A womxn, a Genderqueer and a Heterocentrist Walk Into a Bar ...

... and there they meet up with a polyamorist (who orders a beer with a chaser), a cupiosexual (drinks non-alcoholized beer), a greysexual (put water in his wine), a pomosexual (ordered the un-labelled home-made brew), a spectrasexual (gazed for an hour entranced by the menu list), a sapiosexual (only drinks wine with a label in Latin), and a neptunic -- who couldn't decide what to order.  

Did you know how many genders and sexual identities there are and the poetic labels used for

them?

"Rainbows are nothing new to us mixologists," says the philosophical bartender. "People walk in here full of diversity, but once drunk they're all the same. Drunk is drunk -- inebriation's a great equitizer and way to relax and chill in a fragmented world."

 

Ageism and the DYE Movement

I bumped into an older woman I hadn't seen for some time, and found her brown hair had turned a different colour.

Gone grey?

No: pink.

Ah, dyed it. No one goes grey any more, when you can get a whole rainbow in a bottle.

Pride-dye? Proudly striving for youthfulness?

Yes, because ageism is the last "ism". The one we still tolerate.

Ageism is the DYE movement, which moves against the elderly: "Diversity, Youth, Exclusion".

There are compensations though. When they get to a certain age some elders stop worrying about people-pleasing, keeping a job, maintaining a reputation and being politically-correct. Those are the ones who might speak up for their more timid peers:

                                 

                                  Media Visit to Granny's Free Speech Kiosk

Interviewer: So Granny, this is a nice little business enterprise you've made for yourself.

Granny: Yes, censorship opens up a surprising number of commercial opportunities.

Interviewer: So, in taking this opportunity would you call yourself a free-speech heroine, or a trouble-maker?

Granny: I don't aim to be either, although heroism often does cause trouble -- for someone.

Interviewer: Will it make trouble for you if someone decides your speech is too incorrect? Aren't you afraid of being shot?

Granny: Yes -- so this is bullet-proof glass I'm sitting behind.

Interviewer: Ah. Opinions can be dangerous. Maybe you should add a Danger-Pay Surcharge to your fee.

Granny: Really, speech should be free. If someone is wise and broke, I'll express their forbidden thoughts gratis. (But don't tell the rich folks ...) Everything is monetized now. Your own magazine charges buyers or advertisers to read your words.

Interviewer: True. I see you have quite an audience around your booth. Do some get upset if they don't approve when you contradict fashionably-correct attitudes?

Granny: I do get an audience, but no one has to stay and listen if something offends them. The other side of free speech is the freedom to not listen.

Interviewer: You're performing a public service, eh?

Granny: Indeed. I'm retired, I've got my little pension, I can afford to do this because I don't have to please an employer who could fire me for expressing what their pollsters have determined are not the popular public attitudes of the moment.

Interviewer: Well good luck, Granny! Stay safe.

Granny: I'll be fine. The up-side of being an old granny is that by being dismissed by influencers and virtue-signallers, we oldsters are also often overlooked by cancel-culture.

* * *

"Democracy is not about how many people vote but about how many people feel free to say what they think in public".

-- V. Ramaswamy, 2022


"... in the sunset of life ... I feel it my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear."



-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton,1898

Decrepitude-Envy

                      A short play presented at Seniors' and Community Centres                       by the Alexandria Players (https://alexandriaplayers.blogspot.com/)

Three friends -- Liz, Eve, and Rena -- sit chatting over coffee.

Liz:  This will be the last time we get together for coffee 'til spring. Which warm climes are you two off to this winter?

Eve:  Why is it always "climes", not climates, when people talk about  holiday plans? 

Rena:  Yes, why? And always "wanderlust", never just plain travel.  

Eve:  The romance of the voyage, I guess. The journey. Anyway, to answer your first question, I'm off to Arizona. If I even get past the airport, that is. Airports are so fussy about security now. I never know what I can take onboard.

Liz:  I know. I just hope my new metallic hip-joint won't set off alarms.

Eve:  You're lucky you've only got one. I've got two new hips and a new knee to worry about.

Liz:  Of course, I've got my pacemaker too.

Eve:  What with all the titanium, plastic in our cataract-free eyes, gold in our teeth and computers in our hearing aids, we own more mineral wealth than some of the smaller countries!

