white senior male just getting his feet wet in social media — we will ignore the fact that I began using email around 1987, was a BBS junkie in the early nineties before finally getting on the internet in 1994, and have coded many complex websites and applications in my previous career. I sighed deeply and appended “(hey you!)” to my name. No, I don’t give a shit what you call me. I am the white, senior-citizen mansplainer stuck in his tropes. I have a dozen participants to refer to, to pick pronouns for, but I have trouble finding words to say about subject matter at the best of times. I have no time in a discussion to scan all the names to be politically correct. “I think the volta is this line, and I think… just a sec… her… no, she was wrong.” I have come to use “they” when referring to anyone: they/them/theirs. If they/them/their bothers you, I can’t wait to read your blog.

During the two hours and fifteen minutes, only one reference was made to another participant by a participant, and they used the person’s name. The leader referred to several of us but always used our names or the pronoun you. “What did you think of that?”

Nobody said, “Hey you!” to me.

NaNoWriMo 2016

Tags

authoritarian, Québec City, rammstein, summer, topfree, white male, white privilege

This year’s story is inspired by an image a young female friend posted on her Facebook this summer of a young female acquaintance of hers who attended a Rammstein concert in Québec City topfree. Not completely. She wore electrical tape pasties. I don’t know how old she is, but a mutual friend (male) is 20.

A few things struck me. First, she had to convince security she was legal. Her post has since been deleted (a shame she probably incurred abuse) but I believe she confronted them rather sternly. Yeah! Second, I was there. I didn’t see her, and I didn’t attend the concert; but I was exactly where she had her confrontation outside the gates.

Rammstein fans lingering around the fountain in front of the Québec Parliament building

 

My wife and I were visiting the city that very same evening . We were on our way to Toronto and I wanted to see the Parliament (my 2011 novel has a scene at the fountain). The property was all dug up and many of the statues removed, but we walked the grounds amid the crowd of heavy metal fans. The Plains of Abraham across the road were packed, and thousands more were walking up the hill to try to squeeze in.

 

 

Somewhere out here a young Saint John woman is going topfree and having a blast

Third, I’d like to consider myself a fighter of equal rights for everybody. A woman, any woman, should be able to pull off her top and enjoy the weather just as any man can. Why they cannot speaks to the growth we have not yet attained as a  human race. It’s one thing for a young Canadian girl to do this in a large crowd in Québec City, arguably the most progressive North American city. It’s quite another to do it in America’s Jesusland where she might be severely ridiculed or jailed or in a Muslim country where she might be killed. Fourth, she was young. My research suggests most women who go topfree are a bit older. Not much but they are more mature, are wiser, maybe have worked up their courage over time. I don’t really know. I am a 55 year old white male with almost no credibility to write such a story.

My story is about a young 17 year old school student who goes top free. I am writing it in three parts: the father, the girl, and the mother. The same story from three points of view. I should be able to write the father okay, except he is totally not me and I am struggling with his words and actions. I consider myself open-minded, socially liberal (fiscally conservative), agnostic, and … meh when it comes to such things as nudity. You want to run around town buck naked? That’s how we used to do it before we left Africa. Go for it. As long as you keep your pecker to yourself. Listening and fighting with right-winged fundies has helped me, especially during this election season. I think I can see their binary, authoritarian, idiotic minds, but I really don’t understand them. When I write a man objecting to a woman breastfeeding in a coffee shop,  I feel like I’m writing satire; because I see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Writing the girl scares me. I haven’t started yet. I have had discussions though with both young women and young men. I might be scared, but I am looking forward to writing her. My beta readers will have a field day with me. The tricky part is finding the situation where it can be accepted as natural, and not on a nude beach or behind gates and fences. Out in the open, in public, not in protest.

The mother I have yet to settle on, but so far she’s turning out to be a mess. She capitulated to her desires for freedom by marrying the young, white, privileged rich kid. Her life’s been easy but empty. She’s an alcoholic and … much more. She could be a lot of fun.

I don’t know how this will turn out. The first 5,000 words have me excited, but writing a novel is a long road. If it gets published — two more years at least before submission — you can read it and maybe understand what I am going through. If not, let’s just say I now look at women differently. I think I’ve always been pretty progressive. I treat women with full respect. I admire, appreciate, and am attracted to them as well, and there are battles. I’ve been raised with this religious-dominated view that nudity is desirable but wrong, attractive but repulsive. A bag of mixed messages. I think I have just about sorted myself out.