some thoughts on "community"

[quietann]

Recently someone made a backhanded sort of criticism of "my community" in their LJ. It really got my hackles up. At first I was surprised, but then of course the comment was posted right after my wedding, when the best of the community was present in full force. (As in, within 10 minutes moving an entire wedding ceremony from outdoors into a barn, in the pouring rain, with good graciousness and outstanding organization...)

I guess sometimes I'm very sensitive to social criticism of the _entire group_, as if we are all some sort of mutant freaks... or rather, the same sort of mutant freak (e.g. socially inept). Most of us grew up getting ostracized and seem to go out of our way to avoid doing so to others. And this person's comment came across as "I'm better than all of you." -- which begs the question, why associate with us then?

This doesn't mean that "if I were Queen" I wouldn't kick a couple of people out. But only a couple, and not likely exactly the couple any other individual within the group would kick out if they could. It doesn't mean I don't gossip, or that there aren't any people whose actions make me twitch. But the group, as a whole, is fine the way it is.

I will tell you two outsiders' views -- my dad's and his partner's, after meeting many of the group members before and during the wedding. They were impressed with the sheer concentration of smart and interesting people this group has. And my dad's partner was heartened to see that overweight women were welcome, and just as likely to be partnered as skinny women. As she put it, "this is not a place where people are valued based on superficial characteristics."

My feelings on overweight women in the community? That's another issue, for my next post, though

Comments

[ceo]

The best comment about our crowd Gosling and I got from our families after our wedding was from her father, who described us in a letter to some other relative as "Bohemian yuppies". My family hasn't said word one to us about it, which makes me think they didn't quite deal. :-(

I think I saw the comment you're referring to, but I can't find it now. I once had a friend who came to some events and thought we were rather rude and unfriendly. This friend was not at all a good match for our crowd (or for me, for that matter); what she saw as rudeness was, in retrospect, part of our somewhat-different-from-the-mainstream social pattern, which includes a dislike for small talk and a complete lack of the sort of "you should understand what I mean" indirectness that I found so irritating in some of the relationships I'd been in before joining his crowd.

Compared to mainstream society, we are mutant freaks. And I like it that way. :-) I personally think our social clue as a whole is better, not worse, than the mainstream.

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

I commented on my frustration with the rumor mill and judgments lately, but truly didn't mean to blast the community in specific. I think those things are problems in every group situation. Our community is made up of a lot of wonderful people. I think that painful situations occur but it still seems like people do the best they can if they land in one ... anyway, if it was my post, sorry to have upset you. I was having a day where I was tired of finding out that people had the wrong impression or had misinformation regarding my opinions or statements

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Well, hell, /I/ made a criticism of both the community /and/ me, all at the same time, just recently. Not so backhanded, either.

'Course, it pretty much had nothing to do with what you were focusing on, so anyway...

I value, intensely, the freedom, the acceptance, and the amazing intellectual curiousity folks bring to freakin' everything they do, around here. (And certainly, there's rarely such a thing as a monolithic anything, with this bunch.)

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't find the experience somewhat overwhelming sometimes. Overwhelming in the best possible way, but nonetheless overwhelming. (Which is part of why I am Peripheral Lass, in addition to my stupid work schedule.)

Anyway, to get back to the point, there /is/ a sort of generally accepted way to be, with this bunch (for whatever definition of "this bunch" you choose to use) and not to recognize that is putting blinders on unncessarily. It's a very /different/ kind of generally accepted way to be than mainstream society's, and there's a hell of a lot more leeway, but... it exists.

But... moments like your wedding Just Don't Happen, in other places. And I'll take those wonderful moments over whatever flaws there are, any day.

(Chip is, as usual, more succinct than I am.)

[gingicat]

I really enjoyed meeting your dad and his partner, and the other older lady who was sitting next to Wolf at the pre-wedding dinner. And it made me realize how glad I was to have met your mom at that Shabbat dinner you brought her to when I lived in Brighton.

On the rest of the post, I ditto Ceo and Juliansinger.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

The other older lady was Martha. I've known her since I was 4, when her son and I were both in parent-participation preschool and my mom started giving her and Jeremy rides there. She didn't drive at the time, having grown up in Brooklyn. After she got divorced, my mom taught her to drive. She eventually became my mom's very best friend, and also worked as a lab assistant for my dad for many years (he's a biologist).

