Categorisation.

I was on the lounge, relaxing after a crap day of shoulder pain and more than a little mental confusion. I was writing a letter by hand, something I don't often do, but value as a piece of my own creativity to be given away as something tactile, and therefore pretty important as an expression of myself. I don't throw away things that I create, whether they are unfinished, no longer relevant, or an expression of my own idiocy at the time of creation. I've got boxes full of stuff I've written. Snippets of melodies, chord charts. Bad poetry I wrote in high school. I never throw these things away.

With this letter set beside me I took a break. I picked up the laptop and checked blogland for a little relief from this letter, this creation, this gift that I wanted to pass on. I read a few blogs, mostly stuff about sheet music and street art. But then I check a favourite and I see this:

"Lesbians are a breed unto themseves, they don't want dick but fuck themselves with phallic looking objects."

Now, this is in the context of a piece that is saying that blogging is personal, and is about expressing your own opinions. There's a whole agenda that I should have read into, even in the context of the paragraph that that little gem was nestled in. But no, I read through and immediately settled on the word I use to categorise myself. I looked at that word and didn't like what it came with.

Anger is my first reaction. I challenge anybody to tell me that they do not get angry when they feel they are attacked - even unwittingly, unintentionally - and I will shake thier hand and give them a fucking certificate. I can't do it. I damn near threw my computer across the room. I picked up that letter and screwed it up, tightly. I threw it out. Anger is destruction. Even after the initial flash, anger will radiate from me in waves of burning ice. Ask anyone who has spent a long time around me, you can almost see it emanating from me. Ask my poor two housemates who witnessed me go through all this while they, also, were trying to relax in our shared space.

So what pisses me off here? Really?

The statement that Lesbians are a breed unto themselves or the generalisation that follows?

Lesbians are a breed unto themselves - I get the point that this author has. It takes a particular set of preferences and or practises to define as lesbian. It also takes a particular set of preferences and or practises to define as a guitarist, or a teacher. Those preferences are what set us apart from everybody else. And we are the ones, as people, who adopt those distinctions.

Look at my profile in the sidebar. I've used a bunch of categorisations to display who I am to the world. I’ve used words to set myself apart from others, in a way. I still do this when I profess that all I really want in this little world I wrap myself in is to be accepted as Vic. But there it is. We all need descriptors in order to express who we are.

Our labels can be used against us. That's when it hurts. When that word that you identify with comes out in a seemingly derogatory manner, comes across as an attack rather than a positive identification, it is going to hurt. When I’m out drinking at my local pub and dressing the way I feel comfortable, being who I am, can anybody blame me for being upset at the redneck bloke who yells out across the room at me: What, are you trying to be a man, fucking dyke? The thing is that in being upset I am a hypocrite. My description of him here is “the redneck bloke” and that has the same attacking, derogatory slant behind it. I put myself in his shoes, as my perception of this guy, quite possibly adopting the label “redneck bloke” as part of his set of descriptors about his own identity – and I adapt that same statement that caused such destructive anger in me.

Redneck blokes are a breed unto themselves, they’re obnoxious cunts who couldn’t give a fuck and think that yelling at some gay bitch at the pub is entertainment.

It’s all about opinion, isn’t it? Bloggers shout their opinions at the world, ideally with no regards to their audience. Whether you’re shouting that you think what is happening in the current political climate is bullshit, or whether you’re shouting that you think a set of financial guidelines for future security are the be-all and end-all of your life or whether you’ve decided to share your favourite recipe just for the hell of it – it doesn’t really matter. You’re shouting at the world. Sometimes the world shouts back, and it can get nasty, in the same way that a brawl at the local pub can get nasty.

I think the answer to the question I posed earlier - What pisses me off here? - is simple. In being pissed off about a biased expression of opinion I’ve become a hypocrite, the very thing I despise in people. And nothing irks me more than proving my own point by saying that. Hypocrite – that’s a label, too.