"If we are trying to be anachronistic..."

From the conversation on Same Sex Crowns on scatoday.net:

http://www.scatoday.net/node/21565

Submitted by louis on Wed, 2011-10-19 20:41.

"If we are trying to be anachronistic..."

We should get off the bus right here. Long time players know that the SCA is equal parts entertainment and education. Part of the entertainment value is in escaping the modern world, which is what we might take 'being anachronistic' to mean. However, how unfair, if we are simply wishing to provide a pleasant escape for all from the modern, that we restrict this to a world pleasant only for noble-born, and I would add, white, male, straight Catholic Europeans. For the rest we would only provide a past, worse, world in which prejudice and evil reigned. This is vile in the modern world and, I think, fails to be a goal many wish to even allow, much less advance with our money, time and long efforts.

But, let us not forget the second aspect. Our 501(c)3 charter is to educate ourselves and the public regarding the pre-1601 past of Western Europe and its environs. Education is the antithesis of escapism. Education is only meaningful as far as it provides our modern selves a perspective or insight into the past. We attempt to do this by reenacting (or rebuilding) things and situations of the past. However, when this reenactment runs into the modern aspects of our selves the reenactment can easily (and must) yield to allow any modern person to participate equally. This is both in our modern notion of fairness and is our charge as a California non-profit Corporation. Are same sex rulers perfectly 'period'? There are period examples, and equally one can point out that even the notion of a ruling male-female couple sharing power does not much pass historical muster, but that the notion that perfect reenactment of the past is even a necessary goal of the SCA is a canard. Perfect education does not require perfect reenactment. In fact, eliding what we do not wish to recreate when that aspect is either painful to some or simply out of the scope of what our modern world wishes to study happens all the time in the SCA. It is not only understandable but is really no barrier to educating well and fully on those areas that we do focus on.

Consider: I have read of some Civil War reenactment organizations where blacks wish to portray Confederate regulars. In any notion of period accuracy this would seem downright silly if not insulting to their historic experience. Only when we see the reenactment as educating on the Civil War could we have any notion why such a thing might be agreeable. Indeed if framed that way who are we to question whether a modern person of any gender or race wishes to educate themselves on the Civil War experience by immersion as a Civil War reenactment can do? In like fashion, how could we not allow same sex couples to participate as fully as any other SCA persons are allowed to, as ruling nobles or crowns?