"The Fringe"

I want to talk about "the fringe" for a minute.

It's an interesting thing, this "fringe." The way it's used in conversation, usually by someone trying to put down a point you're making. I've apparently been interacting with it a lot the past week, due to suggesting the prejudice+power=racism/sexism definition... "Some definition developed by irrational and at times irrelevant minority" "on the fringe" is what I was told.

As though being on the "fringe" means you have nothing useful to say.

Interesting, that.

I suppose if they had agreed with me, I would be on "the cutting edge."

And I find it sort of, amusing, this choice of word, given it's dictionary definition: something regarded as peripheral, marginal, secondary, or extreme in relation to something else. Amusing because, isn't basically the whole point how people of color and women have been pushed to the periphery? How we have been systematically marginalized by society in our different ways?

By default then, our opinions on that MUST come from the fringe! Mustn't they?? We've been put there! YOU put us here! And then the place where you have put us, you use against us, to discredit the thoughts that arise out here.

But of course the predominantly white men who used these words against my suggestion don't see the irony of any of this. I thought I would share the joke with my small circle on this fringe anyway...


A related post...Extremists and Polarity