Levels of Closeness

I was talking to a man close to me the other day, and he said something that made me... well, very angry. Angry enough to shut down the conversation and walk away.

He was asking why we didn't talk more, and in a way, he was right to ask. He is, after all, very close to me - though the specifics are not all that important. We've argued in the past, and I withdrew somewhat because I tire of arguments where no consensus can be reached. We all choose the boundaries to our lives, and no one has a right to breach them arbitrarily - not even the people we love.

Things change, of course. I've already noticed that I'm introverted, in many ways, and like I said before, I'm not really all that comfortable with the language of social interaction. I don't know when I give offence, or if I should call someone to see how they are, or if this particular thing is appropriate or not. My better half had to remind me that we needed to buy a wedding present for a couple we know, which I can safely say would not have occurred to me in a hundred years.

So. I thought, perhaps, I could make an effort. Reach out a little. I sent him a link to this article, because we had been talking about feminist issues before. I want this person who is close to me to see the things I'm passionate about, and understand a bit of how I see the world.

If you don't want to click through, it's about Schroedinger's Rapist; the concept that women cannot know in advance whether the man that tries to talk to them or get close to them in a public setting actually means them any harm or not until something actually happens, at which point it's a bit late to do anything about it. So the natural reaction is to view unknown men with caution above all else, even when the man in question is a nice guy who only wants to say hello.

Men might get insulted about being viewed this way, but quite frankly, the statistics are not on their side. The reporting and conviction rate for rape is pitifully low, and in Ireland the victims of rape can expect to be victimised all over again by the friends and family of the man (it is overwhelmingly men who rape, of course). No one has the right to be insulted by the actions that women choose to take to protect themselves from that.

This gesture, however, wasn't enough. I sent the article, and I did hope a little bit that this could open up a new dialogue, with a new understanding of my worldview. Odd as it may seem, the article describes my old habits very accurately; that strange way of being hyper-aware of everyone around me, and the fear of doing or saying something wrong in response to their actions, that I still fall back on every now and then. Never in a hostile way, you understand - I didn't view other people as a threat - but I did view them as not-like-me, and getting over that and learning how to be comfortable around strangers still takes something of an effort of will for me.

To this, he replied that he didn't want to know. He didn't like being reminded of how rotten the world is, and he thought my effort was pretty poor as a gesture of closeness.

So, I failed in a social interaction. Nothing new there, even if I'm still trying to calculate the interpersonal arithmetic and inevitable fallout. But... he didn't want to know that bad things happen? I don't have words to describe how angry this makes me. How contemptibly arrogant, how utterly heartless! It's so easy, isn't it, to say that when the things that are happening will probably never happen to you!

I'm not sure how to parse this. Should I remain angry? Should I reach out again, but with what? I don't have many levels of closeness to offer; there is the one who shares my bed at night, and there is everyone else in the world, and those are the only two I know with absolute certainty. I'm still working out how to subdivide everyone else, and I know I don't always get it right.

I can't see how this will play out. All I know is I don't want to lose another friendship because of another social mistake, but if I do... is it his fault, or is it mine?

I read blogs

Many, many blogs. Blogs with interesting articles. Articles that point to other interesting articles, and videos, and photos, and tweets, and comics, and all kinds of stuff. This is how I get the news.

It's actually pretty efficient.

Today I was pointed at an article that made me wonder what, in fact, the staff of dating.uk.msn.com are smoking, and how I can get some at the earliest opportunity. I frequently maintain that men and women are not from different planets (shock and indeed horror!) and therefore should not be such a mystery to each other, and really, if we all just sat down and talked a bit more, I'm sure we could work out our differences and come to a equal and satisfying compromise. But, dear reader, the article above might as well be called, "Women: The Alien Spotter's Definitive Guide", and should you venture to read it, I would postulate that you will be either baffled (if you are a male with female acquaintances) or insulted (if you are an actual real-life female with a working brain, and not a figment of someone's overactive imagination).

The article is a list of 53 things that women apparently don't want men to know. The whole list... good grief, I'm trying to find just one thing that I can get behind, and really, I'm failing. I mean, some of the things I'm reading there would make me seriously question the sanity of anyone who agreed with them! Here are some of the highlights:

• "We’d happily sleep with your best mate to make you jealous."
• "If you don’t text or call within 24 hours we’ll feel so unhappy that no amount of chocolate and wine can cheer us up. Though we’ll give it a try."
• "Here’s how to make us fall for you. One day, come on to us so strong that we’re a bit weirded out by it. Then totally fail to ring us. We’ll wonder what we did wrong, and we won’t be able to stop thinking about you."
• "We want you to text us from your journey home to say how you can’t stop smiling."

Let's recap: the person or persons speaking here will prostitute themselves to get attention, will drink themselves into oblivion when they don't get that attention, can be casually manipulated because they crave attention, and are also control freaks about how that attention can be paid to them.

This does not describe your average everyday woman. This describes someone with enough mental health problems to keep a therapist in business for years! And the article seems to be somewhat semi-serious, if the opening paragraphs are anything to go by, which means that the possibility exists that some gullible menfolk will wander by and actually think that this is what women are really like.

The mind, it boggles.

I have a suggestion for men who are interested in meeting, dating, falling in love and living happily ever after with a woman. Now, I realise this is a bit radical, so brace yourselves: talk to her. Treat her like another human being, with her own preferences and opinions and habits. Respect her, and get the hell out if she doesn't respect you in return.

