what we reveal when we say the things we say

sabin left this drawing lying on the stairs this morning. is it the monsters within?

ever since my harrowing adventure into the depths of hell with the social authorities on wednesday, i've been pondering language. and the ways in which we reveal so much more of ourselves than we even intend to in the vocabulary choices we make. the slip of the tongue that made a girl who was employed in the union office refer to me as "it there (den der)" instead of "her over there (hende der)" to her colleague was extremely telling of how those behind the desk really feel about all of us losers cattle unemployed folks. and i can tell you that referring to a person as den (it) in danish is quite rude. husband was shocked.

of course, i was largely thinking about what others reveal in what they say, but naturally i reveal myself too. i am definitely adverse to not belonging or any whiff of anything that makes me think that i'm not accepted. this is why the natural danish introversion towards people they don't know sometimes feels very insulting and provokes me. i feel it as a lack of acceptance of me as a person, even tho' after all these years, i know it's not really that. i can't really escape that that's how it feels to me. and it's partially because of how i choose to formulate it, even in describing it to myself.

our words shape our world. if we choose positive words, the world seems much more positive, negative words make things seem black. but we reveal our innermost thoughts and concerns with the things we express again and again, even if we're not actually speaking of those things. i'll explain what i mean by that...

the instructor on my "course" on wednesday revealed when he introduced himself that he was recently divorced and trying to sell a large house that seemed very empty during the half of the month when his children weren't there, but was the perfect size when they were. in my view, this information was totally unnecessary. what we needed to know were his name, who he worked for and maybe a bit about his qualifications/background - "i've been teaching these courses for x-years." we actually had no need for his age or marital status or to know he was having difficulty getting rid of a large house. (aside: danes always tell their age first off and in fact, i realized recently that they've trained me to do so too, because i did it when i introduced myself in our flickr 365 group! funny, because as an american, it used to shock the hell out of me when people did it. ack! i'm being assimilated!!)

but it ended up being interesting that he told us these things, because it went a long way towards explaining many of the things he said. we had a discussion of personal competences - your personal traits that make you a good employee - works well with others, smiles, helps out - you know, the kind of things that were on your kindergarten report card. throughout that discussion he dropped critical remarks again and again about how all of this was "feminine piss." it was clear that under the surface (but not very far under) he had a lot of anger and resentment towards women and anything that smacked of a  feminine mode of expression. that anger he had inside ended up more important than maintaining a professional relationship to his audience, so any political correctness or even common politeness towards half of his audience went out the window because that anger bubbled out in his vocabulary. time and again he revealed himself.

i was so taken aback by the whole experience that early yesterday morning, i wrote an email to the union, outlining my concerns about the linguistic choices made during the day and how they made me feel - i felt it was dehumanizing and demotivating to be referred to as an "unemployed welfare recipient"  again and again, not to mention being called "it," as if i were a cow or sheep. if the goal is actually to get people back to work as soon as possible, then depressing them further by constantly reminding them of their unfortunate status isn't really the right approach. everyone who entered that room on wednesday already felt badly enough about the fact that they were there - they knew they were job seekers who needed the help that's available to them in the system for (hopefully) an interim period.

the manager of the office called me mid-afternoon in response to my email and i had a long discussion with him about these linguistic choices. and how insulting it was to be called an asshole by the instructor because i had joined that union (which is a general one and actually posits itself as being founded on christian principles. HA!) and not another one for academics. he didn't know me from adam, even if he thought he was being funny, it was totally inappropriate to treat me that way. i don't know, perhaps i reminded him of the ex-wife.

we discussed the changing reality of the market and of the clientele for these courses. there are simply way more ordinary people out of work in this economic climate. and the system is still behaving as if denmark had virtual null unemployment. of course, this is partially the legislation and not the union's fault, but the way in which they relate to and communicate with their changing clientele is within their control. people have a union because they want to have a support net to fall back on when times get tough. if that support net doesn't support, but condescends, even just linguistically, then it's not serving its purpose.

