fandomhigh | Practical Philosophy, Friday

"The men among us found themselves in slightly different bodies last weekend," Ender said wryly.

He spelled these things out, now; he didn't want Alluka to feel too confused. "This is an annual occurrence, and it gets easier to weather it. For me and my partner, it's mostly an annoyance now, though our daughter was a little thrown by the changes in her fathers."

His smile was as wry now as his tone.

"We live in a time where identity is at the forefront of people's minds. What you are has become an almost more fundamental question than who you are. Are you a man? A woman? Neither? Something in between? Who do you love, and how?" He took a sip of his bottle of water. "These questions are hard enough when you don't have an island merrily hustling up your phenotype for a weekend. So, of the boys, I ask: how did you experience last weekend? How did you feel about your body? Did you ignore it? Embrace it? Wait in a corner for it to blow over? Do you feel different now, about who you are? More certain? Less so?"

He put the bottle down in front of him.

"The girls will experience something like it sooner or later," he said, "And if there's anyone here who doesn't identify as either, well, you'll either be lucky or go through something unpleasant, and I'm sorry if you do. But to the rest of you, I ask, how much do our bodies say about our identity, do you think?"

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As yourself.

Partake of food and drink. Or just enjoy being outside.

It's why you're here, after all.

If you still feel the need to, after class.

Mmm, vacation.

Daphne Blake

Eric Bittle

Alluka Zoldyck

Ooooh, yeah, despite the fact that this was extremely relevant to Alluka, she wasn't actually aware that it was.

And, despite his efforts, a fair bit of the lecture had gone right over her head anyway.

"Um," she said, hugging her giraffe. "Shouldn't, shouldn't people just be themselves?"

Ender smiled a little.

Alluka made this a challenge, that was for sure, but he hardly minded. "In theory, yes," he said, "But in life-- who's Alluka? What makes you, you?"

Alluka giggled. "I'm Alluka. Why do I have to be made of things?"

"Because if someone met me as a stranger, and they told me you knew someone called Alluka, all I would know is your name," Ender said. "They could tell me you're cheerful, and you like stuffed animals, and I'd know a little more, but I still wouldn't really know you."

"But, but those things are me too," she said, a bit hesitantly. "So it's not like they wouldn't know me at all."

"It's true," Ender said agreeably. "It would be some of you. But not all of you. Because I bet sometimes you're sad, and sometimes you want to do things other than hanging out with your stuffed animals all the time. Someone could tell me you're a girl, but that wouldn't tell me what being a girl is like for you, you know?"

And that was where her brain sort of... short-circuited out of the conversation.

"But, but why do you need to know how being a girl is for me?"

"I don't need to know anything," Ender said lightly. "But it's part of who you are. I'm a boy who likes boys. That makes me different from any of the boys at this school who like girls. But I'm also different from any boy who didn't grow up with a brother and a sister, and I'm different from a girl who did. All of these things make me, me."

"I don't understand!" she said, frowning. "It's all so complicated."

"What don't you understand?" Ender asked gently. "Maybe then I can explain."

"I don't... why does this have to be thought about?" she asked, a bit plaintively. "Can't, can't it just be?"

"It can just be, if you're more comfortable with that," Ender said quietly. "But it's not always that easy. I couldn't just be when I was a child. I was a third child, and where I grew up, it was considered a terrible thing to have more than two children. Other kids bullied me for what I was."

Alluka was silent for a long moment. His story made her insides feel funny--bad-funny--so she didn't really know what to say.

"That doesn't mean you were bad," she said, finally.

She was talking about herself, more than him, but Alluka wasn't going to admit that to anyone.

Ender smiled a little. That statement... was more complicated than she knew.

"No," he said. "It doesn't mean I was bad. But it meant I couldn't just be. There would always be a part of me, thinking about who I was, wondering if things might be easier if I was something else. In the end, that made me angry, because I just wanted to be left alone."

"...Oh," she said, looking down.

Alluka never got angry, but she wondered similar things.

"It can be a good thing, to look at all our parts and think about what makes us ourselves," Ender said softly. "We can't change what we are. We can't make things easier or harder even if we want to. But we can learn to see what every part means, and love ourselves deeper, so if other people tell us some part of us makes us bad, we can believe wholeheartedly that they're wrong."

He sat back. "And if that's hard for us, well, knowing who and what we are makes it easier to find people who are like us, who can believe it for us."

Edited 2015-06-13 19:33 (UTC)

Most of that was stuff that Alluka didn't want to think about, so it went over her head.

But only because she didn't want to consider it too closely.

"What if they're right?" she asked though.

"They will never be fully right," Ender said quietly. "We have bad parts and good parts, but we are never wrong. Nobody doesn't have something in them that makes them right. Usually more parts."

Alluka didn't look... even remotely convinced.

But she wasn't going to argue with him when this made her feel twisted up inside.

"I don't like parts," she decided. "They're mean."

"Parts are hard," Ender said, "and complicated. I guess that can make them mean, too."

He took a breath. It wasn't like this was an easy topic for him, either.

"I guess it's like this," he said. "You can do good things and bad things. Anybody can. But you have a right to be here, always, no matter what your parts are."

Alluka wondered if her parents would agree with him. She wasn't certain she agreed with him.

But she liked the sound of being allowed to be, at the same time.

She just hugged her giraffe a bit tighter though, and decided not to say anything.

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