But most of all, and I say this for the sake of normal women everywhere, ignore dumbass lists like the one above.

"I have a dream"

I was thinking recently on the books that really influenced me when I was younger. I generally don't count the books I enjoyed among them; we may all have liked the Famous Five, for example, but those kinds of books were throwaway for me, to be read and liked and then forgotten. The books that get into your head and under you skin generally have a little more depth.

First, some background: I was fifteen before I saw a black person in real life, as opposed to on television or on a movie screen. I was in Boston, on holiday with my family. We had just gotten out of the airport, and I saw a man walking down the street. If I recall right, I pointed it out to my mother - but she only told me off for being silly.

One of the books that I read when I was about thirteen was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. It's a very complicated book. It's about... lots of things, but what I absorbed from it was this is what racism looks like. There's a difference between knowing something exists, and seeing it come alive on the page; it became so much more important because I could never see it for myself. Irish culture was so homogenous that I never learned that someone could be treated differently because of the colour of their skin.

The charm of the book was that it was just people, to me. People in a tough situation, but still loving, taking comfort in each other, finding ways to laugh and survive. Its voice felt honest and real.

The second book I read about racism was To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. If Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry taught me what racism looked like, To Kill a Mockingbird showed me that you could could take a stand against it; that the world was unjust, but it didn't have to stay that way. The only thing I regretted about it was that I could never really hear the voices of the black characters, as it's told entirely from the viewpoint of a young white girl. It's also been slammed for its use of racial slurs, and even threatened with censorship as a result.

(Another thing that I wonder about - being white, apparently I shouldn't use the most well known racial slur at all. Does that mean I can't even mention it in context? Is it always considered derogatory, even when the writer has no cultural background that would define it as so, and thus never use it in conversation - or in reference to an actual person of colour?)

Discussions of race are a minefield in the States. Even the most well-meaning white person can inadvertantly cause offense or say something racist, only to howl that "I didn't mean it that way!" when an African-American calls them on it. I've seen it a few times, and every time I question the offender, why deny it? It's part of your cultural heritage. It will happen, despite your best efforts. Don't deepen the insult with a non-apology ("I'm sorry if I caused offense..."). Accept what you've done. Take responsibility for it. And do better next time.

I know I've probably already done it, but there has been no one here to call me on it. It's only a matter of time, though.

Roll of Thunder and Mockingbird compelled me to look further. I read the full text of Dr. King's famous speech, for example, and I was inspired by it. These days I subscribe to blogs written by black people. I keep up with the news. I want to read their stories and hear their voices, and be influenced by them and find the threads that I can weave into my own.

Books can do that, you see. They get into your head and under your skin, and they can change the world.

A question of disbelief

So, I met with a few other writer friends today, and we got talking about characters in situations with which we, personally, might not be familiar. For example, I know nothing about New York. Hence, I know nothing about what life is like there, nor what trains run in the subway, what slang people use, what neighbourhoods are there. I might want to set a story in New York, but I doubt I could do so and make it believeable to New Yorkers.

Tiny, tiny things make up the cultural narrative in any distinct area, and what may sound fine to a outsider would be jarring to a native. One of my friends - let's call her Duri - is writing a story set in Ireland. She's English, however, and although we speak the same language, it's not quite equivalent. We use different phrases or wordings; she says, 'I feel ill', but I say, 'I feel sick'. I notice immediately when the things her characters say don't sound properly 'Irish'. If I ever set a story in England, I've no doubt she could point out exactly where my characters say things that are not properly 'English' - and that's before I delve into the regional dialects that are far more pronounced than the various Irish accents.

I've no doubt that people can indeed write stories that are set outside the settings familiar with them, but it certainly adds an extra level of difficulty to the job. The ideal situation is, of course, having a native of the culture present who can proof read and point out corrections; the next best thing is actual experience of the culture, then after that, extensive research and analysis.

I've noticed some writers have a real talent for it. Another friend - let's call him Shanks - wrote a suberb WWII-alternate-history short story a while back, and both Duri and I had a chance to read it. I'm reasonably sure Shanks has very little first-hand experience of modern England, but his particular forte is characterisation and dialogue, and the story (set in the wartime English countryside) felt very, very authentic to me. Duri agreed that it felt authentic to her as well.

Part of the reason I prefer fantasy or sci-fi settings is because there is generally no question of disbelief. I am in complete control of the cultural narrative, and the reader must accept what my characters say. The only question is maintaining consistency, so that characters from the same cultural background speak and act in similar ways.

Developing a new culture is probably one of the more enjoyable aspects of writing fantasy or sci-fi. While there is still a question of believeability, you are more free to chop and change elements from the modern world and other settings - for example, the Klingon culture from Star Trek uses elements from the Spartans of ancient Greece, but the writers were certainly not limited to that and made changes to adapt those elements to a sci-fi setting.

Anyway, where am I going with this... Cultural settings are very important to a story. Writing in a compelling setting is a huge part of fantasy and sci-fi. It's just a matter of being authentic; making the setting believeable, either in reference to the real world, or through internal consistency.

I've found that reading roleplaying books with information on world-building is very useful when I'm developing a setting. It gets you into the mindset of thinking about how and why the culture works like it does.