I started commenting on Finnish blogs. While I do like to natter in my mother tongue, it's also a fact that there's just a tad over 5 million of us here in this land. And it is a very, very small number. It means everyone knows everyone else. It means, feh, that there's a bit of a mob mentality to us Finns. A small bunch of us can ruin stuff here easy: it doesn't need a huge number of slightly dodgy politicians plus businessmen to concoct the latest disgraceful episode in our interior politics: a few people giving largish sums of money to a couple of dozen politicians is enough to rot politics - there not being a larger body of politicians who wouldn't be involved: everyone is, it seems.
Anyhoo, I hope I won't regret a couple of comments here and there. I just don't trust people who are, technically at least, my people.
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I can understand this from a bit of a different angle: I've been keeping away from the expat and third culture kid blogs... I keep on running into people on them through the incestuous network which seems to spring up in every medium where these communities interact.
ReplyDeleteIt's sometimes nice to immerse onesself in the larger mainstream, but, likewise, it's also sometimes nice to communicate with those one has that link with. For me, the link is more with the expats and third culture kids than with the British and Swedish communities which are my birthright. I just don't dare to tell them my secrets because I know I will run into them elsewhere!
I hope you won't come to regret commenting on my blog. Your comments made my post better!
ReplyDeleteWriting blog & commenting is sometimes really scary stuff. I chose to write with my real name, but it means I cencor myself quite a lot. Bummer. Yes, Finland IS a small country!
Yup, self-censorship is what worries me the most. It has this invidious effect of making you not only silent on issues you feel strongly about, but also making you think yourself somehow wrong, or ashamed of just thinking differently about those issues, let alone speaking about them.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not about something I should feel ashamed about: I think I very well should be ashamed of going along, say, racist lines, but speaking out non-cisnormatively about sex and gender in a majorly cis context feels almost like sacrilege, even. Sometimes (no, Paula, I'm not referring to you) I feel like I'm ruining the party by bumping in and decentring the discussion from cis perspectives - and, what do you now, good girls are not supposed to ruin other people's parties. I probably should write a separate post on self-censorship and shame.
Urg, I think I know the party pooper feeling. Not from the trans point of view, though, but from questioning other binaries out loud. (That is to say, I try to question the cis privilege too, when I spot it and can find the words. But having loads of that privilege myself, I'm sure a lot of weird attitudes don't even begin to register with me.)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I hope you keep on derailing the cis perspective, at least in the spaces where you feel safe to do so. I believe it gets uncomfortable (and can be unsafe), but grinning and bearing it gets one down too. I wish the cis privilege could be called into question at EVERY context, as a matter of course, without one having to feel sacrilegious or party-pooperish about it... but we're far from that yet.