Liz:  You've got computerized hearing aids?

Eve:  Yes. The "SmartEar". Much smarter than a phone -- you program it to recognize phrases you don't like so it can automatically digitally delete them. There's a barrier between your ear and your brain, so you can filter out opinions you disagree with. 

Liz:  Brilliant! Much better than writing Letters to the Editor about them. Robotic Intelligence, eh?

Eve:  Somehow it uses the gold crowns on your teeth as a conductor of ... something or other ...

Rena:  (drily) Thus transplanting your brain into the robot. Oh, the irony.

Eve:  No Rena, gold ... not iron. Sounds like your hearing's going too. You need a SmartEar.

Liz:  It's my pills I'll be worried about -- airports are so fussy about drugs.

Eve:  (sighs) Yes -- remember when being beyond a certain age meant being beyond suspicion too?

Liz:  No longer. My cousin was accused of smuggling drugs in his colostomy bag.

Eve:  And the airport security line-ups are so slow. But I've got a terrific new walking stick for passing the time: the knob comes off the top so you can keep your -- shall we say -- "energy drink" inside it. And there's a button on one side that makes an umbrella pop up if it rains. But here's the best part: another button can make bullets shoot out of the shaft!

Liz:  Bullets??

Eve:  Yes, it converts into a gun! So if there's one of those terrorist incidents, you're armed. Brilliant eh?

Liz:  Wow, that's what I call concealed-carry.

Eve:  I predict walking stick firearms will soon be legal.

Rena:  (rolling her eyes) So the airport check-in desk has a sign saying "Triggering language will not be tolerated", yet triggers on guns will be? I'm so glad I never travel.

Liz:  Oh but you should! Think of the fun you're missing -- once you get out of the airport, that is. I take a few pills to calm myself in pre-boarding. I've got this great new pill-dispenser in the shape of the Prime Minister. To keep track of how many pills you've forgotten you've taken, they come out of his mouth one by one. You can pretend they came from a government Pharmacare plan, rather than being paid for out of your own pocket.

Rena:  (drily) At least you didn't pay for all the metallic hardware yourself.

Liz:  A benefit of being a senior. Have you noticed all the airport staff look about twelve? And that they act weird? Like they all have autism or mood disorders or something that young people go in for.

Eve:  Yeah, like "social anxiety". What is that anyway? They should make a Prime Ministerial Pill-Dispenser for it. Where did you get that product? I wonder if there's one with pills coming out of his other end -- like so much of what politicians say.

Liz:  I'll send you the website URL. Airport staff probably get them on an employees' health plan -- the "Anticipatory Mental Illness Plan".

Eve:  Young people today have so many ailments it's unbelievable.

Liz:  I call it decrepitude-envy. 

Eve:  It takes a life-time to become decrepit, but no one wants to earn their diseases any more. Anyway (she lifts her coffee mug in a toast) I'm off to buy my airline tickets. See you next Spring, Chickens!

Liz and Rena:  'bye-bye ... 'bye-bye ...  Happy Flight-Trails! 

-- They make a last toast with their mugs.

Literature-Lib: Looking back at the days of liberated fiction

"Lionized" by the literary establishment during his/her own time, many a once-popular author is now denounced for racism, sexism, transphobia, and general deficiency in "DEI" credentials.

One such is Mordecai Richler, whose novel Barney's Version, lavishly praised upon publication, received Canada's Giller Prize 1997. It was "charged with comic energy and a wicked disregard for any pieties ..." says the blurb on the cover.

Disregard for pieties is still called wicked, but no longer in a complimentary way. "Wrongthought" is no joke; it's even being criminalized.

The hero of the novel (Barney), when falsely accused of variegated personal and professional immoralities, in his own defence responds with his own "version" of events -- and his entertainingly provocative views on culture and politics. 

If he thought the latter were bad back in the 1990s, he'd be horrified at the atmosphere today. Satirical humour was his weapon against political correctness, but his weaponry did nothing to stop the ignorant armies clashing even more on our darkling plain of wokeness. (Matthew Arnold too, writing at the dawn of liberal humanist tradition, would be horrified to see the 21st century's plain, swept with even more "confused alarms of struggle and flight".)