the fifth circle of hell or weird wednesday gets even weirder

descending to the fifth circle of hell (wrath and sullenness)

my morning found me trudging up a staircase, following a fifty-something woman who had clearly eaten loads of garlic for breakfast, or perhaps just used it instead of perfume. i prayed frantically silently to odin that she was going somewhere else, but no, she was headed to the same classroom up on the top floor that i was. apparently odin was otherwise engaged.

because there is a gap of time between old job and new job, i have applied for unemployment benefits and one of the hoops one must jump through is to attend a two day "competence assessment" course during which one ends up with an online "CV" in a government system (the one which, if you recall, suggested after analyzing my education and experience that i do telemarketing). thus, you know that i have already placed my CV in the system on my own and am, as it were, well aware of my competence(s). so anyway, that's why i found myself following the clearly-afraid-of-vampires woman up the stairs early on a wednesday morning.

myself and 17 others were attending the day's sessions, which opened with the most patronizing 30 minutes of instructions and warnings i've witnessed in as long as i can remember. we were referred to as "unemployed welfare recipients" (very motivating) during the entire spiel, which included a whole lot of references to the apparently given fact that we were looking for jobs as chauffeurs and nursing home attendants (not that there's anything wrong with those things, but i didn't spent nine months on a fulbright in the balkans to lift old mr. hansen from his bed to his wheelchair). anyone who came in late was subjected to cutting and even more demeaning and patronizing remarks about their ability to tell time.

once i realized that i was making serious fingernail marks in the palms of my hands from holding them in fists to keep from screaming, i tuned out the capri- and thigh-length "sporty" boot-wearing woman's patronizing droning and looked around. nearly half of my fellow participants were in their upper fifties, four were clearly carpenters or bricklayers or the like, there were two who looked a bit like me and a few young women who looked like candidates for channel 4's the young mothers program.

the capri-clad woman with her asymmetrical haircut turned us over to an energetic bald man who told us straight away about his messy divorce and life with his three kids, who only spend half the month at his house. for otherwise cold, closed people, the danes surely do share some all-too personal details rather easily. he proceeded to throw every remaining scrap of political correctness out the window in what i eventually decided was a charming way (after i recovered from the shock that he outright called me an asshole for joining that more general union instead of the one for people with master's degrees). he actually said to a young girl who worked part time in a church, "what the hell does a kirketjener (her job title) do?" not really appreciating the irony of swearing about a church. i had to actually cover my mouth to restrain outright boisterous laughter at that one.

one of the women, who i thought i had spotted as a fellow academic, turned out to be a former computer programmer turned papergirl turned failed nursing student who left her 4-year nursing program after 6 years without finishing due to "ideological reasons." i came to feel real empathy for her, because i think she had a soft heart and it caused her to be unable to take the overwhelming reality of the world. on the other hand, i do think there are meds for that.

once i arranged not to be forced to go back for day two (i was clearly in the wrong room and apparently the wrong union), i sat back and enjoyed it. some of the more amusing stories that came out during the day:

~  a girl in her late 20s with two kids and no husband who wanted to be a mechanic because she liked cars (but had no training or skills in being a mechanic whatsoever and no idea how to get them. and she didn't even have a car).

~  a sweet (and very talkative) man of nearly 60 who had spent a lifetime as a salesman and had already applied for 500 jobs (he had a stack of documents to prove it).

~  a boy in his early 20s who said his ambition was to become a garbage man (after he attained the correct qualifications, including a driver's license, which he currently lacked).

~  a real asshole of a (self-declared) dyslexic bricklayer whose phone was in his coat pocket and kept ringing every 15-20 minutes all morning and who actually refused to turn it off or on silent when asked to do so (turned out he didn't know how to do it, so the future garbage man helped him out, but not until it had rung 4-5 times).

i'll admit i didn't get a whole lot out of the day, other than 11 pages of notes in my "blog about this" notebook. so perhaps it was worth it. but thank odin i don't have to go back tomorrow. so i can stay home and write some more about it, because there's so much more to share.