If I disagree with you, it's because you are wrong.

I found these two images at about the same time, and I think it's significant, or at least appropriate. In place of "proverbs", you may insert: health advice, political opinions, convictions about race, sexual orientation and gender, denial of various global phenomena, and so on, and so on. 

What galls me is that practically no one prefaces their comments with "I believe that. . . " or "I think. . . " or "It has been my experience that. . . ", followed by a declaration of personal belief. Instead we get opinions hurled like explosive projectiles, and reactions like, "You fxxing moron, get back on your meds!". 

I was thinking today. . . just my opinion, but I was thinking what a disappointment the internet has become. When it was new, there was a sense of excitement, the unprecedented possibility to instantly access information and news, and global communications at light speed that SURELY would bring humanity together at last.

It has hardly come true, and sometimes feels like the opposite. Bland and cliched memes, almost always misspelled, represent practically the only form of benevolently-expressed opinion/sentiment. Read the comments section on just about any web page, and at some point, deeper down, it will devolve into snarling, mudslinging and thuggish name-calling. A lot of pages have started posting warnings to try to screen this shit out.

Let's not get into that left-out feeling, which I am sure only I experience (wink-wink, irony-irony), making me feel like an awkward thirteen-year-old girl. I tried to express some of that in a Facebook post: "friends" (meaning people they've never met who are potentially valuable business contacts) speaking to each other in a kind of impenetrable code that is designed to make others feel left out. 

What I got was two responses (as opposed to the few hundred sympathetic replies an "important" person would get), both from people who occasionally comment on my posts. One sent me a link which purported to tell me how to be more popular on Facebook so that my posts would reach more people. 

This wasn't what I was talking about. At all. I was talking about sensitivity to others, at least an attempt at inclusiveness in a very public medium, and not getting so much obvious pleasure from exclusivity. What she gave me was help for somebody who (she felt) obviously needed it, in order to step into line with the in-crowd. To change myself in order to join the popularity mill, instead of trying to change the system.

The other comment in essence said, "Well, I don't have that problem. I have lots of friends and I don't think anybody ever speaks in code. It never occurred to me to feel left out."

In other words, it's just you. Fine. Her opinion! But that doesn't answer the question: why do you think it's just me?

I'm an uneasy fit with all this social media stuff and would bail, if I didn't want to at least try to stay connected with the literary world. But high school dynamics continue unto death, I guess. My three novels failed, not because they were shitty quality but because they failed to be "popular", which means moving copies. No one talks about this, and if I try to get a discussion going about it, everyone looks away. They're embarrassed for me, somehow, and don't want to get caught up in it. It is the most entrenched, unspoken taboo in the writing field. 

But it's true! To be an author (as opposed to a writer), you have to be read. How else can it be defined? Why is that so unreasonable, so crass? To be read, you have to sell copies, but if you even say this out loud, you're seen as mercenary and an attention whore. But a concert pianist is not expected to play in an empty hall.

I guess this will be seen as a "rant", but at the same time, a blog is supposed to be a place you can express your feelings. Instead, I will go and do something else, entertain myself, have some fun - which I do, and which is the main purpose of keeping this blog going. After all, no one can steal my creativity, which I believe is intact in spite of everything.  I very seldom look at views, because if I get too much into numbers, it will be over. But my days of writing serious novels or even short stories are over. I have retired from the impossible horse race in which I always seem to bring up the rear.

Steven Galloway: outside of Canada, nobody cares

BLOGGER'S LAMENT.  I am absolutely exhausted. Just wiped out. I've been - somehow - don't know how - didn't want to do it, didn't want to do it - caught up in the Steven Galloway "affaire".

What's that, you ask? Who he? Outside of Canada, nobody cares. Steven Galloway is a former professor of Creative Writing at UBC (University of British Columbia, for my hordes of overseas fans). Professor Galloway had a habit of sexually assaulting female students, quite a number of them in fact, and some of them were beginning to actually complain about it. After an internal investigation, UBC dismissed him. 

But that is not the end, readers! The muck really begins here. In the past few days, 80 of Canada's creme de la creme/elite/"just plain old BEST" authors all lined up to sign an "open letter" to UBC protesting his dismissal. These Big 80, described in the press as "a Who's Who" of Canadian Literature, didn't think it was too gol-dern fair for The Professor to be held accountable for his actions - not to the point of actually losing his job! They insisted that a proper investigation be held to drag the situation out endlessly and allow Galloway to hire some crack lawyer who would blow down the (likely poor and marginalized) injured parties with one breath.

