Quirk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pastwatcher) wrote2012-09-18 02:10 am
pastwatcher) wrote2012-09-18 02:10 am
Awkwardness, and negotiating spaces
It turns out I have too much to say, more than I'll write here, on negotiating spaces, and how that has become a bigger deal for me, and how much I empathize with people more on the margins than myself now, the constant choices of different alienations.
But thoughts that have been coming back into my head since Saturday are: first, do you feel awkward in a space where people don't look like you, where you stick out somehow? What if you feel out of place but not threatened? What if you feel out of place but want to be friendly? How do you deal with that?
There were these two very normative* guys who came into a cafe, the other day, during a break in a poetry event. (It was a space full of queer people, mostly queer people of color, several disabled people; nobody looked like them.) They definitely felt awkward; one of them started talking loudly about how they'd been bar-hopping, and started making a request (that sounded like demands) for my friend to redo the poem they'd just brilliantly performed, just there and then. Were they supposed to respond treating the request like a joke, and laugh? ...The other one played off his friend a little, but also knocked things down and was clumsy picking them back up. They both were trying to take up as much space as possible, and it made me think of how many people already fit into this cafe without it seeming crowded, because we weren't doing that.
But plenty of white heterocetera* guys, as well as other people, wouldn't react that way. Nerds mostly don't, for one thing. They might simply not feel awkward. They might stand there and order their drink quietly, or briefly. They might feel awkward, find out it was poetry, and stay for some poems. I don't know, and there are definitely people not in that demographic who also make themselves obnoxious. Privilege is a part of it though, as in this really thoughtful post that is very much relevant to this thinking. The part starting from
But even if one does feel socially awkward, it is possible simply to start conversations, quietly, respectfully, leaving them open but not expecting them to be continued. I am working on getting better at this, and that requires not being too insecure. I keep in mind that while I like people being friendly, I do not like having conversations demanded from me. Even if I don't want to talk to a stranger, it's okay if they're being friendly--but I get irritated fast if it feels like, for whatever reason, I am supposed to be friendly in response. And that's very subjective, but I think it's about whether the body language is pushy or domineering. I know that sometimes, in my enthusiasm, I get into "intense interview" mode with people, and have often wondered why they didn't want to talk more afterward; perhaps now I know.
I hope that works for other people. I wonder.
*Cisgender, white, able-bodied, and straight, in their twenties; or at least, so they appeared. All the traits that are overrepresented on TV, which is as Harvey Milk called it, "in not quite living color".
But thoughts that have been coming back into my head since Saturday are: first, do you feel awkward in a space where people don't look like you, where you stick out somehow? What if you feel out of place but not threatened? What if you feel out of place but want to be friendly? How do you deal with that?
There were these two very normative* guys who came into a cafe, the other day, during a break in a poetry event. (It was a space full of queer people, mostly queer people of color, several disabled people; nobody looked like them.) They definitely felt awkward; one of them started talking loudly about how they'd been bar-hopping, and started making a request (that sounded like demands) for my friend to redo the poem they'd just brilliantly performed, just there and then. Were they supposed to respond treating the request like a joke, and laugh? ...The other one played off his friend a little, but also knocked things down and was clumsy picking them back up. They both were trying to take up as much space as possible, and it made me think of how many people already fit into this cafe without it seeming crowded, because we weren't doing that.
But plenty of white heterocetera* guys, as well as other people, wouldn't react that way. Nerds mostly don't, for one thing. They might simply not feel awkward. They might stand there and order their drink quietly, or briefly. They might feel awkward, find out it was poetry, and stay for some poems. I don't know, and there are definitely people not in that demographic who also make themselves obnoxious. Privilege is a part of it though, as in this really thoughtful post that is very much relevant to this thinking. The part starting from
It seems like the question of being welcome, of how one negotiates space, is one of the defining features of privilege, one of the most telling and immediate facets that isn’t hidden in perceptions or complex social systems, but is right there on the face of our daily lives...
But even if one does feel socially awkward, it is possible simply to start conversations, quietly, respectfully, leaving them open but not expecting them to be continued. I am working on getting better at this, and that requires not being too insecure. I keep in mind that while I like people being friendly, I do not like having conversations demanded from me. Even if I don't want to talk to a stranger, it's okay if they're being friendly--but I get irritated fast if it feels like, for whatever reason, I am supposed to be friendly in response. And that's very subjective, but I think it's about whether the body language is pushy or domineering. I know that sometimes, in my enthusiasm, I get into "intense interview" mode with people, and have often wondered why they didn't want to talk more afterward; perhaps now I know.
I hope that works for other people. I wonder.
*Cisgender, white, able-bodied, and straight, in their twenties; or at least, so they appeared. All the traits that are overrepresented on TV, which is as Harvey Milk called it, "in not quite living color".