Us and Them

So I was talking to someone the other day, and apart from being generally very lovely, she said a couple of things which suddenly abruptly reminded me of the gap between her generation and mine. They were jarring enough, in fact, that I'm still not totally sure that she wasn't just trying to get a reaction.

Firstly, when I said that I was at Canterbury hospital at the moment, she joked about how it's a surprise that the women in that area are able to have operations, because of how they're totally all Muslim and won't want anyone to see them undressed (which, what? I'm not a veiled "modestly dressed" chick, but I don't go around showing people my bits & pieces left right and centre, so surely when it comes to things like undressing for operations your average Muslim woman and I are on the same page, viz. "alright, I guess I must, sigh"?) A bit later she said that it was ridiculous that the whole hospital catering had probably been thrown off because it was the fasting month and that was silly and inconsiderate of them. (To be honest, I was almost impressed that she even knew it was Ramadan at the moment) This is someone who I remember once making a joke about how any Muslim person is likely to unexpectedly blow you and themselves up or shoot people who make jokes about them.

This sort of thing always throws me, because WHAT. Leaving aside the obvious but frivolous note that I can understand that you might want to shoot someone who's carrying on like that, there's the fact that it's just completely bollocks. Most mass murders, statistically, are committed by well-off white American men. Also, Ramadan comes, as I understand it, with specific disclaimers, like that if you're too old or too young or too sick or whatever, you should eat appropriately. Much like you're allowed to eat non-Halal food if you're starving. I mean, this sensible stuff is literally written into the Qu'ran in a way that it isn't in the Bible, probably because they'd had almost a thousand years to observe the way the other religions of the Book were going and to notice which things were causing big problems before Islam even started. It's got crazy fundamentalists just like Christianity has the Westboro Baptist Church, but on the whole it's a pretty sensible religion. I would be pretty horrified if people went "you're a WASP sort of chick in a predominantly christian culture, therefore you must be just like those "GOD HATES FAGS & LOVES DEAD SOLDIERS" Westboro dudes!" and I seriously think it's pretty much equivalent

Secondly, I jokingly referred to one of my friends in a way which might have made it sound like he was a potential boyfriend, and to forestall the whole misunderstanding, I said that he was "as gay as a hatful of glitter" which is not the sort of thing I would say about someone with whom I was not close, or someone who might not like being described like that, but which is a way to describe some of my friends which has the advantage of sounding as fond as I am of them. But she maybe didn't hear me properly, and asked me to repeat what I'd said and then went "Oh! A poofter! Why didn't you just say he was a poofter?". I don't even think I said anything, I think I just sort of blinked in a taken-aback way at that point. I wanted to say "because I'm a good person? Because that's not the sort of language I have any right or inclination to use? Just like I wouldn't describe a black person as a "nigger", that's just not a word I ever ever use?" (Man, I don't even like to type words like that, but I definitely feel like it's important to be clear in a discussion like this. Still, I apologise to anyone offended my my use of such horrible terminology!)

I remember once, as a child of maybe 10, wandering into a room in which some family friends were talking/laughing and asking what they I'd missed: what was the conversation about? And a middle aged, well-educated grown man looked up at me, a 10 year old, and said "we're talking about pillow-biters". To this day I recall thinking "That's not a nice thing to say. It's not a nice thing to say at all, but it certainly isn't something you should say to me, I'm only a child!" I mean, you know you're doing it wrong when even the kid you're talking to knows that this isn't language to use to children, that it's vulgar and inappropriate and weirdly reduces entire people's personhood to one particular sex act.

I think I've never really managed to get on board with that sort of jokes, with jokes based on the "Othering" of people and groups. I mean, I suppose that implies that I never told an Irish joke, which is obviously not true, but since during my youth I was not in any way aware of the tensions between Ireland and Britain or the long history of discrimination which the Irish have faced, the Irish were, to me, not a Them, but merely a subset of Us. They existed in our lives exclusively as attractive people with great accents, so it never seemed like they were the oppressed, just that "irish" was a handy joke-shorthand for "stupid person who is going to be the butt of this joke" (which now I come to say it still sounds terrible, actually).

Maybe it's because I have so many friends and acquaintances from so many walks of life? This is especially true in this era of facebook, I'm constantly reminded of the lives and individuality of friends who I'd otherwise have forgotten. But I have a lot of friends who are gay, who are Muslim, and even, gasp!, who are Irish. None of these groups are a Them to me, they are Us.

Maybe I am so inclusive in my Us-ing that it loses all meaning? I mean, I tend to pretty much assume that all people are doing the best that they can in this crazy old world etc., so that the Us is pretty much everyone and the Them is maybe viruses, mosquitoes, aliens/zombies/etc. as well as iniquity, entropy, and the harsh realities of the world. We're all against those things, even is some of Us try to fight them in ways which make others among Us think of them as Them, as exacerbating the problem.

Is this just privelege, though? Is it easy for me to grandly gesture around me at all the people of the world and be all "See how inclusive and great I am?! I think we're all in this together! Us!" like Mufasa: "Everything the light touches, Simba". I mean, it probably is. I assume most people are on the same team as me because I've never really suffered. I've never been systematically victimised or done down by other people, I am not Them to anyone but the oppressed, so I magnanimously forgive their resentment? This is obviously true, that this is all incredibly redolent of middle class privelege. The only "minority" group to which I belong is "women" and we make up half the population. Sure there is some male privelege to which I have no access, but it's certainly true that women are also priveleged in other ways, and that being as educated-upper-middle-class-white-Australian as I am, I'm one of those women for whom the gender gap is rendered least obtrusive and intrusive. I can happily get outraged about the terrible things that happen to women who are poor or American or Iraqi or in an ethnic minority or undereducated or just plain unlucky, safe in the knowledge that the odds are good that none of that will happen to me.

So, self-analysis aside, I generally just really don't get Us and Them thinking. I don't understand what Americans don't understand about universal healthcare being good because it stops the poor dying and the dying being impoversished. I don't understand why "stop the boats" politicians can happily say "Australia hasn't got room for EVERYONE! We have finite resources!" but don't see the need to address the problem of what refugees should do next, if no country in the world will have them. For some people that's Them so it's Their Problem, but I've always sort of felt like that was some of Us being subjected to injustices at home, Us who might drown, Us who have literally nowhere to go.I just... I just don't understand.

It's also a big thing in aging, I think, this Us and Them thinking. My grandmother is 100, so people always seem to treat her as if she were either a child or just a very serious humourless old person. Which is not how you would treat any other adult. It's weird that people object to the idea of old people having sex or drinking. It's weird that no-one ever jokes with them or is silly and frivolous. I don't know if it's that we're so afraid that one day we'll be old that we tell ourselves that really they were never young like us.

I really think that even if "We are all Us" is the great white lie, and ignores the difficulties faced by many people who lack our priveleges, if you have to err (and you pretty much do, because you're only human) it's surely better to err on the side of inclusiveness. Better to end up thinking of everyone as Us until 'Them' becomes meaningless than to end up in an ivory tower with a tiny select group of Us, sneering down at the masses of Them. That way lies madness, and Nazism, and Godwin's Law.