Sunday, June 23, 2013

On The Possible Practical Utility of Gender-Neutral Pronouns

Last semester, I had my students share their thesis for their final paper with the rest of the class, to get them feedback and alternate viewpoints.  One student was this kinda tomboyish girl with this emo thing going on.  Her argument was that English should adopt gender-neutral pronouns--that is, something that meant "he" or "she" without specifying gender, but is also more personal than "it" or "one."

And indeed, she had precedence--Sweden recently adopted gender-neutral pronouns into their language; and I know that in Chinese, "Ta" means both "he" and "her," such that gendered-pronouns are something most Chinese people struggle with when learning English. Clearly other languages get along just fine without gendered-pronouns.

She said that she picked this topic based off personal experience, because people kept confusing her for a boy.  I very gallantly replied that I had never confused her for a boy.

"No, I am a boy," he said, correcting me, "You misheard--people keep mistaking me for a girl."

This was in front of the entire class, mind you.  I was tempted to just grab my bag and march out door with a, "welp, class dismissed, see ya'll Monday!"

Let's be clear, this wasn't some "It's Pat!" situation where I wasn't sure of the gender, flipped a coin and was wrong, no--I had just assumed from day one that he was a girl, and never gave it a second thought.  He wasn't even a cross-dresser or anything; I said he looked tomboyish, because, well, he was a boy!  Why wouldn't he dress like a boy?  But his voice, body-type, everything, just seemed so girl-like, that though I should've second-guessed my assumptions, I never did!

He was even totally cool about the whole snafu, assuring me that people confuse his gender all the time (not that that made me feel like any less like a jack-ass).  He later told me that once at Queer Prom--you know, among the folks who are supposed to be all about sensitivity towards gender ambiguity--people kept assuming his gender wrong.  In any matter, that incident in class made a clearer case for gender-neutral pronouns than an essay ever could.

Makes a great story, at least.  I love telling it to people who start declaiming loudly how gender-neutral pronouns are totally pointless...right up until I get to the big reveal.  The looks on their faces are priceless.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

On Millennials

I have a memory, from when I was a teen-age camp counselor (products of Centralia School District will remember Camp Cispus), of us High School Juniors being shocked--shocked!--by the filthy language and sexual preciousness of our 12-year-old charges.  "What happened to GI Joe and Barbie, you know, all the more innocent things we loved when we were 6th-graders?!" we said entirely un-ironically and un-selfconciously, "Kids these days!"

I laugh about that memory in part because there was only a 4-5 year difference between us and those 6th-graders; shoot, kids a full decade younger than me are within my "demographic" now. 

But the other reason I chuckle is because it's the uncontrollable impulse of every generation to declare, as un-ironically, immaturely and without a shred of self-awareness as a teen-ager: "Kids these days!"

I bring this impulse up because of the recent and wide-spread assaults on the ill-defined "Millenial Generation;" we are repeatedly informed by Time magazine, mass-market PhDs, hackneyed HuffPost articles, and various and sundry talking-heads, that we are the most "lazy, narcissistic, entitled generation" that ever was.  (They'd know, I guess.) These much-maligned kids are oft described as "socially awkward" and having "poor communication skills," what with their facebooks and the twitters and youtubes and get-off-my-lawns and etc.

These adults lambast "kids these days" as if they were mushrooms that just magically sprung to life out of nowhere, without parents or upbringing, as though no one raised them.  Parents, perhaps that accusing finger should be pointed the other way. The deep irony is that it's Baby Boomers and Gen Xers calling Millenials "narcissistic"--the Pot calling the Kettle indeed!  Maybe you guys should quit bankrupting Social Security before you get all judgey.

In fact, while we're on it, for all the flaws of "Millenials" (and no generation is without 'em), it certainly was not the "Millenials" who exploded the deficit, exploited the third world, got mired in foreign wars, polluted the earth, and crashed the economy.  Adjusted for inflation, minimum wage is lower, college tuition higher, and the general cost of living more outrageous, than anything our spoiled elders ever had to deal with.  It's kinda poor form to wipe out the jobs then get mad at your kids for being unemployed and living at home.  Methinks the Boomers doth protest too much.

I have a vested interest in sticking up for these "Millenials" because 1) being born after 1980, I'm generally lumped into this age-group; and 2) as a college instructor, I am teaching these "Millenials"--and let me tell you, for however much their creeping text-speak in their papers drives me nuts, "lazy" and "entitled" these kids are not.

And I'm not teaching students of privilege, no--I'm currently at a community college, with the working poor, with the masses.  These students are juggling jobs, bills, family responsibilities, and classwork.  On the whole, these kids are stressed, and what's more, they are trying: they are hard-working, social, thoughtful, perceptive, ambitious, articulate, amiable, and, like all human beings everywhere, just doing the best they can given their circumstances.

Now, also like all humans, they're far from perfect; yes, they all waste too much time on facebook; but don't pretend for a sec that if facebook had existed in the '60s, that Baby Boomers wouldn't have been all over that like a weed-smoke on a tie-die.  ("just saw Hendx play natl anthm while trippin madd balls on lds! #groovy #rocknrollwillneverdie #YOLO"  --With Jane Fonda and George Bush in Woodstock, New York).


