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Naming and Name-Calling
May. 18th, 2011 07:52 pmI am, if you haven't worked this out yet yourself, a definitive Nerd. And by "definitive," I mean if you read the Wikipedia definition of "Nerd," which I was recently directed to, IT DESCRIBES ME. I like being a Nerd, and, by extension, a Geek ("Nerd" is of course a subset of "Geek." And yes, I am aware that only a Nerd would construct a sentence like that to begin with), aside from the social awkwardness. There's so much weird stuff to be fascinated by in the world, you HAVE to love learning about it, and I enjoy my own uniqueness. Once I went to college and found myself in a whole dorm full of the most delicious variety of geeks (uh, "A Community of Scholars," I mean), and now that the Internet connects geeks around the world to each other, I REVEL in this culture. I call myself a Nerd and a Geek with the utmost pride.
But I didn't always. I spent my childhood and even early teen years in flat-out denial of my Nerditude. Not that I HID my Nerdish Tendencies or anything-- I was, clearly, a total nerd from a very young age. But I wouldn't accept the LABEL. Nerds were dorky boys who loved computers and dressed like shrunken businessmen who had nonetheless outgrown their clothes. They didn't like the arts and didn't miss the romantic attachments they would never ever have, they didn't have rich family lives and varied interests and senses of humor. I on the other hand didn't necessarily like school-- at least, I certainly didn't like every CLASS, and I was TERRIBLE at actually getting homework done, and I wasn't into computers at all, and I loved the arts something FIERCE, and not NERDY arts either, I mean I loved ROCK MUSIC for pete's sake, and I wanted to be a Broadway star for awhile, and maybe I wasn't a COOL dresser but even I could see Steve Urkel was doing it wrong. So I couldn't be a NERD, right? RIGHT?!
But what I was really trying to say, by denying my Nerdy self, was that I wasn't a STEREOTYPE. I wanted to be seen as more than a label-- a true individual: someone as likely to blast Zeppelin as read a book (okay, I'm likely to do both AT THE SAME TIME-- hence the username); someone who may not follow fashion but still loves to flounce around in a new hippie skirt; someone who actually IS interested in guys even if I'm more likely to crush on the likes of Bill Nye or Michael Palin rather than Brad Pitt or, heck, I don't even know what kind of guys you normal people are going for nowadays; someone with friends and family and stories and passions and opinions and emotions all my own! It wasn't that I didn't want to be considered a Nerd-- it was that I didn't want to be considered JUST a Nerd.
You know how, in bad cartoons and children's media with "messages" and horror films and whatnot, they always have a merry band of those stock character types? The kids are all friends, but you have the Everyman Leader kid, the Loyal Best Friend who is probably your token black kid, the Girl, whose primary character trait is that she is a Girl, the Dumb Fat Slob who eats a lot and is comic relief, and The Nerd? And on the off-chance your Nerd character happens to be a girl, because your writers were attempting to be Progressive a bit, that character still doesn't have any particularly girly qualities because that would totally take away from the Girliness of the Girl character, and basically, the Girl-Nerd is exactly like the basic Boy-Nerd? Who is the total stereotype, by the way, is what I'm saying. (Now, I could also go off on a rant here about the portrayal of Girl-Nerds across the broader scope of media, too, particularly WHY do Nerd-Girls ALWAYS have to endure the requisite MAKEOVER! before anyone will love them for who they are? Why are they always MADEOVER! into somebody else's idea of what is an acceptable image? HOW are people truly loving them for who they are THAT way? Why can't the Nerd-Girl STAY a Nerd-Girl and still get some love? WHY, I ASK YOU. But, this is in fact a tangent, because it gets me off the actual point I'm trying to get to, so revert your brains back to the concept of the Merry Band of Stock Types).
My point is, PEOPLE are not Stock Types. But chances are we've all experienced some sort of prejudice based on others' insistence that people CAN be reduced to Stock Types. Some kinds of prejudice get fancy words like RACISM or SEXISM that come with an Air of Social Importance, but it all comes down to PEOPLE ARE NOT STOCK TYPES. People have labels, and often those labels tell us things about them. But as soon as we reduce a person to JUST their label, that's when we start on the slippery slope to INVALIDATION.
