In the Name of Good... and Announcements

I believe there's a lot of cross over between my blog readers and the community of writers, so I thought you might be interested in the following announcements:

First of all, I edit the review section and write a couple columns for Vision: A Resource for Writers. This is a wonderful online magazine that provides articles on markets, writing techniques, resources useful to writers, and interviews among other elements. It is also a market for beginning non-fiction writers, and pulls on a wide variety of experienced writers for articles and interviews. Most of the content focuses on fiction writing of any genre, but articles on non-fiction topics do appear and are welcome. If you haven't checked it out before, please do. And if you have, you'll be happy to hear the new issue has been posted.

www.lazette.net/vision

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The second item is primarily for fiction writers. I am teaching an online workshop on non-verbal communication: how to become conscious of its influence and how to use it in your writing. The course does require membership in Forward Motion (a wonderful writing community), but membership is free. This requirement is to preserve rights for any work you might complete during the class.

I give fair warning that my workshops are intensive, but the more work you put in, the more you get out of the workshops.

Please come and check it out at fmwriters.com. After you log in, click on the Learning Center 2009 link in the header and then go to the Workshops 2009 folder.

The workshop begins on January 5th and the class will run 6 weeks.

Hope to see you there.

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For the stray thought, I give you this...how many social restrictions do we pass on to our kids in the effort to protect their childhood?

This question struck me when reading an article in a 2003 Smithsonian (yes, I'm behind, but they're still as good now as then, and sometimes more interesting with what's happened since). It was an article about the Blackfoot language, and efforts to recover the language and the cultural aspects it contains through an immersion school. While that, in itself, is interesting, what really caught my eye was how the language dwindled in the first place.

The article explains that the tribe's children two generations back were shipped to English-only schools where the penalty for speaking anything other than English was harsh. These children came back to their reservations with the understanding that speaking Blackfoot meant being beaten, so they made sure their children wouldn't suffer the same fate by discouraging any use of their own language. In one generation, the number of native speakers was reduced to almost nothing first by the treatment in the schools and then by honest efforts to protect children.

Okay, that's horrible, but has no direct impact on me seeing as English is my native language, except...

The day before, I went with my husband to Home Depot to pick up some plastic zip ties to attach a mile counter to my son's bike (his Christmas present was missing some key, but easily obtainable, pieces). We had to ask for help to find the zip ties, and the Home Depot employee tagged along.

We turned the corner to see a bag of zip ties in the delightful colors of neon yellow, green, and of course, pink. I pointed them out to the man and my husband, laughing at the unexpected colors. The man commented that black plastic holds up best outdoors, a handy little tip I now pass to you.

It was a slow night and so he hung about as we contemplated the extensive display. My husband had hoped to pick up a bulk pack with a variety of sizes, but the options were white, and of course, the neon collection. After the man's comment about black, neither were suitable, but I jokingly said that we should get the neon pink for our teenager as this would go over very well. We all laughed at the shared cultural joke, then we picked up straight black both for the longer duration and the social safety.

All well and good so far, but now that article has me thinking.

In as late as a 1918 Ladies Home Journal, mothers were advised to dress their boys in pink to be in fashion, presumably because it was a bright, dramatic color. It's not until the 1940s that the modern gender association became common. And yet, a boy who wears pink in most modern US cultures will be subject to ridicule or worse.

That attitude is clear enough in the joke I myself made even though I normally scoff at the biased linking of specific colors to gender. In the case of my kids though, I do what's necessary to reduce the chance of them getting bullied, something they've been at risk for since the beginning because, frankly, their parents are out of step culturally. What I hadn't realized was how much I'd absorbed those cues in the context of my kids.

And now I have to rethink my position.

Not that pink being lost as boys' wear is a big cultural failure, not that a people's history will vanish because of this bias against pink, but even such a small thing makes me wonder.

I don't want my kids to be subject to ridicule, isolated by their peers, or beaten up after school as I was myself. I know that governs my choices not just of clothing but in other aspects of their lives. I give them a good foundation, or try, and then point out where they need to be cautious and protect themselves.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to raise kids to be aware and respectful of people who are different than themselves while at the same time encouraging them to act like everyone else to protect them? When what makes them unique also makes them vulnerable, how do you balance sheltering them and encouraging them to be themselves.

When my mother-in-law got the boys wind cheaters ages ago, she was startled to see them choose hot pink. Why did they? Probably because my wind cheater was hot pink (a color I happen to adore for its ability to be bright and cheery when we were living in a place that rarely got real sun) and they hadn't yet picked up on that being a no-no color for boys.

My youngest doesn't care about pink. Sometimes he even likes to wear it. When I caution against, he says he doesn't care what people think. Part of me is proud of him. The rest is worried.

This is the same son that I joked about getting the pink zip ties and then chose not to.

So what other social conventions that I don't believe in have I unwittingly supported in the interests of my children? What haven't I told them to make sure they didn't say it in other company where such attitudes would be greeted with a harsh response, whether by the authorities or their peers? In what ways have I helped the destruction of what makes our culture and my kids unique by avoiding or actively squashing things?

I don't know whether it's comforting that I can't think of any big example, or terrifying. By pure luck have I only had to compromise on the little things, or has compromise in this context become so common that even something big slips my notice? I know something important to me would not have, but there are a lot of things outside my radar that, when given notice, are clearly making a statement I don't intend. When that does happen I correct the impression, but who's there to give notice if each generation aids and abets the whitewashing of culture for purely good reasons?

Scary thoughts, don't you think?