About Marginalization

The other day I wrote a long blog article about feeling marginalized...and refrained from posting it.  After reading it a couple of times, I had felt it had a kind of whiny sound to it...as if I were bemoaning being a kind of victim.  Well, I guess that factors into it all a little, but truth be told I don't particularly enjoy being the center of attention with the spotlight trained on me...better to be a little off to the side of the picture...while still being in it.  And if that inclination of mine communicates to others that marginalization is their best option in dealing with me then I suppose I bear some responsibility in that.  But in situations where no one knows me, or over long periods of time in the same place, there should be a least some kind of acknowledgement of my existence if not participation.  Let me give a couple of personal examples regarding photographs.  If you've read this blog over its existence, you'll know that I'm into distance running...going back to 2007 when I resurrected this activity after a hiatus of 31 years. I've engaged in many races over that period, my finishing times unspectacular-but-fulfilling experiences.  Since we now live in the Internet age, almost all of the races I've run in have had websites with posted results...and some of them show pictures taken during the race of the different runners.  In all the years I've engaged in these races, I have seen myself in only two pictures, both as an unrecognizable figure among many others, one with me partially hidden and the other showing my back from a distance.  Yet over and over again, while running different races, I see folks who I know are volunteers or officials standing there snapping photo after photo of runners passing by, including of me...yet my picture is consistently rejected when it comes to posting it with the others online.  Now go back much further in time, to the six-year period when I attended my junior/senior high school.  Each year they came out with a yearbook, featuring the perfunctory individual studio shots for each class year, arranged in alphabetical order.  But sprinkled throughout each yearbook's pages are also assorted cameo shots of different students.  You'd think that the law of averages alone would dictate that I'd be in at least a handful of them, considering the many photos displayed over a six-year span.  But of course, you probably already guessed it...no photos of me anywhere, even though like with the running races I would see yearbook staff from time to time taking pictures that I knew I'd be in. It all seems a bit whiny of me, doesn't it?  Oh well, we all have areas in our lives to complain about and in the grand scheme of things, griping about being marginalized around others is probably a relatively minor issue, especially considering that I'm an introvert to begin with.  On the other hand, I'm often pressed upon to engage in community relationships with others, but when in those situations, discover that they don't particularly want to engage in community relationships with me...

Before writing this article, I checked the Internet to see if others were like me in feeling unduly marginalized, only to discover that the term "marginalized" had been coopted by the PC/Woke crowd to designate people belonging to demographic groups from which I am excluded...great, even the marginalized marginalize me!