Look Behind You!

There is being unlucky, and there is being really unlucky. Of course, it can’t always be said that being a member of a minority group is necessarily an unlucky position to be in, but many minorities – by their very nature – receive less than favourable treatment from their majority counterparts, and so it might be assumed that being a member of a minority is, shall we say, an unwelcome place to be.

Imagine my reaction then to a television programme I was watching yesterday which featured a member of a support group for deaf gay immigrants in Sweden. I don’t mean a support group that includes deaf people as well as gay people as well as immigrants to Sweden. No, I mean a support group for people who are all three of these. The person being interviewed did not reveal how large this group is, but given that the percentage of people in the population with profound deafness is reckoned to be less than 2%; and given that (although it’s impossible to be accurate on this) the percentage of gay people in western culture is somewhere between 5-10%, and given that the immigrant population in Sweden is less than 5% of its total, and given further that Sweden has a total population of less than 10 million people, the chances of finding someone else in this group must be, I would think, fairly small.

This reminds me of a strange game I once played on a beach in Majorca. We were split into four groups – I can’t now remember what the groups were but let’s say they were pigs, sheep, chickens and cows. We were then blindfolded and scattered (by kindly assistants) to far flung parts of the beach whereupon we then had to seek out our fellow species by means of using our particular animal’s call only. Once we'd found someone whose call matched our own, we clung on to them and set off together to find others on the beach who were the same as us. It was harder than it sounds – there was such a cacophony of moos and oinks and bleats and clucks that it was difficult to locate someone who was in ‘your gang’. Although it was just done for a laugh, I found that it was nevertheless a strange experience to feel alienated and isolated, and to be desperately calling for recognition from people who were in my group, whilst straining in my blindness and hoping to hear a call that matched my own. Seemingly I was surrounded by every other kind of animal but my own kind as I struggled to locate a familiar, friendly voice in the wilderness. This must be similar to how a deaf gay immigrant to Sweden might feel, I think.

There is a further analogy (if you can call it that) to all of this, for it also reminds me of the story in Greek mythology about the suffering we endure to find our own soulmate. The story goes that originally we humans were combined of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. Zeus feared that this made us too powerful and so he split us all in half, condemning us to spend the rest of our lives wandering around the world searching for the other half to make us complete again. We are all looking for our soulmate, and the reason why this invokes so much suffering is because – like in the game on the beach – there is so much other noise and distraction going on, and so many random collisions, that the chances of making the right connection are always going to be relatively small.

Hmm. Bit of a mean-spirited bugger, that Zeus fellah, don’t you think?