But the more people looked at this petition and the signatures under it, the more they smelled days'-old fish.

UBC is known as a sort of literary mill, a vast machine churning out new writers, who then, eventually, become Establishment: the new elite of CanLit. This is how the system renews itself: think of an immense, seething termite queen whose sole purpose is spewing out more termites.

If one unit of this family (and I use the term in a Sicilian sense) suffers in any way, the others must, according to their contract, rush to his/her aid. It is the termite way, and it is immutable.

The whole thing made me ill. To my mind, it was an extreme example of the wagons going in a circle, not to mention what Orwell might have called "wethink" (or, perhaps, "we-think"). A number of these CanLit muckety-mucks actually took their names OFF the "open" letter (which, to my mind, was about as closed a thing as I have ever seen), once they realized what it was they had actually signed.

Not to jest, because this has left me feeling like road kill. For the glittering Literatti will surely mass together when one of their own is under attack - while casually throwing a number of vulnerable, relatively powerless sexual assault survivors under the bus.

Or so it seems to me. 

Margaret Atwood, the Queen Bee or perhaps the Termite Queen of CanLit, wrote a letter of her own, which I won't reproduce here, but it's haughty. She tries to backtrack on her original statement, which compared Steven Galloway's dismissal to being burned at the stake in Salem. (Her references to a "witch hunt" strongly implied the students' claims were driven by hysterical delusion).

She has since made an effort to cover her literary ass, but it's a little late for that. Charmingly, she does remind us all that Galloway was "thrown in a mental hospital", which is apparently the worst fate which can befall a human being. The indignity of it - the horror, the shame - a Gulag Archipelago, UBC-style! It was all designed to cue the "He's Really The Victim" music.

If I jest about all this, it's so I won't cry. The whole thing exhausts me. Like Dorothy Parker, I only jest to keep from howling. (And please don't think I am comparing myself to her - I stopped drinking 26 years ago).

I hate Facebook.

This post has been stewing around in my brain for months now, and I still don’t know if I’m ready to write it.  Or, perhaps, to be ostracized for it.

For me, Facebook was a matter of “should”. Hell, I’m a writer, aren’t I? I want to communicate, don’t I? I want to promote (and promote, and promote) my next book, don’t I? What’s the matter with me, anyway?

So I stepped, reluctantly, across the barbed-wire threshhold into an atmosphere that reminded me, most alarmingly, of the playground.

Were you ever bullied? Of course not! You wouldn’t be reading this at all unless you’re already on Facebook (and curious as to why anyone would crucify themselves by daring to say they hate it). And if you’re on Facebook, you have at least 1500 “friends” and have always been popular and have never been bullied and and and (as William Shatner once so eloquently put it) “blah blah blah!”

When I stumbled into this thing I was a stranger in a strange land. Though I had managed over the years to acclimatize myself to basic computer skills like email and blogging and setting up a web site, and all that sort of thing, I didn’t have a clue how to do Facebook and soon found that there were no instructions. It was that same old bitter dynamic that nearly destroyed me in my youth: I had gotten to the party far too late, everyone knew each other already, and they most certainly did not want ME around to clutter up their nice little tight-knit in-group.

When I finally figured out how to post comments, I gingerly reached out for help with the system and got exactly no response. There was this dense, embarrassed silence. It felt like I had just said, “hey, someone help me! I don’t know how to use the bathroom.”

I felt like an incontinent old lady stumbling around in the dark.

Soon, I was alarmed to learn that most of my contacts – feeble in number, at the start – had at least 300 “friends” (300 being the starting point for most people), and some had well over 1000. Some panic light came on in my solar plexus and began to blink, blink, blink.

I was bullied – a lot – in school and outside of it. This was before bullying came out of the shame closet and teen suicide attempts inspired compassion instead of ever-more-elaborate and ruthless forms of ostracism. I still can’t really figure it out: I didn’t have green skin, I didn’t have two heads. Believe it or not, I did have friends, and these friends tended to be loyal and close. In some cases, I call them friends still (though not on Facebook).

So I wasn’t some piece of shit meandering along with a target painted on my forehead (but you’d never know it from the way I was treated). I was persecuted – there’s no other word for it. I was more than unpopular, I wasn’t even on the screen. So trying to find my way on Facebook stirred up some of the worst feelings from the bottom of the sludge barrel. A thousand friends? Would I meet that many people in a lifetime?

Dumb, stupid, incontinent old lady me! These weren’t friends. These were, well, I don’t know what they were. I couldn’t figure it out. When I tried to answer the question (or statement) “what’s on your mind today”, and if my statement had any sense of need or desire for help or any sort of vulnerability in it at all, I was completely ignored. I couldn’t say anything remotely critical  or I was “corrected”. Get back in line, fruitcake!