I was thinking, after having a prickly evening of self-doubt and self-hatred, about the concept of Naming vs. X-ing in L'Engle's A Wind In the Door. I was thinking about the Lone Power in Duane's Young Wizards books, that mythology's Personification of Evil who is known particularly as the creator of Entropy. I was thinking about that little voice in my head that likes to tell me that I Suck, that I'm a Complete Failure, that I Will Never Succeed, that Nobody Cares What I Have to Say. And I was thinking about something I read in a writing book once, it was Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write (which I coincidentally posted about a year ago YESTERDAY and have now just discovered I have incorrectly attributed to BARBARA Ueland in my paper journals for the past year), that creativity comes from the Holy Spirit, by its very definition-- CREATIVE SPIRIT, and is therefore something not to be shirked. All these ideas collided in my head, and epiphanized themselves into one word: VALIDATION. Saying, "YES, YOU ARE."
When we label something, we have to be careful how we do it. NAMING builds up; NAME-CALLING diminishes. Naming VALIDATES something, Name-Calling INvalidates. When we look at a person, are we seeing them as a whole person, to be loved, to be named, to be worthy of being? Or are we seeing a label, diminishing them to a trait or two, not as the person they are at all?
I don't know, but I'd like to align myself with the Creative Spirit, the force that Validates, the force that says "Let it Be So" and it IS. I want to ignore that voice in my head, which I KNOW is the voice of Evil, of the Lone Power sowing entropy instead of creation, trying to convince me to invalidate myself, to convince me of all I'm Not, to convince me that I ought to be X-ed Out. And I definitely don't want to AID that voice in other people's lives. I don't want to be the one who does anything to Invalidate anyone else. (I find it ironic and heartbreaking whenever people use RELIGION as an excuse to Invalidate others-- if only they'd realize what a Great Big Chuckle the Evil One is getting out of it every time someone tears someone else down in the name of the Lord). I want to choose LIFE, and YES, and BEING. I want to treat everyone I meet as the truly unique and irreplaceable individual that they are. I want to Validate.
See, I have no problem calling myself a Nerd-- I find it Validating-- it reveals pieces of myself that I like, and it links me into a community that I belong to. But I need to stop calling myself a Loser, because that Invalidates all the good things I am and reduces me to Nothingness. I need to keep remembering the difference, in myself and in others-- between Naming and X-ing, between Validating and Invalidating, between Creating and Allowing to Succumb to Entropy.
But I didn't always. I spent my childhood and even early teen years in flat-out denial of my Nerditude. Not that I HID my Nerdish Tendencies or anything-- I was, clearly, a total nerd from a very young age. But I wouldn't accept the LABEL. Nerds were dorky boys who loved computers and dressed like shrunken businessmen who had nonetheless outgrown their clothes. They didn't like the arts and didn't miss the romantic attachments they would never ever have, they didn't have rich family lives and varied interests and senses of humor. I on the other hand didn't necessarily like school-- at least, I certainly didn't like every CLASS, and I was TERRIBLE at actually getting homework done, and I wasn't into computers at all, and I loved the arts something FIERCE, and not NERDY arts either, I mean I loved ROCK MUSIC for pete's sake, and I wanted to be a Broadway star for awhile, and maybe I wasn't a COOL dresser but even I could see Steve Urkel was doing it wrong. So I couldn't be a NERD, right? RIGHT?!
But what I was really trying to say, by denying my Nerdy self, was that I wasn't a STEREOTYPE. I wanted to be seen as more than a label-- a true individual: someone as likely to blast Zeppelin as read a book (okay, I'm likely to do both AT THE SAME TIME-- hence the username); someone who may not follow fashion but still loves to flounce around in a new hippie skirt; someone who actually IS interested in guys even if I'm more likely to crush on the likes of Bill Nye or Michael Palin rather than Brad Pitt or, heck, I don't even know what kind of guys you normal people are going for nowadays; someone with friends and family and stories and passions and opinions and emotions all my own! It wasn't that I didn't want to be considered a Nerd-- it was that I didn't want to be considered JUST a Nerd.
