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Postaday for January 7th: Oasis

A sanctuary is a place you can escape to, to catch your breath and remember who you are. Write about the place you go to when everything is a bit too much.

It was the summer of too much pizza. I had moved to Seattle, been through a few relationships and a few roommates, and was living alone. A lot of loneliness, a lot of pizza, a lot of video games. One in particular was City of Heroes.

This was my first foray into any kind of online-with-other-people type of thing. I was very timid at first, but got over it, and eventually hooked up with a remarkable group of folks. I’m not going to tell you we all became super best friends or anything like that. I don’t even know their real names, and years later, don’t stay in touch. But during the summer of pizza, they were my tribe.

My character in the game was called Dakota Jones, and he was a Scrapper. Basically that means he fought with his bare hands and healed fast— more or less he was Wolverine. Hours spent roaming the city streets, fighting criminals, earning rep and leveling up. And eating pizza (haven’t really recovered a skinny body yet. Oh well).

I stopped playing as bigger, better things came along, and now, City of Heroes is no longer available. What I long for is a chance to get back in there and just… jump around. One of Dakota’s super-powers was the ability to “leap over tall buildings.” Not flying, per se, but I could steer in mid-air. I would spend hours just jumping around from one sky-scraper to the next, listening to music and not thinking about much.

Nowadays when I need to escape I wind up just browsing the internet. “Escape” is more a state of mind than anything else. I don’t lead the kind of break-neck life that requires any kind of actual physical sanctuary. I work from home, so I’m in this nest for most of the time anyway. No real need to “get away from it all.”

But I’d love to go back to City of Heroes and jump around, soar through the air, land with a satisfying thud under my boots and jump again. That’s what I think of when I think of getting away for a while.

January 6th: For Posterity

Your blog just became a viral sensation. What’s the one post you’d like new readers to see and remember you by? Write that post.

Let’s stop using the B word. You know what word I mean. I’m not asking you censor people, or pass judgment on those who use it. I’m not trying to be a prescriptive in any sense. I know how language works (well, as much as anyone can know how language works), so I know we can’t control the evolution of language. But I can ask you to choose to not say that word.

The word means nothing more than “women are inferior.” If you say “that person is a B-” you’re saying “that person has the quality of an inferior type of person.” It’s the N- word for women. It’s the S-word for what comes out of a person’s back side.

And there’s no male equivalent. There is no word that means “men are inferior.” At least, not in English, not that I am aware of. There are very few contexts where calling someone a “man” is an insult. Very few contexts where a man wishes people would stop treating him like a man.

The word continues to insult women, even when used ironically. We see this in the media all the time. A strong get-things-done woman will say “Yeah, I’m a real B- and proud of it.” The statement has force only because if the irony involved— and the irony requires that the operative word be denigrating. Same as if a person said “Yep, I’m the kind of asshole that gets things done.”

Even if you come from some belief systems that requires men and women be treated differently, just remember this: no two people are alike, no matter what their gender is. Two woman have nothing more in common than a single strand of chromosome. After that, there’s no way you can say one’s actions, beliefs, or comportments accurately describe the other one. Using gender to identify people is about as predictive as astrology.

Which means that if your experience with one woman is negative, it’s because of who she is an individual, not because of what women are in general. Pick some random quality in yourself— like your height. Now go up to someone and spit on them. “That’s what 5-11s do!”

Absolutely ridiculous.

I’m asking you to choose, for yourself, to not say this word anymore. I’m asking you to ask others.I am NOT asking you to force anyone. This word will lose all of it’s power and meaning if we choose to forget about it. If you were told your new boss is a real Mrs. Grundy, would you get a picture in your mind of what she must be like— or would you instead start to wonder about the person who used the word in the first place? And would you pass it on?

I’m thinking no. Let’s stop using the B word.