The Dream Police Live In Fort Lauderdale

A long time ago, I read a book about antebellum America written by a black economist, and one of the points he made much more strongly than anyone ever had before, was that "slavery" wasn't just one thing. It was an everyday act in which whites policed each other about their attitudes towards blacks. Kindness, a recognition of equality, a straightforward humanity, were discouraged out of whites one to another with looks, with words, with sanction, and with exclusion.

I'm in Fort Lauderdale this week, looking in on my 79-year-old mother, who is having a housewarming party for her new place now that her partner (not my father) has passed away. She is understandably impatient with this world. At 79 she's still a pretty good driver, although I don't recall her being this aggressive or foul-mouthed with the other drivers on the road!

But one thing I have noticed is that people in Fort Lauderdale, at least in the circles that my mother walks through, and she always walked through a world much wealthier than mine, a world of yachts and penthouses, there is a very aggressive attempt to channel people into their "proper roles." I tried to buy a cheap USB cable because I'd left mine at home; the woman behind the counter found one only in a lavender color and tried twice to convince me that she should take me to the other end of the store "to find a better color." When I insisted it was fine, I took it up to the register, where the woman operating the cash register again asked me, "Are you sure you don't want a better color?"

Two guesses what they meant by "better."

Later, at the car shop, my mother asked me to carry her purse; she had stuffed extra items into it in anticipation that the car would take more than a day to fix and we'd have to rent a car. We walked to a restaurant. "Are you sure you're comfortable carrying it?" my mother asked. And the waitress told me I was "very kind and brave" for carrying my mother's purse.

Why is everyone in this town so concerned about my masculinity?

This is the thing that drives me crazy about the whole "masculinity" debate. I'm comfortable with my masculinity. I've got the assigned hardware and I'm doing okay, comfortable with the whole "a good man" role. I'm no role model, but by Crom, it's just. not. that. difficult.

It's not just me. I've watched other people teasingly say others "should" do this or "shouldn't" do that. "It's not right for someone of your success to do something like that" was a line I heard at the party. My mother twiced referred to grown women (in their twenties) as "Hey, little girl" (and is it coincidental that both women were Hispanic?).

A great line from Bujold:

Gregor said, "I daresay Miles didn't even think about it. He's lived under exactly this sort of security screen most of his life. Does a fish think about water?"

Ekaterin darted a glance at Miles. He had a very odd look on his face, as though he'd just bounced off a force wall he hadn't known was there.

That's how I feel right now about the behavioral norms I'm encountering. I'm suddenly very sure that Seattle has a set of norms like these, but I no longer know what they're trying to achieve or how to describe them or how they're enforced; I just live with them. Maybe I'll be more sensitive to them, at least for a while, when I get back to Seattle. The norms here in Fort Lauderdale are strange and alien to me, intended it seems to absolutely ensure every individual knows their assigned role and doesn't try to escape it, visibly granting privilege to some and channeling ambition in others.