I asked her to "stand in" for my mom at the wedding. I wanted someone as close to my mom as possible to walk with me to the huppah. (She also, at one point, half-jokingly asked my mom if she could trade one of her three sons for me... this was when I was a teenager. My mom didn't really believe her -- I was a real brat at the time -- but Martha always wanted a daughter.

[gingicat]

Ah, and Jeremy was the person sitting between me and your brother at dinner? Now I know how he fits. :)

My parents have "adopted family" like that too. I feel that our honorary family has definitely enriched my life, and made it easier for me to adopt people myself.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Um, actually, no. Jeremy is happy in Minnesota with his wife and kid (soon to be kids).

So... who did you sit next to? Tom Berry perhaps??? He was the person who had to be picked up at the hotel...

[clauclauclaudia]

It was indeed Tom Berry.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly sure what "my community" means to you, but I've found that there's a lot of people in the bi/poly/goth/geek/whatever overlapping scenes that have certain annoying features like "geek answer syndrome", or a lack of when to stop a conversation. One of the reasons I didn't attend your wedding was that I was WAY sleep-deprived, and while I really like you and Ben and wanted to share in your special day, I also know that, as the center of it all, you 2 would be busy, and more likely I would have spent the time dodging conversations about computers, computer security, etc.

And the worst thing about it would have been me going to your wedding and not enjoying myself. mycroft and I have decided that we want you and Ben over for dinner one night, to make up for it, but I digress.

Paraphrasing from another friend of mine, a lot of people in the community seem to only want to talk about bi/poly/goth/geek stuff. Those are the people that are the core of the community, in that they are at most events. Keep in mind that I'm slightly disgruntled because OPN is at my place. Anyway, there are a lot of interesting people, too, but I get the feeling they come to events less often because they have the same complaint I do. To quote the same friend: " Despite intelligence and such an obvious breadth of interest, they seem very two-dimensional. That's one of the things that really frustrates me about these people."

Sometimes I want to talk about the war in Afghanistan. Sometimes I want to talk about running. Sometimes I want to talk about my family. And sometimes I even want to talk about computers, but not as often as it comes up in conversation.

The very reason I hang out with them, if I don't like them? Well, I like the crowd in small doses, so I hang out with them in small doses. I explain, justify, whatever, the reasons I sometimes don't go to the larger doses, even though these events may be more special (although if I weren't sleep depp'd I would have gone, I even had a ride with mangosteen all set up and what I was going to wear was lain out on my bed).

One of the problems I see in the community that really bothers me is that people try to show off how good they are at geekery. I think that's an aspect of the "we were all socially ostracized in high school" generalization, but it really bothers me that even in this crowd, there's nasty gossip and cliques and whatnot.

To be fair, every community has its good things and its bad things. I have a love-hate relationship with the community, and recently it's been more hate -- probably mostly because I've stopped enjoying Wednesday nights, and when you aren't enjoying the community and then have to clean up after them on Thursday morning, you tend to focus on the negative. (I left suspects for a while between when I was 20 and 22, mostly because the crowd, mostly mid-to-late 20's at that point, was always giving me unsolicited advice and I hated it. I haven't felt the need to leave it now, and I think things will get better when I move).

[quietann.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes I want to talk about the war in Afghanistan. Sometimes I want to talk about running. Sometimes I want to talk about my family. And sometimes I even want to talk about computers, but not as often as it comes up in conversation."

You know, this strikes me as odd. I've found that at OPN, some of the best non-typical conversations occur. Recently, we've talked about the Catholic church, families (especially nuttiness within families), weddings, movies (not just "Star Wars" and "Spiderman"), bicycling, the many many books people read and the hobbies they have...

God knows that if a similar event was held amongst my classmates at HSPH, the range of conversation would be much, much narrower. They're nice, smart people, but for the most part bland as white bread.

For me, the geekery conversations are background noise. Of course, I'm in no way, shape, or form a computer geek, so I don't get drawn into these conversations; no one's inclined to try to impress _me_ with their latest geek toy or their latest hack. Avoiding the computer room at OPN cuts way, way down on the techno-geekery.

I can see why having the event at your place is annoying, but you _knew_ that it was going to be occuring there before you moved in. And I do think the solution of a "rotating" OPN site is a good one

[awfief.livejournal.com]

about the whole holier-than-thou attitude stuff: I don't know if I'm the one you're specifically complaining about, but I do notice that people's livejournals, including my own, contain a lot of justifications, explanations, rationalizations. We all want to think we're the best, and so our journals reflect that. (at least mine does, to some significant degree).

How's that for the most hypocritical rationalization? Can I rationalize rationlization any more? :)