As for the Giller Prize (a prize Richler would never be nominated for now), and the ideology of present juries: how could change happen so quickly in the literary world? Such shrinkage of imagination and narrow-minded condemnation of free thought? How could the imposition of obligatory self-censorship have gone so far so fast? Yesterday's lionized are today's verminized.

A literary critic writing in 2022 objected to Richler opposing the "special pleading" of politically correct groups, and his disagreeing that Western society is unjust toward minorities. Indeed, if he was writing today he'd probably be sued by allies of identity groups who felt triggered, harmed and epistemically violated by his words, although writing today he'd probably never find a publisher at all. Publishers are businesses, and they want to stay in business in a field where personal free expression is now unpopular.

In fact, according to the University of Southern California, we're not even allowed to refer to a "field" in case it brings to mind the fields wherein slaves once worked. Compassionate people may want to save others from hurt, but history will still be history, even if we legislate public ignorance of it.

There were no Anglo-Saxon names among authors on the 2022 Giller prize shortlist, and only one the previous year. Of course, Canada gets more international immigrants every year, but Mordecai Richler might suspect a bit of "special pleading" going on here behind the Giller scenes. Since 1997, when he won the prize, there has been less satirical humour on offer. We live in an era of intellectual straightness, of hearing only self -- an arid environment of cultural grazers who survive on poor soil and poor nutrition, and need much herding.

In an interview on Writers & Company, Eleanor Wachtel noted that Richler had been called "irreverent and smart-ass", and warned that listeners might find the excerpt he was about to read "raunchy". That word seems quaint; today, we'd warn of "toxic masculinity" that might trigger "trauma-spectrum diorder".

Richler himself said he aimed to satirize the absurd while witnessing his own times. If he thought his 20th century times absurd, one can only guess what he'd think about "the times" today. More than a little "out of joint".

Reviews of Barney's Version in 1997 used the words "wonderful, hilarious, gripping, touching and humane". Today they'd more likely accuse him of being "racist, trans-phobic, sexist, stigmatizing and trauma-inducing", and if Richler gave a reading, the de-platformers would be shouting outside and waving placards. 

Freedom From 'Harm' Means Freedom From Labels

You are not fragile (from Latin, frangere, to break). You won't break every time someone hits you with a label. 

You are not a victim, but you live in a spreading victim-culture. So step away from the miasma.

To see yourself as harmed or unharmed is a choice. No need to be on automatic pilot about it. Pilot the good ship "Unharmed". Skim over choppy waters, sail past slings and arrows. They call this "building resilience", and used to teach it to kids. Now schools teach them to worry about their mental health and to find their place in the victim-hierarchy. If they're not put high on the Trauma-Spectrum Disorder Scale, they feel disadvantaged and unprivileged. (And if they don't master this spectrum-game, they'll never succeed in the current University.)

Something will get us all one day ... disease, freak accident, nuclear war ... but until you really are mortally harmed (dead), why not aim to live harm-proof rather than harm-curating?

The Way of the Skeptic rejects group-think labels like "harmed", and its twin, "unsafe". We can choose to ignore labels as we do seagull droppings: unpleasant, but just step around them.

We needn't feel harmed by people who think differently, or look at them as the opposition. Other people's opinions are not weapons trained on you. They are just thoughts. We don't need to fear the thoughts of others; only your own thoughts can harm you.

And no one can oppose you if you haven't agreed to oppose them. Instead, you can agree to live and let live -- safely. Without labels, identity or other. The word "identity" comes from the Latin word "idem", meaning "same" -- like all the members of a tribe. It's better to be freely a no-name brand; be a one-off.

Real Poets Write Wine Labels

"Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down", opined Robert Frost.

Since he said that, poetic structure (not to mention content) has continued to -- let's say -- devolve. Dissolve. Much current verse sounds more suited to a therapy session than a poetry collection. 

"Serious" poets, often trained in Creative Writing departments, get away with turgid, tangled, concept-free feeling-pieces. Reading them is like staggering through a bramble-patch, clawed by cleverness and prickly diction. Let's take another path, think some readers. 