Gradually this changed as I realized I had to “cultivate” these thousand-or-so friends, that they likely wouldn’t just fly into my nest spontaneously. And a funny thing happened. From that point on, if I ever said anything at all or even commented on some else’s “anything”, I was generally sniped at.

I was made to feel “geez, don’t you even know how things work around here?” – as if I didn’t already feel that way! In one case I tried to explain that I wanted to be careful who I took on as a “friend” and I would “unfriend” anyone who made me uncomfortable for any reason. Someone answered something like “wtf lady give them three tries then they’re out why don’t u lol?” Another said “I just let in anyone. Any old person who comes along, in the parking lot, out in the alley, hehheheheh.” The feeling was, OF COURSE you have to be careful, you fucking idiot, why are you making such a retarded statement anyway? Or else it meant, what? You have discernment? This isn’t about quality. It’s about volume.

You say it isn’t? A thousand friends. Two thousand? That’s volume.

I’m reading more and more articles now about how Facebook is making us all much more lonely in a society where loneliness is already epidemic. Every time I force myself to go on Facebook I feel palpably pushed away. It isn’t fun. Since almost all my contacts are in the writing and publishing field, 95% of what I read is  self-promotion, done in a breezy “oh by the way” style that provides a nice pink floral veneer. Call it the Facebook wallpaper scheme.

Shockingly, this even seems to apply to writers who feel they're renegades and outside the mainstream and standing up to the status quo.

Yes, I’m a writer too and the whole reason I got coerced into this thing is so that I can promote my next novel, which is written but not exactly published yet. Maybe this is my incontinent-old-lady mentality rearing up again, but I was taught NEVER to refer to my accomplishments in the writing field. You’d have to pry it out of me with forceps that I ever won an award, or was shortlisted (that weird sister to success that provides a sort of shadow-gratification for the up-and-coming). You’d have to turn me upside down and shake me to make me admit I had ever had a positive review.  I was a Canadian, and this was the proper thing to do. Anything else was inexcusable arrogance and rudeness and would alienate everyone for sure.

Now it has been turned inside-out and upside-down, and EVERY occasion, every launch, every luncheon, every book-signing-where-one-person-shows-up-because-they-think-it’s-a-different-book, probably about fishing, is now a chance to turn clownish cartwheels and wag your stumpy little Wheaten Terrier tail for attention.

I’m sorry, folks, but I am just so sick of this.

Yes! I see that this is the information age. Yes! I see that selling a book (nobody knows this better than me, believe me) is now so difficult that one must become a shameless self-promoter to get anywhere at all.

Yes. I get it.

But I have yet to see ANYONE on Facebook really express any feelings about anything except a sort of blandified, self-involved glee. If someone is feeling devastating grief, they stick a happy face over it. Though it was probably designed for it, it is NOT a forum for any sort of meaningful communication between human beings.

But there are people who spend many hours a day “on” Facebook. Lonely?  Why would we be that?

I haven’t cancelled my account just yet, and I don’t know why except I still have a thread of hope that my book will find a home. I believe it is now a requirement, unless you want to be viewed as a crackpot or a Luddite. And I am aware that Facebook is so popular now that you do not dare criticize it unless you work for the New York Times or something. Or the Atlantic Monthly. So what will I do if something does happen? Must I treat Facebook like the vast garbled bulletin board (or billboard, or flashing neon sign) of ego that it truly is, get in line, and say my say? Will I have to learn to cartwheel?

My immediate concern is that I will be crucified for daring to say what I really think about all this. It’s deeply taboo to say you hate Facebook. We. All. Love. It. Don’t we? You don’t? Just get off it, then. Shut up and go away. There goes freedom of speech – yet another casuality of the blandly conformist “we-think” that would make George Orwell turn over in his grave.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

But the greatest of these. . .

When 17-year-old Tory Inglis went to New Westminster's first Pride celebration last June, she was pretty excited about it.

It's not easy being a gay teenager. In spite of all the huge strides we've supposedly made in the realm of "tolerance" (and what does it mean when I "tolerate" you? It's a pretty stingy word), prejudice and even outright contempt lurk in hidden and not-so-hidden places. But Tory really wanted to go. An event such as this, vibrant and joyful, would boost the spirits of any young person who sometimes feels marginalized by who she is.

