In my last post I touched on heteronormativity. At Free Culture Conference 2008, I came up with a new word: Proprionormativity.
I am sharing this because language is power. Having words to succinctly express ideas is extremely empowering to the individual, and extremely useful for any sort of movement. Queer children are tortured by their sexuality until they learn what “gay” or “queer” means, giving them the tools to make sense of their identity.
I think there are similarities between the free software and free culture movements and the gay rights movements (and I’m hoping to reflect on this in another post at some point), but there are also important differences. I say this simply to assert that I don’t claim that proprionormativity is directly related to heteronormativity. I’m simply borrowing the idea.
Examples of proprionormative statements:
“Downloading movies online is illegal.” (assumes that videos are published with closed licenses)
“Windows or mac?” (disregards other operating systems, most of which are open-source)
Surely we Free Culture activists see open source software and openly licensed (ie Creative Commons licensed) media as useful, perhaps even essential. But do we as a society see open licenses as “normal”? How does our language either support or challenge proprionormativity? Normality has to do with both statistics and internalized impressions that become manifest in our language. I argue that we can expedite the movement of openness into a realm of statistical “normality” by using language to assert a social normality (recall that heteronormativity is a real issue despite the statistical “abnormality” of queerness).
One might argue that openness is always going to be abnormal while copyright law is an opt-out system (as it currently is in the US). However, despite the way that the law is constructed, it is extremely common to opt in to copyright. Individuals and corporations almost always include copyright declarations with their work. There is just as much action involved in including a copyright declaration as there is in attaching a Creative Commons license. However, there is less choice involved, because people don’t understand that open licensing is a viable option. This is precisely why we must use language to combat proprionormativity.
Careful attention to our own language, and gentle correction of the language of others can provoke a paradigm shift in the way that we view creativity and technology. Right now, the assumption made by the lay person is that the more valuable zer work is, the more important it is that ze control the rights to copies and derivatives in order to “secure profits”. But we know that allowing people to share and remix only increases the value of a work, and that creators can monetize openly-licensed work. Through the careful use of language that challenges proprionormativity, we can progress society to a point where the average creator sees open licensing as “normal.” Once the artist is made aware that open licensing really is an option, the choice is obvious.
