(no subject)
Jan. 4th, 2008 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSimon and I were discussing, amongst other things, a term for non-mutants in X-Men.
(If you don't know, in X-Men, there's an X-gene which gives people various invariable useful if often inconvenient special powers. These people are called Mutants, and everyone else is referred to as Human by exclusion, although human would by any sane definition include both as well.)
Peter won, in my opinion, with a suggestion in the pub last night, "Wild type" which in biology means "members of a species not having interesting mutations" (very roughly, someone give a more precise definition below).
But it got me thinking. What do the following terms all have in common:
Human (as in non-mutant)
Carnivore/Omnivore (as in non-vegetarian)
Neurotypical (as in non-autistic)
Heteronormative
Cis (as opposed to trans- or trans-gender)
Atheist
They all define everyone apart from members of a specific group. And hence don't really have any cohesion within themselves. And so the terms can be used literally, but most are generally used with either a grin or a sneer, admitting non-X doesn't just mean non-X, but "what I find annoying about non-X people, particularly their opinions of X people" and "lets see how they like being labelled". To magneto, human is an insult.
I don't know if it's relevant, but I think no-one ever means vegans when they say "non-vegetarians" :) (So a term meaning sometimes-meat-eating is actually more accurate.)
"Wild type", apart from sounding a hell of a lot cooler than "human" and lacking existing prejudice, seems to do a nice job of describing a default state, without implying anything about it as a whole. Of course, it's probably too obscure a term to catch on, but I like it.
I know sometimes it can be difficult to decide which is a group and which isn't. For instance, traditionally religion-X might consider people not of religion X to have more in common than not (and to some extent be right, if religion X is true). But I was enchanted by the analogy between atheist and neurotypical, etc. I'm sure it says something (though I'm not yet sure what).
(If you don't know, in X-Men, there's an X-gene which gives people various invariable useful if often inconvenient special powers. These people are called Mutants, and everyone else is referred to as Human by exclusion, although human would by any sane definition include both as well.)
Peter won, in my opinion, with a suggestion in the pub last night, "Wild type" which in biology means "members of a species not having interesting mutations" (very roughly, someone give a more precise definition below).
But it got me thinking. What do the following terms all have in common:
Human (as in non-mutant)
Carnivore/Omnivore (as in non-vegetarian)
Neurotypical (as in non-autistic)
Heteronormative
Cis (as opposed to trans- or trans-gender)
Atheist
They all define everyone apart from members of a specific group. And hence don't really have any cohesion within themselves. And so the terms can be used literally, but most are generally used with either a grin or a sneer, admitting non-X doesn't just mean non-X, but "what I find annoying about non-X people, particularly their opinions of X people" and "lets see how they like being labelled". To magneto, human is an insult.
I don't know if it's relevant, but I think no-one ever means vegans when they say "non-vegetarians" :) (So a term meaning sometimes-meat-eating is actually more accurate.)
"Wild type", apart from sounding a hell of a lot cooler than "human" and lacking existing prejudice, seems to do a nice job of describing a default state, without implying anything about it as a whole. Of course, it's probably too obscure a term to catch on, but I like it.
I know sometimes it can be difficult to decide which is a group and which isn't. For instance, traditionally religion-X might consider people not of religion X to have more in common than not (and to some extent be right, if religion X is true). But I was enchanted by the analogy between atheist and neurotypical, etc. I'm sure it says something (though I'm not yet sure what).
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 03:52 pm (UTC)Why? Because the first step in getting non-X to deal with you is getting them to admit you exist.
A comparison that may show a bit more of what I'm thinking:
--If you were to ask a lot of hetero people what sexual orientation they were, almost all of them would say "heterosexual." Very few people see the labels "heterosexual" and "homosexual" (and "bisexual") as being forced in some way. Now, I'm not saying that all those hetero people think it's okay NOT to be hetero. They may think that non-straightness is morally wrong, icky or gross, or just plain unfair (because the lesbians never come over to THEIR house to fix the computer and get naked). However, they admit it exists and they are all right with calling themselves something that clearly labels them as another kind of person than that.
--However, if you were to ask a bunch of cisgendered people what their combination of sex and gender was called, assuming you stopped to explain it to the ones who weren't familiar with the idea, a good many of them would balk at labeling themselves "cisgendered." Not, mind you, because they think of themselves as trans, or some kind of gender rebel who transcends the oppressive gender hierarchy or whatever, but because they don't think of being transgendered as REAL, and thus they don't need a word for not-transgendered. For people who think that, it's like having to state your species on the driver's license; of course I'm H. sap. sap. you buffoon! What am I going to be, a Vulcan? a dolphin?
I think the problem that people have when they make a not-X term is that people aren't equidistant. "Neurotypical" is a very nice term, except that it doesn't apply to someone who's had a stroke or taken a railroad spike through the head, even if they aren't autistic. "Heterosexual privilege" doesn't apply so much if you're a black man dating a white woman at certain times and places. People don't really allow for that, and that's where the problem with these sorts of terms comes in.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 04:00 pm (UTC)*thinks* I think one difference I was thinking of with atheist is that it started as a minority, like many of the others, but I listed it the other way round, because it thinks of itself as a default state, the way you describe cisgendered people. That it has achieved terminological recognition, but wants to go even further -- to *reject* the terminology "atheist" and gain the "what, why are you grouping these people together" sense of "everyone other than trans".