Othering
A friend emailed me yesterday, explaining her conflicting feelings about visiting the country of her birth. She feels like she doesn’t belong here in the States and going to visit this country that is foreign to her, she will feel like she doesn’t belong there. Her fear is the confirmation that she doesn’t belong anywhere.
The default mode for humans in this modern age is to feel like we don’t belong. I wonder if this has been exasperated by the internet. Connection occurs at a surface level, even if we have deep conversations over email or video. The physicalness of connection is lacking using technology, and not having that feedback that someone else’s body gives us prevents us from feeling a connection. Then again, perhaps the internet has created more capacity for connection. Regardless, this sense of feeling outside the group seems to be more prevalent than what I remember from a few decades ago.
Othering—the term used to distinctly put people outside of the in group and focusing on the differences between individuals—stems from this lack of connection. My friend feels like she is other, outside of the group (whether that’s feeling American or otherwise), and the cultures of both countries will support that. In the current state of my home country of America, there is a tidal wave of othering with immigrants and a segment of the GLBT community. Trump and his ilk have capitalized on creating in and out groups, and if you aren’t part of the in group, you should be eviscerated.
A few straight, white, cis men have told me in the past year that being a straight, white, cis man is the most difficult thing to be in this day and age. They have to worry about what they do, what they say. They are immediately seen as the problem, in any scenario. They’ve got no DEI for straight, white, cis men. Two responses: are you fucking kidding me? And welcome to what the rest of us have dealt with for centuries, have learned to live with, have created strategies to handle straight, white, cis men’s fragile egos. We—meaning anyone not granted power simply by birth—have dealt with what they are now experiencing. So I want to say, Buck up, kiddo. Stop being such a pussy.