In which I have Feelings about community

[kaberett]

Experience does not correlate linearly with age. The chronologically oldest members of a community do not have the right to dictate its terms or modes of engagement; in so doing they alienate and exclude and erase.

I have not lived through the same events as the chronologically oldest members of my communities. But this, too, is true: they do not axiomatically or automatically understand my experiences any more than I do theirs.

Community-building is by necessity collaborative and constructive. Hierarchies for streamlining decisions are not required to uphold inequalities and power gradients.

I am rendered brittle by this tension, this assumed inequality, and then I remember: that I can help people decades older than me. That people younger than me gift me insights that rearrange my world around me and leave it better. That the people I am best able to ask for help are those who ask me.

When I say that I think the most important thing I do is know who to ask, I am fairly sure that what I mean isn't just about knowledge and respect for expertise: it's about reciprocating trust and kindnesses, and about bringing as many people as possible into this economy of gifts-freely-given that constitutes the ground on which I build.

Comments

[kaberett]

(This isn't about LonCon! It's actually a thing I've been mulling over for Quite A While, most directly applicable to the local trans community, but - ~feels~.)

WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[kaberett]

And of course the reason I'm so terrified of doing anything that I think looks anything like pressure or undue influence or coercion - to the extent that lots of you have told me that I'm way the hell too prone to undervaluing my own needs in negotiations - is that I know the rules, I know the tricks, and when it comes down to it there are very few power struggles I can't win (and I say this from a position of routinely winning against white dudes of similar class & educational background). The way I have made this safe is that I never want to have that fight, or anything that looks even vaguely like it; consequently people who require me to prove my worth before they're willing to interact with me as an equal automatically get filed in the box marked "do not trust".

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[kaberett]

Corollary! This kind of power game is actually something I love doing in safe, negotiated and consensual settings. Cheerful friendly bullshit about science? YES PLEASE. Cheerful tongue-in-cheek bullshit about The Wrong Linguistic Prescriptivism? Sign me up!

It's a test of strength just as much as physical sparring is. Done in safety & voluntarily, instead of out of necessity, it teaches me about myself & about my capabilities & limits, & it's just fun. It pushes me to be better and think faster, and it lets me play with getting things wrong with a safety net in place.

If I have to use this skill set to defend myself, something is already very, very wrong.

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[cosmolinguist]

Yes! I like it when it's fun, not when it's a defense mechanism.

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[kaberett]

♥

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[khronos_keeper]

Dude I have been wondering about the Linguisitic Prescriptivism for a long-ass time, so hopefully if I ever mention my musings about my home dialect, it will be something you can join in on rather than feel intimidated by.

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[kaberett]

Hah yes please!

(The Wrong Linguistic Prescriptivism: I wrote a draft blog post about a topic. It was decidedly informal. I sent it round the people who needed to okay it and one person decided that it was appropriate to be a linguistic prescriptivist at me about my use of commas, or some shit. Except HE WAS DEFAULTING TO US NOT UK PRESCRIPTIVISM AND THERE IS A VERY CLEAR DIVISION BETWEEN THE TWO FOR THE ISSUE IN QUESTION ALSO I WAS WRITING IN THE UK FOR A UK AUDIENCE.)

(... the most recent, less explodey, instance of The Wrong Prescriptivism involved P asking me to be a second opinion on a job-application-email he was writing; we disagreed cheerfully & volubly about the best way to express a thing, which involved a lot of me going "I appreciate that you take a different stylistic approach in this particular instance but that is because you are wrong." Facetiously grumpy bullshitting while curled up in bed with people is my FAVOURITE.)

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[redsixwing]

Hooray for this sort of mental and verbal sparring, iff it is actually -sparring- and not testing.

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[kaberett]

-- or at least testing-of-self rather than testing-of-other?

Re: WAIT I HAVE MORE THINGS TO SAY

[redsixwing]

Yes, yes indeed.

[fyreharper]

<333

[kaberett]

♥

[redbird]

Connected to which, experience also doesn't always accrue in the same order, because real life isn't a standardized curriculum. I could have several bits of relevant experience that someone else doesn't, while lacking one or more bits in the same field that they do have. And that's an easy one for people to miss, even if they recognize that chronological age doesn't always correlate with years of experience in an activity, experience, or place.

[kaberett]

Yep, precisely.

[silveradept]

I wish to take this insight and hammer it into all the brains of all the people around in my workplace, including me, so that perhaps the necessary work of reinventing ourselves to meet needs can be done without the tooth-pulling bureaucratic measures.

[kaberett]

<3

[hairyears]

The gift economy of information and experience...

There's quite a lot in that. Are there any more panels with Kim Stanley Robinson?

[kaberett]

I seriously appreciate your insight into How People Even Things, so thank you lots for saying.

Not sure if more panels w/ KSR - may get my act together to check tomorrow!

[pretty_panther]

♥

[fyreharper]

Musings on community seems an appropriate place to note - and for me to have again noticed - that you have quite a lovely commentsphere around here :) Community, aye.

[kaberett]

<3! Thank you for being part of it :-)