GIVING OFFENSE

To quote Heinlein's famous inversion of the dictum from the Officer's Handbook:
"A gentleman is someone who never unintentionally gives offense."

There are times when it is appropriate to give offense -- usually over matters of principle. Most of the time it is highly inappropriate. Part of being a gentleman or a lady in the SCA is in recognizing the difference and acting on it -- no matter how much petty personal satisfaction we might gain by doing otherwise.

--Ironsteed

IRREGULAR SCHEDULE

I'm not going to be posting regularly for October and possibly the first part of November.

A combination of work, travel and some rather arcane teaching is going to be eating a lot of my time, so posts will be catch as catch can.

For which my apologies. But I should be back, better than ever (?) after the first week in November.
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--Rick Cook

PREROGATIVE CREEP -- AND PREROGATIVE CREEPIES

Recently the question came up in an Atenveldt forum from a relatively new member who wanted to add a jaguar-skin sash to his outfit (Aztec persona). He was afraid he'd get in trouble for it because the Masters at Arms or squires might take offense.

Legally, of course, he had nothing to worry about. Society-wide white baldrics (sashes) are reserved for Masters at Arms and in Atenveldt (at least) red baldrics denote squires. But he was still afraid someone might hassle him about it.

And I'm afraid he might be right. In spite of the fact that he is within his rights, there may well be some pompous jerk who will inform him that he can’t wear a sash of any color because baldrics are the mark of Masters.

This isn’t theoretical. In Atenveldt we’ve had people try to extend the circlet of yellow heraldic roses reserved for ex-queens to a lady wearing roses of any color.

These are examples of prerogative creep: Taking a right or custom and trying to extend it to cover things it was never intended to.

I'm sorry to say that this has even been enshrined in Aten law. Coronets, circlets with strawberry leaves for dukes, embattled for counts, and pointed for barons, are reserved for their respective classes of peers. However society-wide, there is no restriction a metal circlet of plain outline.

But in Atenveldt plain metal circlets are forbidden to the general populace. The reason, I am told is that years ago two or three high-ranking ladies objected because plain metal circlets might be confused with coronets and some people (horrors!) might actually mistake the person wearing a circlet for a duchess, countess or baroness. Their subsidiary reason, I am also told, is that the proper coronets were heavy and they wanted to wear something lighter.

When this nonsense was first proposed, the College of Arms attempted to stomp on it by issuing a ruling that plain metal circlets were permitted to anyone in the SCA. Unfortunately the Board overruled them on the grounds that this was a matter best left to the kingdoms.

First off, the justifications given for restricting circlets are nonsense. Even a blind man can tell the difference between a plain circlet and one with points, strawberry leaves, etc. The chances of legitimate confusion are just plain nil. Second, if the coronets are too heavy, then either get a lighter one or don't wear one. It's not going to kill you for people not to realize immediately you're a duchess or whatever.

This is an example of prerogative creep driven by the prerogative creepies' own rather pathetic sense of inadequacy. They do this sort of thing because they're terrified that without all the jinglies they won't get the respect they deserve. (What they miss is that they tend to get exactly the respect they deserve - i.e. not much - no matter how much junk jewelry they can hang on their person. With sane human beings respect flows to the person, not the awards. The ones who respect the awards above the people are likely to have other problems anyway.)

There is another kind of prerogative creep that often doesn't even owe anything to the people it allegedly honors. This is the made-up tradition.

Sometimes the tradition is made up out of the whole cloth, as the long-ago notion that dukes have a royal presence and should be bowed to within a certain distance. Sometimes it is a weirdly distorted version of a legitimate tradition.

Because Atenveldters historically have had an exaggerated respect for dukes, due to the outstanding examples who regularly visited us from the West in the early days, a lot of these phony traditions center around dukes.

One that has proven just about unkillable is the notion of Ducal Privilege.

In its fairy-tale form Ducal Privilege claims that a duke has the right to enter or leave the crown lists at any point he chooses. ('He', because there are no female dukes in Atenveldt.) This is a total misunderstanding of the tradition and even some dukes believe it. We actually had one try to enter the lists by claiming Ducal Privilege a few years ago and at least one Duchess (not his) claimed to me privately that such a privilege exists.

It does not. This is a complete and utter misunderstanding of Ducal Privilege and it has never been applied to entering the Crown Lists in Atenveldt that I am aware of.

Ducal Privilege as it legitimately exists in Atenveldt was inherited from the West. It is the privilege of a Duke to withdraw from the Crown List at any time, not to enter it at any time!

Rumor hath it that the reason this privilege was established in the West was that there were certain fighters no rational person in the West wanted to see on the throne. Since aside from being acceptability to the Crown there were no bars on a belted fighter fighting in the list and since rationality was no more thickly spread in the West than it was in any other kingdom, the better fighters, dukes included, tended to fight in the lists whether they wanted to be King or not. Rather than feign injury, the Western Crown and the Dukes chose to establish the principle that they could withdraw at any point - when the idiots had been eliminated, in other words.

To my knowledge this real form of Ducal Privilege was exercised in Atenveldt precisely once. One of the visiting Western Dukes withdrew from a (non-crown) list simply to establish the principle.

So how did this nonsense about entering lists get started? The answer is that someone half-remembered an old custom and embellished it in repeating it. The person probably wasn't a duke, but he or she was a committed royalist and wanted to build up the image and prestige of dukes in Atenveldt.

I don't think this rumor was even started for political gain. I think it was just an 'old-timer' sitting around shooting the breeze pulling stuff out of his or her belly button. Of course the royalists seized on it and repeated the notion as if it were undisputed fact.

