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| Pixabay - Roninmd |
The concept of “passing” has presumably been around since whenever the first person on the outside of the dominant social group of the day figured out they could hide in plain sight because they had the good fortune of looking like they belonged.
You’re a black person in the pre-Civil Rights era, but your genetics gave you light skin and straight hair. You’re Jewish in Hitler’s Germany, but with an acceptably Aryan bone structure as to draw no negative attention. You’re a trans woman using a women’s washroom, but your physical appearance is sufficiently “feminine” that nobody has a thought about that.
You’re a sex worker in a hostile room of those mean kind of feminists who hate sex work, but everybody treats you respectfully because you look like them and they have no idea what you do for a living. You’re LGBTQ in a land that will have none of it, living out your secrets from inside a heterosexual marriage. You’re a daily user of street drugs, but you’ve got a job, a nice house and a good haircut, and no one would think to label you a “drug addict.”
That’s passing. It’s obviously an uneasy place to exist, what with having to hide your true self in order to not be called out, fired, or even killed by the dominant social group. But in terms of how effective it has been throughout history as a means to live without harassment alongside the dominant social group, it brings home so well that decisions about who gets “othered” largely come down to visibility.
Since time immemorial and across all states of stigmatized being, we have always been free to be whoever we are as long as nobody finds us out. The dominant social group’s objections aren’t so much about someone actually being black, Jewish, trans, a drug user, etc, they’re about having to know that they are.
Sex work provides a useful local example. When I first moved to Victoria some 35 years ago, outdoor sex work strolls were common on both Government and Broad streets downtown. Everybody complained about them regularly.
Business owners lamented their presence. Social agencies worried about the vulnerability of the workers. Police conducted undercover operations where they pretended to be customers, in that usual way of pretending that enforcement would clear things up. Many, many media stories were written.
So when was the last time you heard complaints about sex work strolls in the city? So long ago I can’t even remember. That change isn’t because sex work doesn’t exist anymore, it’s because the instant connection via cellphones and online communication has ended much of the need to walk streets so your customers can find you.
A more distant example: Colombia. Not so long ago, it was widely viewed as a dangerous country neck-deep in the cocaine industry and completely unsuitable to visit. Today, tourists love it, and return home raving of its beauty and sophistication.
That isn’t because Colombia wiped out its cocaine industry. It’s because the industry decided to tone down its visibility. Dress a high-ranking narco in a nice suit and he looks no different than any other corporate guy.
Consider the current hubbub about street issues through this lens, and you can see why everyone is so worked up. It’s all so visible at this point. People have always lived sick and impoverished with profound disability, but now it’s fully out there for all to see. The days of being able to hide our social problems are long gone, especially during a housing crisis.
I suspect the fervor around starting up involuntary treatment again is largely related to this high-viz situation. We’re pretending that it’s about getting people the help they need, even if it means shoving it down their throats. But in reality, we’re mostly just craving a place where people we don’t want to look at are locked up out of our sight.
There’s obviously a big human-rights perspective on this issue of “passing,” of course. Someone should not have to blend in with the dominant social group just to ensure they have human rights.
But as a diehard pragmatist, I also see the utility of just reducing visibility so that we can all settle down for a while. Some kind of fast housing solution that turned down the public profile has a lot of potential to calm things down.
In a dream world, we would build some beautiful facility full of support where everyone with all their challenges could find peace, a bed to call their own, and the stability to take a few hopeful steps into a new life.
We’re far from a dream world, however, so how about we figure out a slapdash fix in the meantime? If an earthquake put 100 people onto the streets of Pandora Avenue, we’d scrabble together a hasty fix in a heartbeat. Yet here we are, years into the crisis, paralyzed, grasping at the ridiculous idea of locking everybody up “for their own good” just so we don’t have to see them anymore.
All around the world, people leading troubled lives find a modicum of peace and community in hidden places where they can get out of sight. Slums, tarp huts under the freeway, tent cities, condemned buildings, empty lots – not great solutions by any means, but still better than a filthy square of Pandora Avenue sidewalk amid the endless misery of constant scrutiny and community loathing.
Many big, big problems to sort out on Pandora, and no end in sight of new people falling into high-viz homelessness. But we can’t even get started when we’re this worked up. Making it all a little less visible has to be a priority. Get these poor people a place to live.
