If you are a recent addition to the cadre of readers for this blog (all 6) you may not know of my aversion to labels. As in defining people with them. It is why, though I am, you don't read the word "gay" much around here. It's like categorizing a whole group of people as "spinach eaters" - ridiculous! We all eat, need to eat, want to eat, so why label people by "what" they eat. Preplace "eat" with "have sex", and you should get my point.
Every couple years for the Olympics, I really don't pay much attention to the nationality of the participants. Why are we so proud that the medalist was born on our soil? (Or in some cases defected to our soil.) I think it's a lametard way to devise teams for a competition. (Sure, you can quote me.) I do like the triumphs of the human spirit, the personal stories of sacrifice and perseverance, and the breaking of previously held world records, but I couldn't care less from where the athlete hails.
The Olympics only reinforces ideas of "us" versus "them" on the world stage. When you consider that this premise pretty much accounts for all wars, it is curious that we continue to buy into it. Nevertheless, every evening we are treated to a scoreboard of medals won by each country. And the names of the individuals become irrelevant. (We should be rooting for everyone people!)
Don't even get me started on the gay Olympics, oh wait, excuse me, the (cough) Outgames.
11 comments:
I like to see the countries compete. I don't like it when it spills over to become coverage that excludes other countries, but from what I've seen on both CBC and NBC this year, the commentators have been fantastic. I do hate to follow the Canadian news coverage because I think that there the nationalism is a bit much. However, for me the bad old days of the boycotts and blatant favouritism seem to be over. Even the commentator covering Canadian mens hockey pointed out that the Swiss played the better game.
It's not possible to NOT categorize stuff if you ask me.
If you eat only vegetables, you are a vegetarian, else a carnivore. It's not like someone apply a label to me "carnivore" and I will be offensed, because that's what I am. It's like fact, not "label". Sorry to disapoint you but when I see 2 guys together. I think "gay" because it's like a fact, nothing to do with label.(imo).
The Olympics is the competition of the 5 continents. You have to select the way the scoreboard work somehow. Either by individuals ranking, team ranking, countries ranking. You always have to identify yourself vs the other team.
The way you present it, all the sport games right now are irrevelant. Montreal vs Toronto, etc. (Cities vs cities). You still have a ranking for the best players, but you still have to count points somehow.
Anyway, I disagree with you this morning. Something wrong happen !
I haven't watched a lick of the Olympics, sadly years of listening to hubby watch sports has totally ruined me. I appreciate all those Olympic dreams though and I love it when an underdog wins.
You're gay?!
hahahahahaha ;)
What's 'gay'?
I've been thinking the same thing. In most cases the athletes rarely train on their own soil. Its about the athletes not the countries but it would be nice if we could solve disputes with athletic competition rather than war no?
I missed something...youre gay?
;-)
as soon as they do a personal story on someone, that becomes the person i root for. last night they had the bobsledder who had twins, one of whom is deaf. i was crying for her as a human, not as a member of a country.
the label awareness is so important. i don't think it's possible (nor did you suggest) that we can eliminate them from our daily life. but the awareness and what we do with it - the decisions and assumptions we make, and how we interact with people - is vital.
as for the "g" label, i wanted to slurp ya from the minute i started reading you. because of who you are, and the ways you share your life in this blog.
The problem isn't with labels per se. As a few people have already pointed out, labelling (i.e. the action of naming something or someone according to specific attributes) is an inherent characteristic of all human beings. Language itself is simply a form of labelling, of making sense of the world by dividing it into recognizable "things": That is a tree; this is a tomato; she is a pilot; he is a father; they are idiots; and so on.
Problems arise because we don't just use labels as factual identification. Many labels (particularly those applied to people) have emotional and moral connotations that can - and do - affect the overall meaning of the word.
So, what we actually "say" when we call someone a vegetarian (to appropriate Psycho's analogy)depends largely on the emotional and moral characteristics we attach to that particular label.
To someone who doesn't hold strong opinions about other people's eating habits, the term could be simply factual. To a member of PETA, the label "vegetarian" would probably also automatically encompass characteristics of enlightenment, moral righteousness, and worthiness. To a cattle rancher, "vegetarian" would probably mean something more ... negative, shall we say.
It really all depends on your point of view. (Language is so much fun, eh?)
ink.
P.S. Personally, whenever I do watch a sporting event (which is not often), I always root for the underdog - even when it's against the "home" team. I was really, really hoping the Italian women's hockey team would get just one goal, for instance.
P.P.S. And just to be completely anal, humans are more likely to be omnivores (eaters of both meat and vegetable matter) than carnivores (meat only) or herbivores (plant matter only). Thanks very much Grade 5 sciences class!
I have conflicted feelings about this entry. On one level, I like and respond to your idealism. Ultimate freedom would mean that we could negotiate whatever types of relationships we wanted without predetermined assumptions about our identities. The historian in me also knows that all of these categories (nation, racial, gender, sexual) only exist because of the peculiarities of our societal discourse and knowledge. None of them are “natural” or “real.”
On another level, though, we can’t ignore that these categories, though socially constructed, have very real consequences for our daily lives. Desiring and pursuing a relationship with someone of the same sex means we will automatically fit within a particular category of “gay” or, maybe more broadly, “queer” within our society. Not claiming it doesn’t make it stopping existing. Likewise, eschewing the problematic existence of modern nation-states won’t get us very far as we try to cross national borders sans passport.
So, I guess I wonder how we can pursue an idealized freedom while also being conscious that none of us can escape the categories that we have learned and assumed since birth. Your post is a thinker and I am really just thinking aloud – or, er, thinking a-typing.
I'm w/ ya buddy. Hate everyone equally! Laugh when they fall on the ice and go "OWIE!" It doesn't matter if they're German or gay--as long as someone gets hurt.
"We all eat, need to eat, want to eat, so why label people by "what" they eat. Preplace "eat" with "have sex", and you should get my point."
Well, some of us. I don't have sex. I want to have sex, but need it? It's been 7 years so far... I'm still here.
(gotta make it about me, you know.)
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