Fisk A Stranger's Comment - On Traffic Lights

The original opinion piece is in Spanish, here.

The City Hall of Madrid has changed a few crossing lights to give them a more inclusive, integrated, and egalitarian bent.  They are so kind, those humanized lights, that they would even carry us across, as if we were fording a river and they didn't want us to wet our socks.  Such lights could mediate traffic disputes to end with hugs.  Lights with proper feelings about public morality.  So no naked people?  Nobody openly drunk?  Even though the garden-topped buses failed, isn't this the best of all possible cities that could have emerged for The People to frolic in in a state of Rousseaunian grace in the paradise of New Politics?  No snide exaggeration there, nosiree.

On seeing the new figures, I was reminded of the solitary dignity of that Ampelmännchen of East Germany, who insisted on wearing a hat, when only nostalgic characters created by Garci did anymore.  Its creator, Karl Peglau, thought the East German authorities would not permit it, since the hat was a bourgeois attribute of dress.  But the Little Man stayed, fearing deportation, Fucking really, deportation is the worst you can think of? until Reunification made him one of Ostalgia's favorite memories, the German homestead.  I think I've seen little men in hats on the lights in Santander, and I shouldn't be surprised.  A city with that sense of elegance, and that rain, easily makes the standard description of its citizens one with an Italina fedora, or at least a rain hat.  Sooo, is it cool for the lights to represent a figure apart from the people in the city or not?  Now you're saying that it's perfectly normal for crossing lights to reflect the people on the street.

The new figures on Madrid's crossing lights are fruit of City Hall's attempt to take on all positive values, as if they were the province of Podemos alone.  But in trying to be inclusive they have created a sticky problem.  We had taken for granted that the old figure represented us all and that we were all invited to cross in safety when it turned green.  Now things have changed.  Uh, damn right things have changed.  We took straight white religious men to be the default human in the past and now we're trying to make everybody equally human.  If you can't see a reflection of yourself in a symbolic representation of a possible human then - YOU DON'T THINK IT IS HUMAN.  That is the problem.  That's what people are working to change.  Not creating little balls of snowflakes, but a blizzard of varied humanity.  Now you have to be personally invited, like homosexual couples.  Actually there are heterosexual couples too.  And if there's discrimination or confusion for anybody, it's single people who don't have a hand to hold.  Is that your real problem, it reminds you of having to walk in pairs as a schoolboy and you always had to hold hands with the weird kid?  And why the fuck do you have a problem with inviting different people to make sure they feel welcome?  Is it actually true that you just want to keep your he-man woman hater gay basher xenophobe club?  Does a fat man have to wait until the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock turns green before he crosses?  Are fat people not people?  Because if two ladies in skirts appear, how does he know he's allowed to cross?  How did ladies in skirts know before, you ass?  Especially ladies who liked to walk hand in hand.  They were pretty clear about the fact that they weren't welcome to cross, or be anywhere on the street really.  Does the punk have to wait until he sees a light with a mohawk?  What do I do if I go to cross with my children and the light doesn't have an adult man surrounded by little people?  What if the light isn't for a large family?  I don't know, what did mothers do before?  Oh, right, nothing they could have to say is nearly as important as your ego stroked by being reflected on every single crossing light in the city.  Am I only allowed to cross holding the hand of the man next to me and leaving my offspring behind?  Well, they can hold hands with each other.  Unless you have an odd number of kids, then somebody's screwed.  You say the lights are inclusive, but I don't see a fat gay punk family guy light anywhere.  You sure have a tame picture for a fat gay punk family guy.  Must be an old one.  Or one for a fishmonger.  Or a jogger.  Or a horse rider.  Or a guy with a beard.  Or a misanthrope.  Or somebody pissing themselves.  Or wearing a tie.  Or an old man with a cane.  Or...  Like I said before, the problem is you think you really are the only real human because you've been the default for so long.  You expect others to see their humanity reflected in you but you won't take even a second to find yours in them.  You are a lazy, fearful, arrogant basket of rotten rats' assholes.  But I bet you think your picture should still signal all humans, except the ones your behavior shoves out as soon as they show up.  The most mind boggling thing about arguments like this is that people think they are actually saying something intelligent!  It's simply incredible.  They mewl about the most insignificant and meaningless problems, only to turn around and say that the other side is too sensitive.  Oh, the problems of the top dog.  Should we put that on a street light for you?  Or do you not want to be bothered by reading?  If we just put words on the crossing lights we could do away with all the symbolism you so fear, but then everybody would have to be literate, and really you need something to help you imagine how much better you are than the dregs, right?  The dregs that can't even recognize that you represent every human being on earth while they represent only themselves.