Tori's picture in the Vancouver Province newspaper reveals a shy-looking, serious young woman in dark-framed glasses, a girl who never thought she'd get into such dire trouble just for going to a parade. She hardly looks like a foaming radical, but rather someone who's quietly but fervently seeking authenticity in a world full of posturing.

Yes, Tory went to the Pride parade, and while she was there, someone snapped a picture of her with (the story says) "two gay men". And that would have been that, except for another truth about Tory: she has been a lifelong, active member of First Presbyterian Church, baptised and confirmed.

When the photo came out in the June 12 edition of the Royal City Record, it didn't just cause a stir.

It caused a storm.

There must have been much buzzing about this before Tory was called into the principal's office (so to speak). It was about a month after the photo appeared in the local paper that she was told to meet with the minister "and a female member of the church" (a buffer? The article doesn't say).

The response was predictable. Basically, Tory had her hand slapped. But it was worse than that. She was scolded for being a bad role model, for "promoting a sexual lifestyle".

She knew that, like most denominations, her church was against gay marriage, but she never expected to be told to step down as a junior youth leader. Tory sat and quietly wept during the disciplinary hearing (for that's what it was). Perhaps her tormentors felt this was a good thing, a sign of repentance.

The Province article states, "The minister told her the church would prefer if she withdraw from the group that organized the Pride events. But she refused and withdrew her membership from the church instead."

I have been through something like this in my own church, not over my sexual orientation but for my profound, disturbing doubts about leadership and the agenda we were expected to follow, especially in light of the fact that "our" church (unlike everyone else) claims to be gay-friendly and "even" ordains openly gay ministers, so long as they don't practice it beyond the bonds of monogamy.

Keep it quiet, boys and girls. No Pride parade photos, OK? If a United Church minister appeared on one of those floats, what would happen? Can you guess?

And dare I even mention the possibility that a minister might be furthering his own agenda, his need for public recognition: that he might have "issues" that he can only work out in front of the cameras on national television? Worse than that: why didn't anyone object to having these cameras filming the worship service, and why can't I even talk to anyone about it? And how about this: why is it OK and even "courageous" for him to do this, and not OK for Tory to be photographed at a parade?

"I see a lot of shallowness," a friend of mine said years ago. I have never seen such commitment and passion in a human being, but organized religion slowly and systematically snuffed it out.

Tory has fortunately received supportive calls from other church members, but the elders are adamant that she sinned in some fundamental way. Her mother commented, "I never thought they'd say she's not a good role model, because she is, and we've raised her to be that way. Our belief is that God created us to be who we are, and I've raised her to be true to who she is."

Imagine that. Another sinner! God created lesbians and gays? What sort of heresy is this?

What would Jesus say? Well. . . he didn't say anything at all about homosexuality, in spite of the fact that fundamentalists like to twist the gospel into something resembling a pretzel. As for marriage, he was sort of against it, telling people it might be better if they were celibate, though acknowledging that most people couldn't manage it.

If I may indulge in duelling Bible quotes, here's a pretty good one from 1st Corinthians: "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." - J. Christ.

In being true to herself, Tory was forced to step down from a lifelong, cherished commitment. I can say to you now that this is about as painful as losing an arm. When you sever ties like that, you leave a huge chunk of yourself behind.

But if she stayed on, what would be the consequences? Whispered conversations, quickly hushed when she appears? Judgemental glances? Threats to leave if she stays?

One of the organizers of the Royal City Pride Society describes Tory as "intelligent, quiet and shy". Hardly the tattooed, pierced, raging radical we sometimes see on the news. This young woman quietly made a life-changing decision, choosing authenticity over phoniness, reality over posturing.

And she paid the price.

Tory made an incredible statement that made the hair on my arms stand up: "Above all, I want to promote peace and love and acceptance. And in a place that condemns people for loving, I would much rather be in a place that accepts people for who they are."

Heresy! Floats, drag queens, marching bands. People so "out" they're in your face. How dare she, a Christian church-goer, align herself with such destructive nonsense? How can any 17-year-old know she's gay, anyway? Isn't it just a phase, won't she come around if we just put her together with a nice young man in the youth group? Even if she is gay, can't she just get married anyway to avoid embarrassment (or at least keep quiet about it)?

These are the strictures of the past, and they carry forward in a distressing way. Every so often I think about returning to a church I attended for 15 years, but I find I just can't do it. There is an inauthenticity there that clangs like a cymbal, resounds like a hollow gong, and there isn't a single person I can talk to about it without the fear of being judged or even edged out.

"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing," a great writer once said.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

That sounds like a pretty good desription of a courageous young woman named Tory Inglis.