It's worth noting that the duke that attempted to apply this a few years ago and both his ardent supporters on the Aten list in the discussion that followed are royalists of what passes for an extreme stripe these days. (By the way, even if Ducal Privilege in that form had existed, the Duke couldn't have exercised it. Traditions are overruled by law and Aten Kingdom Law has very specific requirements for entrants in the Crown List and their Consorts. This is result of a long run of bad kings and the realization that anyone who might be king needs to be able to handle the job.)

Of course as the Most Ancient of Atenveldt I find prerogative creep highly annoying. I know it's nonsense because I was there. Often I'm the one who explained these things to the other founding members.

I find it really annoying when prerogative creep is used to buttress a particular political/social position, such as the phony Ducal Privilege, and it drives me to foaming fury when it is used for the sole purpose of lording it over other SCA members as in the circlet silliness.

Prerogatives, like traditions, have real uses in the SCA. To the extent that they support and embellish the goals of the organization they are worthy and should be followed.

To the extent that they are used to set up artificial divisions, create useless privileges or are used to try to exalt one person by stepping on others, they are to be ruthlessly rooted out.

To me that is a form of bullying and I utterly despise bullies.

On Correcting Gaffes

Most of us don't get it right the first time. In our early days in the SCA everyone blunders. We do things, say things or wear things that aren't appropriate and when we do that it helps us for someone to point it out.

That is it helps us unless the person doing the pointing comes across as a nasty, overbearing jerk. Done as an exercise in social superiority or putting someone in their place it is destructive. It has also cost the SCA a lot of potentially good, productive members.

In a number of cases I would much rather have had the innocent newcomer who got driven away from the SCA than the twit who drove them off. Unfortunately there are some people who seem to get off on making others feel small. We don't need them, but we've got them and the best thing you can do is keep them away from newcomers.

So how do you handle a situation where someone says or does something inappropriate out of ignorance. The key word is 'gently'. You want to make the correction with as little ill-feeling as possible. If you can't make your point without being hostile, superior or just plain snotty, then leave the correction to someone else.

Remember the idea is not to make the person feel bad. It is to let the person know how we do things.

As part of this, make the correction privately. Doing it publicly, especially in front of the person's friends, causes unnecessary embarrassment and hurt.

And if you can, offer some positive reinforcement to the person. Surely you can find something they're doing right to compliment them on.

Finally, if you're a peer or otherwise loaded down with jingly trinkets, remember that you're probably pretty awesome to a newcomer. You may feel it's silly, but it's a fact of life. Consider the effect you're likely to have on that person because of the weight of all that metal.

High ranking peers need to be especially gentle in their approach for exactly that reason. Everyone who knows Duke Poohbear of Fuzziecuddle knows he's an absolute sweetheart. But someone meeting his 6-foot-4, 250-pound grace in full regalia for the first time won't know it and his rank and appearance are going to magnify the effect of his words.

Now there is one exception. When someone is behaving like a jerk and disturbing or annoying others a sterner tone is often called for. A non-confrontational approach is still best, but I'm a lot firmer with someone like that.

The Most Important Question

Since I'm a triple peer (royal, chivalry, pelican) I've had a number of people ask me over the years how to become a peer.

I usually answer with a question of my own:

"Do you want to be elevated to the peerage or do you want to be a peer?"

That's not a trick question. Well, actually it is, but the trickiness comes from the nature of the peerage.

Most of what a peerage brings you doesn't come from the symbols of rank or being entered into the order of precedence. In fact a lot of the formal duties of a peer are boring when they're not frustrating. (Try sitting through a couple of two-hour circles back to back while everyone else is having fun at the event.)

The good part of being a peer, the fun part, comes from the fact that people look up to peers. They tend to respect them, value their opinions and hold them in regard.

But that isn't conferred with a peerage. Ideally, a peerage is the SCA's way of saying "you're what we want to be when we grow up." It is a recognition that someone has achieved the skill and displayed the personal characteristics that represent the ideals and aspirations of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Again, ideally the peerage recognizes these characteristics, but it does not create them.

I've pissed off a couple of kings, and not a few peerage circles, by pointing out that neither the king nor a peers circle can create a peer. They can only recognize that one exists in our midst.

The other hard fact is that elevation to the peerage is not a fair process. Most kings at least try to make it fair and some strive mightily to find and elevate deserving candidates, but at the end of the day and with the best will in the world, good people get overlooked.

And of course not all kings are good and not all peers deserve the honor. That too is a fact of life. Favoritism, political considerations and good, old-fashioned sucking up all play roles in who gets elevated.

Of course there are always people for whom the symbols are more important than the thing. They are desperate to have that medallion or belt or baldric or whatever, to be addressed as "sir", or "master" or "mistress", to be seen hanging around with the others with similar accouterments, to get a special place at court.

Mostly those people want to be peers because they think it will fill a gaping hole inside them. That being made a peer will make them better, wash away their inadequacies and make people respect them.

They're wrong. And many of them end up being very frustrated.

The choice is simple. If you want to be a peer, act like a peer. Display the virtues of honesty, chivalry, noblesse oblige, and support for the goals of the SCA and your Crown (the institution, not the person currently wearing it). Further yourself in your chosen art or skill. Teach others as you can. Learn from those who are better than you are, eagerly and humbly. Avoid excessive pride and overbearing behavior.

And guess what? You will receive the respect and the other important things that go with a peerage whether you are ever elevated or not.