You know how, in bad cartoons and children's media with "messages" and horror films and whatnot, they always have a merry band of those stock character types? The kids are all friends, but you have the Everyman Leader kid, the Loyal Best Friend who is probably your token black kid, the Girl, whose primary character trait is that she is a Girl, the Dumb Fat Slob who eats a lot and is comic relief, and The Nerd? And on the off-chance your Nerd character happens to be a girl, because your writers were attempting to be Progressive a bit, that character still doesn't have any particularly girly qualities because that would totally take away from the Girliness of the Girl character, and basically, the Girl-Nerd is exactly like the basic Boy-Nerd? Who is the total stereotype, by the way, is what I'm saying. (Now, I could also go off on a rant here about the portrayal of Girl-Nerds across the broader scope of media, too, particularly WHY do Nerd-Girls ALWAYS have to endure the requisite MAKEOVER! before anyone will love them for who they are? Why are they always MADEOVER! into somebody else's idea of what is an acceptable image? HOW are people truly loving them for who they are THAT way? Why can't the Nerd-Girl STAY a Nerd-Girl and still get some love? WHY, I ASK YOU. But, this is in fact a tangent, because it gets me off the actual point I'm trying to get to, so revert your brains back to the concept of the Merry Band of Stock Types).
My point is, PEOPLE are not Stock Types. But chances are we've all experienced some sort of prejudice based on others' insistence that people CAN be reduced to Stock Types. Some kinds of prejudice get fancy words like RACISM or SEXISM that come with an Air of Social Importance, but it all comes down to PEOPLE ARE NOT STOCK TYPES. People have labels, and often those labels tell us things about them. But as soon as we reduce a person to JUST their label, that's when we start on the slippery slope to INVALIDATION.
I was thinking, after having a prickly evening of self-doubt and self-hatred, about the concept of Naming vs. X-ing in L'Engle's A Wind In the Door. I was thinking about the Lone Power in Duane's Young Wizards books, that mythology's Personification of Evil who is known particularly as the creator of Entropy. I was thinking about that little voice in my head that likes to tell me that I Suck, that I'm a Complete Failure, that I Will Never Succeed, that Nobody Cares What I Have to Say. And I was thinking about something I read in a writing book once, it was Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write (which I coincidentally posted about a year ago YESTERDAY and have now just discovered I have incorrectly attributed to BARBARA Ueland in my paper journals for the past year), that creativity comes from the Holy Spirit, by its very definition-- CREATIVE SPIRIT, and is therefore something not to be shirked. All these ideas collided in my head, and epiphanized themselves into one word: VALIDATION. Saying, "YES, YOU ARE."
When we label something, we have to be careful how we do it. NAMING builds up; NAME-CALLING diminishes. Naming VALIDATES something, Name-Calling INvalidates. When we look at a person, are we seeing them as a whole person, to be loved, to be named, to be worthy of being? Or are we seeing a label, diminishing them to a trait or two, not as the person they are at all?
I don't know, but I'd like to align myself with the Creative Spirit, the force that Validates, the force that says "Let it Be So" and it IS. I want to ignore that voice in my head, which I KNOW is the voice of Evil, of the Lone Power sowing entropy instead of creation, trying to convince me to invalidate myself, to convince me of all I'm Not, to convince me that I ought to be X-ed Out. And I definitely don't want to AID that voice in other people's lives. I don't want to be the one who does anything to Invalidate anyone else. (I find it ironic and heartbreaking whenever people use RELIGION as an excuse to Invalidate others-- if only they'd realize what a Great Big Chuckle the Evil One is getting out of it every time someone tears someone else down in the name of the Lord). I want to choose LIFE, and YES, and BEING. I want to treat everyone I meet as the truly unique and irreplaceable individual that they are. I want to Validate.
See, I have no problem calling myself a Nerd-- I find it Validating-- it reveals pieces of myself that I like, and it links me into a community that I belong to. But I need to stop calling myself a Loser, because that Invalidates all the good things I am and reduces me to Nothingness. I need to keep remembering the difference, in myself and in others-- between Naming and X-ing, between Validating and Invalidating, between Creating and Allowing to Succumb to Entropy.