Yes, yes, I've heard all the anecdotes (never hard statistics) of unemployed Ivy League graduates who turn down some $40K/year job because it doesn't match their entitled sense of expectation, but let's be clear: these are Ivy League graduates you're citing!  Of course rich kids are entitled, narcissistic, and lazy, when have they ever not been?  Will you please quit treating the privileged as representative of the rest of us.

Quite frankly, the Proletariat inside me suspects that this Millenial-bashing is yet another strategy by which the rich and powerful try to deflect attention from their own sins; they project themselves instead onto their youth and by extension all youth, including the impoverished and disenfranchised, as part of their continued project of villainizing the poor so as to justify their oppressions and exploitations.  For shame.

Cause here's the thing: back when I said "Kids these days!", I was a teen-ager, I was immature, but I grew out of it.  I find it distressing that the older generations, the ones who should know better, the ones who actually run the place, still have not.

It's not the rising generation that I fear.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

On Mom's Piano

She would've been 60 today--or she is 60, depending on your attitude towards the afterlife--or she is outside all age and time now, depending on your thinking towards pre-mortality and eternity.

In any case, she would've been closer to the age when it no longer feels too soon, when it wouldn't have felt quite so strange to be taken from us.

She's been on my mind on this birthday more than others, because I no longer have her piano.  Oh, it's still technically mine, make no mistake, but it is no longer in my possession.  I'm moving out east this Fall to start a PhD you see; and rather than burden myself with the expense of carrying it across multiple states, I've left it in trust of family--specifically a 2nd cousin in Orem--with a vague promise to retrieve it one day at some unspecified and distant date, like some sort of lesser samaritan.

I'm trying to embrace my inner-Thoreau a little, by shedding most the worldly possessions that already encumber me, to start out fresh in some new wilderness.  My goal is to only travel with--and be content with--whatever can fit in the back of an ol' 4-door sedan.  It generally feels good to make myself less materialistic...but Mom's piano complicates that feeling.  The piano is Mom's, you understand?  Putting aside the fact that I'll never get another free piano again, that particular piano belonged to my dead-and-buried Mother, and there is more than just sentimental value there.

It's the piano where I first learned to play piano; it's where she played piano; we occupy the same place in space but not in time (if there even is such a thing as time) when I play it.  To sell off or even just give away this piano would feel not just callous, not just disrespectful or even disloyal, but sacrilegious.  This thudding, heavy, full-half-step-flat-out-of-tune instrument is in all senses my most direct connection back to her.

But here now comes the paradox, the unresolved tension, my complex relationship with Mom's piano, because it is also Exhibit A in my life of how the things you own begin to own you.  To review: Dad sent it down to me 4 years ago without asking me for permission, after his then-recent remarriage saddled him with 2 pianos.  I begrudgingly accepted it, though soon grew to appreciate--nay, love--that I could now practice whenever I wanted.  In fact, I now had the resources to learn new songs, which I did, it was marvelous!

Then I graduated.  A fellow grad student, knowing I'm from Washington, asked me casually if there was anything to keep me in Utah now that I'd completed my MA.  For a brief, wild, flashing moment, my eyes opened wide, as I considered that hey, yeah!  I could give away my sparse furniture to DI, load up the back of my car and drive off into the great unknown, like I used to in college!  I could move to California, or Portland, or maybe New York--maybe I should teach English in China again!--or maybe Mexico this time?--or maybe work in Europe or Australia or anywhere, everywhere--

But then my musings stopped suddenly, as I remembered, no, wait, I can't move anywhere!  I own a PIANO!  And not just any piano, MOM'S piano!  I must take that heavy beast into all future considerations.  And I stayed put in Utah.

Oh, I still got some traveling done--but each time I travel abroad, I'm reminded again and again of how few worldly possessions a man really needs--in fact, I realize how much more free a man is when he's free of things.

So, I guess that's the real question: do I want to be free of my Mom?  Could I even be free of Mom?  What does that even mean?  Would leaving behind the piano even free me?  Surely she will always be with me if you believe that sort of thing (and I do) no matter what happens to that piano; but music was so central to both her identity and mine that it becomes difficult to disassociate her from the piano.

Is the piano holding me back?  But here is another deeply distressing paradox: that piano also moves me forward!  I learn new songs on it, I develop my talents, I give full expression to the passions and madness of my soul, I enter the spaces beyond words and commune with the infinite on that decidedly-finite piano.  What weighs me down also lifts me up.  My bondage is my freedom.  My fall is my exhalation.  My roots are my branches.  What keeps me grounded (and trapped?) also liberates and opens me.  Can you tell I'm still conflicted?

Of course, all this agonizing is strictly academic, the question of the piano is a fait accompli--it's in Orem now, with family.  But the paradox has only deepened, because the piano is now mine but isn't, I'm free of it but am not.

