Grateful for Hail Mary: On choosing to be visible

Photo from a recent Talent Show I attended, hosted by the local Pride committee.

Grateful for Hail Mary: On choosing to be visible

by Jen Davies, nerd

A lot about identity is visible, for example in skintone or in religious symbols we might wear. Two identities I hold, asexuality and nerd, are only visible when I choose to share them, which is a real privilege for me. I can decide when and where to bring them into the space I'm in. And I've decided over the last year or two that I wanted to make them more visible.

I only realized a few years ago that I was ace. I grew up in places and at a time when that identity wasn't recognized as part of the spectrum of sexual identity, though in hindsight it sure explains a lot about why I preferred to hang around young men who were gay! Low risk of being hit on. For the record, I have probably ended up demisexual because I have been in a happily committed relationship with my spouse for 20+ years. And this is another privilege: my home life appears heterosexual, although we always had fur babies rather than human ones. (We both work with young people - we are happy to contribute to raising other people's kids.) I make a point of going to Pride-related events, and whether I'm perceived as an ally or if people know I'm part of the community, either way is fine - and that's how I found myself in the front row a the talent show, to cheer folks on.

I'm actually more anxious talking about being a scifi nerd. I've been a scifi nerd just as long as I've been ace, but I suppose in many ways being a nerd is a choice. And it's a choice that in the wrong crowd has led to Captain Kirk jokes and question about how well I might function in "the real world" (answer: just fine, thanks). So only people who know me reasonably well have typically known that my imagination is typically full of space ships and imaginary places and people.

So I'm very grateful for recent achievements in science fiction that have been made by well-respected creators, and received well by the broader public. These have made me much more confident in revealing my nerd nature. Award-winners have helped: Chris Nolan's Interstellar and Denis Villeneuve's Arrival and then Dune films especially earned rare acknowledgements that scifi films deserved writing, direction, and acting recognition, not just for technical achievements. 

And now the world is enamoured of the alien Rocky and the film Project Hail Mary, and I'm so glad for it. I've seen a lot of conversation about it being the story we need right now, because its emphasis is on cooperation and kindness. Now you're see what scifi nerds have been seeing: that in our imaginations we can dream up better ways of being and doing that we would choose to apply today.