#on difference

[sensationalsegue]

"The moment we clash with another person who has a very different view than ours, we have the possibility of breaking down our own entrenched viewpoint and opening the door to a different one."

Bonnie Bright, Love and Relationships as a Spiritual Path in the 21st Century: A Jungian Perspective

[pastrywhipped]

OK, kids, there IS a difference. I initially Googled pictures of trilby hats because my darling fella has a penchant for these. I find them oh-so-hipster-irritating, yet also adorable on this fella. But my foray into Google territory learned me that most people don’t seem to make a distinction (or know a difference between) a fedora and a trilby. 

It’s like not understanding the difference between a pointer finger and a toe. (Size, friends, does matter. And so does shape.)

You know what other things are different?

a knife and a toothpick, though they are both pointy

An orange and a nerf ball, though they are both round

ironic ugliness and actual ugliness (wait... I take that back)

Hand-scissors (like in rock-paper-scissors) and real-life scissors 

Although confusion sets in when I think about Edward Scissorhands. 

Actually, confusion sets in when I think about Johnny Depp. I want to hate that guy, but he’s too pretty. Lately, he’s ugly-pretty, which is confusing on its own, but seems to be a category of attractiveness available only to those who are generally understood to be brilliantly pretty, and thus not tarnished by a little scruffing-up. The rest of us don’t have so far to fall, and are generally just considered meh. Or ugly.

But finding Johnny Depp attractive means I’m probably a straight guy (or maybe a straight woman). Which I am not, on either count. 

Point is, though, that there IS a difference between a trilby and a fedora, even though they are both hats, and even though both of them represent annoyingly affected attempts at making yourself stand out.

I’d like to suggest that queers and straights are not the same thing either, though both categories are human beings deserving of dignity. But the misguided attempt to claim that queers should have rights because we are all (gay, straight, magical creature...) the same is just plain wrong. Sure, there’s a shared humanity that should be granted us all, simply by virtue of being... human. But my life as a white gay middle-class single man in the US is radically different from the lives of other folk. On some levels, I have a bucketload more privilege, being white, being unproblematically read as male, being a middle-class America citizen... On other levels, my life is full of more danger, more difficulty, less opportunity than the lives of people who are consistently read as unproblematically straight.

My difference DOES make a difference. Not only are we not all equal, we’re not all the same--claiming we are is a way of whitewashing our culture--of straightwashing, I guess, and class-washing? I’ll say it again: difference makes a difference. Difference isn’t something to ignore, or try to “get past,” it’s something to honor, understand, and accommodate.

Can you imagine Indiana Jones in a trilby? 

[corikane]

i'm baffled by our passions, the liking of things and people, the disliking of others - what makes us see in a certain way, why is this appealing to me and not to you, why do you like different things from me - but you do, as naturally and unequivocally as life happens all over the world - all so different, yet all so passionate and yearning and obsessive...

it baffles me - you baffle me