These anti-pack-rat tendencies come from my Dad I think; that trait is something of his that weighs down in me--and that quite literally, because his anti-hoarding is what sent that piano down to me in the first place.  But lately I've been wondering if we've worked so hard to not be hoarders, to push back against materialist attachment, that perhaps we've overcompensated in the other direction.  For here is another paradox I believe in but have yet to resolve: we are to seek not after the things of this world, for behold, ye cannot carry it with you; nevertheless the meek shall inherit not some ethereal plain of pure abstraction, no--the meek shall inherit the Earth.

We are to be free of this world.  We are also to possess it.  We are to lose all but we are also to gain all we've lost back.  I think I am to have the same relationship with Mom's Piano.

Monday, June 3, 2013

A Confederacy of Dunces and the American Escape

After many recommendations, I finally read A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole's comedic novel of New Orleans in the early '60s.  The book features a colorful cast of characters who are all defective, but in different and complementary ways.  At the center of the ensemble is Ignatius Reilly, an obese, over-educated, self-interested, unsympathetic pseudo-intellectual still living with his mother at 30; Ignatius is so obnoxious, so over-bearing, so pathetic and unjustifiably arrogant, that...well, he can't help but feel familiar, can he!

Just me reading off his characteristics, you were able to think of several Ignatiuses (Ignatii?) you know personally, didn't you. He's like an internet troll on a Reddit board, brought to life.  He's so off-putting that he's strangely fascinating; there's a sort of train-wreck allure to both him, and the manifold ways he keeps shooting himself in the foot.

But give Toole credit--A Confederacy of Dunces could have very easily been a deeply cruel novel, wherein a thoroughly unlikeable person is beaten down again and again.  However, Toole, while making no bones about Ignatius's obnoxiousness, still seems to have a genuine affection for him, as well as for near every one else in this book.  There's no attempt at sugar-coating Ignatius here, but nor is there any sadistic glee, either.  In fact, without spoiling anything, by novel's end, Ignatius's misadventures indirectly result in improved circumstances for most of the novel's characters.

In the end, Toole seems to imply that Ignatius, whatever else may be his utter lack of all other redeeming qualities, is still human--and that is the only redeeming quality he really needs.  That goes for every one else, too.  We all deserve each others' compassion and respect, not because of our talents or connections or even our goodness, but simply because we are all fellow human beings. 

Now I want to put some more pressure upon the ending of A Confederacy of Dunces: again, while trying not to spoil anything, Ignatius finally leaves New Orleans in the finale, hitching a ride to New York from the one person he has yet to alienate.  This is a big step for Ignatius, for he has constantly bored folks throughout the novel by describing his one bus-trip to Baton Rouge (his only venture ever outside New Orleans) as some sort of horrific heart-of-darkness traumatizing experience, which he pathetically uses to justify not leaving his pitiful comfort zone.

Nevertheless, one could still be cynical about this ending, for Ignatius has not really changed or grown as a character throughout the novel. This friend rescuing him is a former college love-interest from New York, one who will doubtless grow to be as infuriated with Ignatius as literally everyone else justifiably has.  One could read the novel's ending with a tone of dread: the madcap antics Ignatius has wrecked upon New Orleans will now only be shifted to New York.  Ignatius hasn't changed, only his location.

Except...it's actually impossible to read the ending to A Confederacy of Dunces that cynically, because it's an American novel!  Americans are incurably optimistic (just compare the UK version of The Office to the US one), but more than our optimism is our deep-rooted need to escape!  

This novel has caused me to realize that the great escape, the movement away, the push outward and forward, is central to making a novel distinctly American.  No, Ignatius hasn't really changed, not yet anyways...but at least he's moving!  Admit it, your American heart lifts within you whenever you read of the main character getting away.  It's hard-wired into your American soul.

Consider all the other great escapes of American lit: Yossarian escaping the Catch-22; Jack Kerouac On The Road; Hemmingway making his Farewell to Arms; Huck Finn heading down the Mississippi; Frederick Douglass escaping to freedom quite literally; Ishmael boarding the Pequod; McMurphey escaping the asylum in One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest; Andy in The Shawshank Redemption; the Okies heading for California in The Grapes of Wrath.  Even when the escape is disillusioning, or is ambiguous, or even straight up fails (maybe even especially when it fails), the great focus on near all American literature is still on the celebratory escape.

Maybe, more so even than all the racist rhetoric associated with Manifest Destiny and so forth, the real reason Americans kept expanding out relentlessly outward and westward, is because we just wanted to friggin' get out.  Compared to our Old World ancestors who often stayed rooted in the same village for generations, we Americans are renowned for our relentless mobility; because the quickest way to start changing yourself is to change locations.

Yes, yes, we all know that the only zen you find at the top of a mountain top is the zen you bring there, and the grass only appears greener on the other side, and you should be content with what you have...except you really shouldn't.  No American actually believes that.  When someone we know is stuck in a bad situation, our advice is never to just "deal" with it and accept your lot in life, no--we tell them to get outta there! 

Maybe when you move you'll be the same person there as you are here...but then again, maybe you won't!  Changes in locations and situations have a curious way of shaking people awake.  This is a doctrine we believe in here in America: it's never too late to start over, it's never too late to get out.  And we rejoice, we cheer, we applaud, we high-five and hug, when someone who has stayed in one place for too long finally moves!  The movement, more so than the moral, is always what's most important to us.