They might try strolling through a wine shop. They might conclude: real poets write wine labels! Some play around with comic sub-genres but most favour the romantic style. Like 18th-19th century Romantic Poets they draw on the language of nature: flowery and suggestive with a plethora of fruity scents and smooth flavours. Phrases like "dark smoky velvet" tempt the oenophile, and adjectives like "clean, fresh, and crisp", and "spicy, peppery, and bold" are popular. 

Wine labels also revel in synonyms and antonyms. So as to please every prospective buyer, presumably, and to tempt every sommelier, wine diction covers several bases at once: "sharp but generous", "balanced yet assertive". They are suggestive, lulling us with promises of the "juicy and tropical", others with the "musky and earthy".   

"Herbacious" is a favourite word; everyone likes some herb or garden plant which the term calls to mind. Its partners in rhyming language would be "vivacious" and the imprecisely teasing "bodacious". When the wine-label poet wants to invoke sensations, the encomium will brim with "hints" of things ... citrus, oak, cedar or honey. Overtones and undertones grace not only the wine but the wine-verse describing it.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is one subtext; or perhaps the comparison is with a winter's evening before the fire. "Full-bodied" works for both. 

Alliteration is prominent in the products' names as well. Nature-based like the label descriptions, wineries' names have become whimsical: "Pink Poodle", "Crow Canyon", "The Black Chook" (an Australian reference to Australian poultry). Puns and wildlife are popular in naming, as in "Fish Hoek", "LAB", with a black dog graphic, and "Yellow Tail" (with kangaroo).

British Columbia wineries are not to be out-done in the lyrical/colourful nature-linked name game, offering "Blue Mountain", "Red Rooster" and "Blue Grouse", plus "Wild Goose", "Burrowing Owl" and more ...

What with poetic oenophilia combined with artful label design, a visit to a wine shop is like a visit to an art gallery. Even if you're not a wine drinker you could get drunk on the lyrical language of labels -- rather more than on the contorted ambitions of "serious" verse. And, unlike that (or Coleridge when visiting his dream-caves of Kubla Khan), your dip into the pleasures of wine-verse will allow you a "pleasing finish".

The Necessity of Inappropriate Laughter

If it was appropriate, it wouldn't be half as much fun. There's no such thing as inappropriate laughter of course -- laughter is so automatic that that would be like inappropriate breathing. Laughter bubbling up or bursting forth unplanned is a type of honesty. It bursts as a force of nature, not of manufacture. The world needs that safety valve.

Yet, in cartoons or performance, during a speech or at a party, some people do complain that a joke was "inappropriate". Tasteless it may have been, but it has a function: Neitzsche and other philosophers have mentioned the release of tension and the joy of surprise.

It's socially useful to have the ridiculous laughed at (from the Latin ridere, to laugh). It's more than a personal response, it's a social corrective.

When laughter is labelled inappropriate it's usually about sex, gender, race, religion, or something ending in "ism". One person's laughable "ism" is another's no-go area.

Yet laughter goes everywhere; that's why it's powerful. No one has been able to imprison it -- not chilly religions, dictatorial bureaucracy, humorless teachers or anxious parents, no matter how repressive their reactions are. Laughter Laughs Last.

Think of how dangerous the world would be without it. Neitzsche also pointed out is that to oppose a bad idea, laughter is more effective than anger. If we had only anger imagine how much more violent life would be, how full of warfare.

In former ages court jesters were a professional group. In ancient Greece, under the rule of Philip of Macedon they were linked with Court Poets and Philosophers. Likewise in the English Courts of Henry VIII, James VI, and Charles I, where William Summers, Archibald Armstrong and Muckle John performed respectively.

This was reflected in Shakespeare's plays, with their essential Fools. ("Fool", linked to "folly", comes from the Latin noun follis, meaning bellows -- which are full of air and provide oxygen, like humour does.) Being full of air, someone to be jeered at (Shakespeare also dressed characters in ass ears etc.), the Court Fool could say what no one else could, escaping the murderous censors of the time yet managing to tell truths. 

Some comics do that today. In their act (or writings or cartoons) they present a farrago of material (a "mixed medley", originally meaning a mixture of fodder:  "far-corn").

Humour too is food, for both personal and social nourishment. Spontaneous laughter might erupt when we don't know what to think about something ... and then our subconscious tells us. Conflict is short-circuited, resentment deflected and something else takes the blame ... and escapes. Call it the scape-joke.