[Ansteorra] RE: the Attack of the "Authenticity Police"

[Marc Carlson]

Just a warning, this is one of those kinda rambling messages, but if you 
take the time and bear with me, I think it actually goes someplace…

The problem with things like this term "Authenticity Police", and its 
related terms is that they are labels intended to elicit a specific 
knee-jerk response, as well as being labels meant to diminish the other 
person’s position to an object that can simply be dismissed.  In short, they 
encourage people to just say things without thinking.  For example, while I 
made the point yesterday that I am not offended by terms like troll, -ocrat 
terms, etc.; being called a “nazi” –is- offensive to me (and many others), 
and my knee-jerk response to it tends to be becoming deeply and aggressively 
unpleasant to the speaker/writer.   “Authenticity police” does not offend 
me, it’s just inaccurate since the SCA has no rigid authenticity standards 
there is nothing to police.  It’s even more inaccurate to me since I make 
such a fuss about NOT telling people that they HAVE to do x, y, or z   (I 
mean, I guess I could, but what would the purpose be?).  “Authenticity 
Maven”, is still a label meant to diminish the other person’s position to an 
object that can simply be dismissed, but at least it’s not inaccurate in 
most cases.

Now, I –have- been called an authenticity Nazi by someone who I’m quite 
certain was meaning it as a compliment, because all she’d ever heard it used 
for was as something interchangeable with authenticity maven.  And so she 
was understandably confused when I did not take it as a compliment.

I have also been called an authenticity Nazi by people who knew exactly what 
the term meant, because they wanted to be insulting.

Ok, as has been discussed here, it is believed that there are some people 
who want to push their views on authenticity onto others, and make them toe 
the line, become more authentic and so on.  Is this true?  I’d be stupid to 
say no, it never happens – I have weekly conversations with people who think 
this is actually a good idea, but are frustrated since the SCA offers them 
no recourse.  I daresay, the fact that there –is- no outlet for regular 
authenticity is a prime reason that many people leave the SCA.

This is different from saying that there are people who stalk the 
unsuspecting, jump them and beat them over their head with “what you are 
wearing/doing/whatever is wrong so stop doing it”.  Now, again, this happens 
certainly (the first event I ever attended I had the then crown stop me and 
dress me down for not being attired to his level of accuracy, something I 
find highly amusing these days but at the time really made me angry).  Is it 
common?  Without finding someway to do a broad research study to actually 
test the numbers, I can’t say, but my belief is that it isn’t as prevalent 
as is believed.   What –is- common is to have people who are very bad at 
giving helpful suggestions on the one hand, and others who are overly 
defensive on the other.

I once had a rather interesting disagreement with William Blackfox when he 
tried to explain that something I was wearing was inaccurate.  Now, William 
was a really great guy and a brilliant artist and such, but was not always 
the most elegant in face to face discussions, and what he was saying could 
well have seemed to be criticism had I chosen to take  it that way, when in 
fact all he was really trying to do was be helpful.

Now, honestly, I have many examples of people being defensive -- for example 
the guy who took offense just because I told him that I liked his boots – he 
assumed I was being snide; or the guy who told me that I was being critical 
of what he was wearing just by being dressed more accurately than he was.  
People are going to find offense if they want to see it.

The issue of course is that no one likes to be told that what they are doing 
is wrong, and there is often an unspoken assumption that if a person is told 
that what they are doing/saying/wearing is wrong, that there must be an 
implicit “stop doing that”.  This becomes a problem when in fact this isn’t 
actually the case.

If I were to take the position that “Byzantines are not really European, 
they talk that funny Greek language, not good real Latin, and should just be 
barred from the SCA;” Xene, and others, would be well within THEIR rights to 
disagree.  We might then proceed to array our arguments, and debate the 
issue.   This might leave us ultimately with just continuing to disagreeing 
on the matter  [as an aside, I have nothing against Byzantines – except that 
they don’t have enough archaeological data on shoes available to me in a 
language I can read… *mutter*].    Now it really doesn’t matter how good my 
arguments are, how much better I think being an Irishman trapped in England 
is over any of that Byzantine stuff – by the way the SCA is structured (and 
I expect always will be), there is no way I can force anyone to not be 
Byzantine.   The only thing I can do is show by example that I think it’s 
better, and why, and hope for some sort of understanding.

Now, we come to the really interesting part of this.  Remember the guy who 
said I was pressuring him just by being dressed better than he was?   This 
is not as stupid sounding as it first seems.  Once upon a time, there were a 
lot of people who were interested in Authenticity, and they did their thing 
quietly and alone, and it was generally accepted by the people who just 
wanted to not have to worry about that sort of thing (unless of course they 
tried to step out of their boundaries and threaten the status quo).  They 
had no real way to communicate with others, or even know if there WERE 
others who were interested in the same sorts of things they were [BTW, this 
is written somewhat hyperbolically, but I’m trying to make a point].  Then 
came the Internet and that changed – authenticists got the chance to start 
to exchange information and see that they were not in fact alone.  And you 
know what?  In the past 10 years or so, the level of attire has gotten more 
accurate overall.

Except that as more people become interested in doing things more 
authentically, there is an increased level of peer pressure (pressure from 
one’s peers, not pressure from the peerage, although there is some of that 
too in some cases) on those people who really have no interest other than 
doing things the good old SCA way.  Now, those of us who aren’t interested 
in doing things the good old SCA way but want to do things more historically 
accurate experience the same sort of peer pressure as well.  The use of a 
standardized tradition based argot is one way of enforcing that peer 
pressure, so that every time we get hit in the face with terms like “troll” 
or “garb” or whatnot, we are being told, you are not one of us, you do not 
belong to OUR group unless you conform and use our terms.  Once upon a time, 
this worked great, but now there are enough of us that we ARE a threat to 
what people who are not like us want to do, just by our own presence – just 
as they present a continual presence we have to contend with and avoid in 
order to do what WE want to do.

So is this an insurmountably polarized diad?  I don’t think it has to be.   
First, most people aren’t strictly one OR the other, but rather fall 
somewhere in the middle ground.  Second, we all _have_ to accept that the 
SCA, like all social structures, has to evolve to a certain extent, however, 
with the more conservative traditionalists slowing down that evolution – and 
that conflict isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Growth and chance is good, but 
unrestricted growth and change is potentially cancerous.   The SCA’s lack of 
authenticity standards is not, as some might argue, a bad thing – it’s a 
good thing.  That lack protects those of us who want to do MORE, just as it 
protects the traditionalists who aren’t interested in doing historical 
accuracy.

Tolerance isn’t just learning to accept that others are there; I suspect 
it’s more learning to just not care about what they are doing, and still 
doing what you want to do.

To those who want to stick with the traditional SCA stuff, I’m glad to hear 
it.  I respect what you are doing, but I expect that same respect.  I will 
try not to insult you, if you will stop insulting me.  I understand that you 
can feel pressured, so do we.   I am not going to stop doing what I am doing 
just to please you, nor do I expect you to change what you are doing to 
please me.  If you can’t learn to live _with_ me, and accept that we are not 
going to agree on this (and vice versa) we are both going to lose.

Marc/Diarmaid