The Other as Space

I’ve been reading up a lot about race relations, cultural representation, and appropriation – which would be evident if you’ve seen the past few entries on here and on The Merch Girl . (Speaking of which: I seemed to have gained the niche of Politically Noisy Burlesqer Harping On About Appropriation, Damn You Weirdo.)

I’ve read a lot (and am still reading – it’s still a drop in the ocean), and thought about it in relation to my experiences, and I’ve come to a realisation:

People tend to talk about the Other as though it was a Person or Thing, with its own characteristics and needs and foibles. Quite what those characteristics are, no one knows, except that it’s Different and Other and Difficult to Deal With.

But really, the Other isn’t a thing. It’s a space.

People get sent to the Other Space if they stand out enough from the status quo to make the rest uncomfortable. If there’s something that makes them stand out. Even in the freakiest, most uncomfortable groups, there is always a Space for the Other.

Think of it as a circle with an outer ring orbiting it, crossing over in parts but never really fully included. Like Saturn’s ring squished in in parts, merging with Saturn. The people in that ring are still considered part of the group to some degree, but they’re never really included. They’re not at the core.

There are some people that do tend to float on the other edges of the circle, closer to the ring than to the core. But they’re still more a part of that circle, of that planet, than the ring folk will ever be. They’re sympathetic to the Other, but they are not The Other.

Even within cores there are sections for the Other. Even within the Other rings there are cores and rings. It’s possibly infinite, and very fractal-like.

I’ve always been in the Other Ring for every group I’ve been a part of. Even when I was part of the “mainstream”, I was still the outlier. It didn’t matter if the group was made up of Malaysian students, or NaNoWriMo writers, or young pagan hipsters, or burlesquers, or internet freaks, or whatever. My identity as a person has always ended up as the Other – I’m not sure whether it is by coincidence or by design. It also explains why I’m so passionate about anti-discrimination, why I’m always trying to link rings and circles together, why I notice when people push others into the Other – because it’s the life I lived. It’s what I know.

So perhaps of looking at the Other in terms of personality, let’s look at the Other in terms of the space they occupy.
Where is the ring of the Other in relation to the core? How far away is the ring? Which parts are squeezed in and which are stretched out?
Is there easy access between the ring and the core? Are there people floating in between?
Do people transition between the ring, the core, and inbetween?
Who chooses who goes in the ring – the person itself, or the group? Are people given a choice in the matter? Is the choice conscious?
What structures are in place that reinforce the shape and location of the ring and the circle? Are those structures solid or malleable? Are there hidden passages?
How visible are the people in the ring to the people in the circle? Or vice versa? How visible are they to the people outside their planet?
Is it possible for someone to not be in any rings, circles, or planets whatsoever – to just float in space?
How do we push others into the ring and what do we do with them? How are we pushed into the ring? Do we push ourselves in?
Is it more desirable to be in the ring, in the core, somewhere in between?

I don’t have any sort of graphics software on this computer, but if someone can get what I’m trying to visualize, feel free to make some sort of picture or slideshow, and share it with us. And if anyone else has come up with similar theories about the Other being a space that people/things/etc get placed into (I don’t think it’s just limited to people; anything could conceivably be placed in the Other ring in relation to its group) do share.

Also, this is the tail end of the International Blog Against Racism Week – I didn’t set out to write something just for it, since I’ve said as much as I could say already on my two blogs, but after writing this I thought it could be a good meta-topic, in a way. Go check out their del.icio.us profile and read some :)