The Tyranny of Socks

I was going to post about my response to ibarw (International Blog Against Racism Week; visit the comm for links and discussion), and kept putting it off, because I get the sense that people's feelings are still rather raw, and goodness knows we don't need another round of "those Italians/Hungarians/Russians/Protestants/whatevers beat up my grandparents!" I think that IBARW is a good and useful thing, irrespective of how it makes me feel.

Now I'm in the situation where I think I ought to speak up about that. This is in response to a chain of posts which have something to do with that thing about bands playing gay on stage which (a) I do not know anything about and (b) I do not care anything about. As far as I'm concerned, what I'm talking about starts here, with a comment which I am going to come out and say is anti-semitic. chopchica, who I do not know at all, responds here. And finally technosage examined her own discomfort with discussions of antisemitism here.

( Under the cut I talk about antisemitism and racism. There is political content. I also talk about IBARW. That's all the warning you get. )

Every spring, at around this time of year, my grammar school sponsored a trip for the eighth (or was it seventh?) grade students--we went to Quebec City, to stay with French families. It was supposed to be a language immersion thing, but of course the kids we were staying with were just as happy to speak English, so it wasn't really. At one point someone asked our French teacher why the exchange was never returned--why the kids from Quebec never came to stay with us. She (utterly unaware of tact) explained that their parents would never permit it--as far as they were concerned, San Francisco was a modern-day Babylon, a sinkhole of vice and sin, and they didn't want their children coming into contact with it.

OK, so she didn't really say "sinkhole of vice and sin." But it was something like that.

It was the first time I realized that I was growing up not just in a place, but also in an Idea, and that there were people who were afraid of that Idea. (Since then, many people have told me that they were afraid of some place I've lived, usually Chicago. I smile and try not to think badly of them.) It seemed strange at the time, and it still seems strange. I mean, we were just living our lives. There may have been terrible and dramatic events swirling all around us--and indeed there were--but when you're growing up these things don't seem extraordinary.

In retrospect, it was like living just at the edge of an Armistead Maupin novel, and I feel extraordinarily lucky to have grown up in that world, to have been exposed to that Idea (whatever it was) before I could possibly know that it was something people were afraid of.

There's an article in this week's New Yorker on personality assessment, and it reminded me of some of the thought's I'd had while watching the "50 things" meme going around. One of the sets of five facts, if I recall correctly, were to be "about your core personality." Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if I even have one of those.

The problem came up last time I looked at the MBTI test*; I read through the questions and most of the time the only answers I had were "Yes and No," or "Sometimes." It's not that I have a poorly defined personality, or feel that I don't know who I am; it's just that my answers to most of the questions on the test depend on the context. For example, in many social contexts I hang back rather than push to the center of whatever's going on. But the career I've chosen also means that I spend time talking to a large audience--in that context, I not only demand to be the center of attention, but also enjoy it. Other answers depend on whether I'm answering with my teaching personality, my researcher personality or my fannish personality: all of these are "the real me" in some sense. Part of me likes to work on well-defined projects with regular assessment from others; another part of me wants to be left alone to play with a few big questions. I don't feel particularly fragmented or unstable; on the contrary, I think I have a very clear sense of who I am. I just can't answer most of the MBTI questions.

The New Yorker article had some interesting things to say about the origins of the MBTI test, which confirmed my suspicion that it was more or less claptrap. Don't get me wrong: I love personality tests. They feed a kind of self-centered urge to examine my own navel for clues that it is, in fact, the most interesting navel in the world.** And there's the nice sense of categorization, of membership in a group: "Oh," you can say, "You're an INTJ too? Obviously we're meant to be the very best of friends." It's a useful token in interpersonal relationships--a form of self-identification. So is saying "I'm a Dunnett fan," or "I adore crazy Uncle Arvin," or "I read poetry for pleasure"--and I wonder if those aren't more valid forms of self-identification. At least I know that all three statements are true. None of them, alas, have much to do with a core personality, whatever that may be.***




* The Myers-Briggs Type Index test--it's the thing that tells you if you're INTP or EsFJ or whatever, and also what that means.

** I'd love to be psychoanalyzed, for just that reason; luckily I lack the necessary money and possess the sense to know that it would be a waste of the analyst's time.

*** The article is Malcom Gladwell, "Personality Plus." The New Yorker, Sept. 20 2004, pp. 42-48. It doesn't seem to be available on line.