Showing posts with label Fringed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fringed. Show all posts
Monday, July 22, 2013
Living on the Fringe
I was recently on FB and commented on something on my
newsfeed. Another author was venting, pissed at finding herself dissed from a
conversation within a group. I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I asked for a bit
of specificity. She said it was a group discussion, where someone walks up and
inserts self, then takes over, dismissing who she doesn’t consider important
within the group.
Ah! I knew what she was talking about. I call it being
fringed.This happens to me. Sometimes it is because of a specific person who deliberately eliminates those they don’t know or consider unimportant. Sometimes, I truly believe people do it without realizing they are doing it. Their energy is so intense or overwhelming, they intimidate and or take over without meaning to. It happens.
Sometimes a group just grows too large and naturally splits.
And people are just shuffled to the outside.
Why do we stay there? On the edge? Well, we are easily shuffled and don’t really
know how to re-establish our position. We might just shrug and leave, it isn’t
worth risking giving the impression of pushiness.
Yup, I’m one of those.
It happens within social groups. It happens within so many
avenues. If we complain, we are told to be more assertive. That we need to
speak up for ourselves. And undoubtedly we do.
Ah, but I am so tired of being told if I were
more…assertive, pushy, confrontational, loud, secure…then I’d be more
successful, more part of, more everything.
The thing is, I’m not a shy person. I am not terribly
reserved. I am sensitive to offending. (Despite the impression I give sometimes
when I blog.) I am sensitive to being rude. I was taught to be polite, to a
fault. If you are dismissed, you go. You don’t impose. You don’t insert.
Yet, I know there are better words for what I should do…and
most of it is my perception of how to define the right thing to do. The right
way to act.
Now, when I put a pirate hat on at convention, I change.
Same convention, I wander without the hat and I’m once more living on the
fringe.
Every situation of being fringed calls for a separate
evaluation. And living on the fringe can be a choice. In fact, it likely is a
choice. I know I’d like to be aware of making that choice.
I’d like to start a movement. The fringed movement. We
count, we are there and we aren’t invisible. We aren’t mice, we aren’t timid.
We are aware, sensitive and polite. We are everywhere. We inhabit the
borderlands. We write stuff that doesn’t quite fit in, (like romantic adventure
featuring pirates.) We are the lady writers of scifi/fantasy, who are dissed by
the great white men. We are the self-pubbed who aren’t best sellers. We are
here. Always have been. And despite my FB manifesto last week, we aren’t
invisible. It just feel that way sometimes.
I think everyone
feels fringed now and then. I need to design some buttons… Any suggestions for
our slogan? Ever felt that way yourself?
(Yes, it was Terri’s turn
to blog today, but she begged off…speaking to me on Saturday of an oncoming
coma she intended to be in come Monday.)
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