I spend a lot of my time keeping myself from saying and doing things. You do too, but maybe you haven't kept track of how much you do it. It seems that I am constantly saying "I'm sorry," or "I apologize," even if I haven't even done anything that is worthy of it. You may remember one of my Electron posts from last year about "apologizing for everything." Well, not much has changed, except that I'm more aware of it.

Long ago, when I was a college student, I was obsessed with improving my character. I had lists of my unacceptable behaviors, which I was to monitor throughout the day so that I could eradicate them and replace them with better behaviors. Rude remarks, loud talking, interrupting other people, were some of the behaviors which I hoped to remove. And then there were thought-behaviors, too, which came out in writing as well as in talking. The worst of these were GENERALIZATION and STEREOTYPING, especially in human social situations. I reminded myself again and again that one must not make "sweeping generalizations" (they're always "sweeping," as if they were armed with brooms) about human actions, ethnicities, genders, or any other feature. Stereotypes were just as bad. Every human being must be considered as a unique individual, without any prejudice, and without any previous consideration of his or her social, racial, religious, or any other status. All human beings were created equal and unique. Noble sentiments and ideals, indeed.

As with all idealistic quests, I failed this one every day. I had a written journal, which I still keep. In those days, I marked a green dot on each day that I had failed to live up to my behavior improvement rules. There was a green dot on almost every day's entry, along with the sins in question: Generalized. Interrupted. Made a sarcastic remark. Generalized again. Thou Shalt Not Generalize, when human beings are concerned!

Now, thirty years later, I've learned to behave, at least in public. And also on this Weblog. You will notice that I will not make any general statements about anything social, if I can help it. General statements are fine if you are talking about physics. You can't offend a proton or the acceleration of gravity. But I try to not say anything "general" about gender or race or nationality or religion. That does not mean that I don't think these things. But I strive, as I did in those younger days, to constantly counteract the inner thug and bigot, or even pattern-recognizer, which is always lurking inside me. In fact, now that I am older, there are even more bad behaviors to watch out for. And I fail just as consistently. Thus, I'm sorry, and I apologize, all the time, giving my public and writing persona a kind of fussy, unconfident, self-reproaching ambivalence, which barely hides a bossy, aggressive, self-important transgressor. But something caught my eye recently, about all this apologizing, as I was reading a review of a book that just came out.

The book is called SELF MADE MAN, written by a journalist named Norah Vincent. In this book, she tells the story about the eighteen months she spent in disguise, passing as a male. I really want to read this book. Now if you are a journalist, you might actually be able to say something which might be construed as a "general statement" about something social, so I will simply quote Ms. Vincent as she was quoted in the book review:

"One of the things I picked up as a man was projecting a certain confidence and authority and entitlement," Vincent says. "As a woman, you're often apologizing for things."

It was just one of those things which makes me go, "hmmmm." Can't say anything about gender myself, but I offer thanks to Norah Vincent and all the other gender explorers and innovators and founding feminists, who dared to do what I must not.

Posted at 3:31 am | link