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certified_systemThis is one of our Thinking Things that we reference kind of often, so figured it should be an earlier post. We also have another that'll probably be the next.
Image is three concentric circles. The centre is labelled "normal", the next labelled "quirky", and the outer ring labelled "abnormal". "Normal" and "Quirky" are labelled "acceptable" and "abnormal" is labelled "unacceptable"
If you're talking broader society than this would be better drawn as a gradient, but the programme wasn't cooperating. Individual's lines are drawn in different places (or they put different traits in different places on this, whichever view suits you better.) This is here to describe how different traits or behaviours are viewed.
None of this has any actual correlation whatsoever to harm.
Traits that are Abnormal, and therefore Unacceptable, are usually treated in one of two ways. They're not taken seriously, mocked, and derided. Or they ARE taken seriously... and people come up with reasons that the trait is harmful, to justify their bad feelings around it. You know, the bad feelings that are often only there because the thing is considered Abnormal.
I think part of the reason so many people desire normalcy is not because they actually want to be Normal, it's because they know Normal is socially safe. And many people don't want to be Normal - they'll happily be a little or a lot Quirky, because that is still Acceptable.
Any given person is not one trait, however. They have a whole bunch of traits. People are odd and different. So often, I think, it ends up being Acceptable for a person to have just one Abnormality.... maybe two, if all the rest of their traits are very firmly in the Normal circle, so that the average of their traits ends up classed as Quirky, and therefore still Acceptable. If you have a few Quirks, then you might only manage one Abnormality, as a second would bring your average out into Abnormal, and therefore Unacceptable. And if you're Very Quirky, admittance to any one Abnormality would put your average there, and make you Unacceptable as a person. Being Unacceptable is unsafe.
These traits can be things like disability (and disability type / visibility), ethnicity, clothing and appearance choices, speech patters and accent, anything and everything.
And so, often, marginalised groups want to be safe and accepted, and tend to aim to go about this in two different ways: either they aim to be included in Normal, or they say "fuck these circles". This divides marginalised groups a lot.
One example, terribly overgeneralised and oversimplified, is queer and gay folk. We were all one Unacceptable group, fighting for Acceptance. As we got closer to that, one group made up predominantly of white cis lesbians and gays saw that they were closer to Quirky/Acceptable than the Queers were, and started saying, "hey, look, Normal folk. We're just like you, we're gender conforming monogomous 2.5-kids-white-picket-fence-dreams, not like those queers, the genderfucks and transes, the polyamorous, the kinky freaks over there. We're Normal, like you!" And so they seperated themselves from us, pushed off of us to get closer to Normal and pushed us away from that in the process.
And it's not like us queers generally want to be Normal, what we want is to be safe. Not Acceptable, but accepted.
"Normalisation" and the fight for Acceptablility is this. These circles are so strongly ingrained, that fighting for Normal (or Quirky) leads to far, far faster results than fighting to destroy these circles. It's a short-term solution, and if there's one thing I've been noticing, short-term solutions are never good for the long-term. (Unfortunately, long-term solutions are slower and harder, and suck in the short-term, and sometimes, you need immediate safety more than you need the next generation to be comfortable.) All that happens when you fight to Normalise things, is you continue to perpetuate the idea that these categories are Objectively Right and Good, and you get one specific group conditionally accepted at the expense of other groups. The only way you can have a Normal is if you have an Abnormal, and you continue to judge things based more on normalicy than you do on harm. Actual harm, not rationalised-bad-feelings harm.
This is where, I think, "so what?" is such a good thing to think. "Oh no, if we just allow people to marry any gender, men will want to marry their pot plants!".... so what? (putting aside the whole marriage-as-contract thing) So what if people wanna marry objects? It's weird as fuck. It's abnormal. Where's the actual harm though?"But people will think -" so what if they think that? People are allowed to think things.
"If people think they can just 'identify' with a gender whenever they feel like it, what's next, people 'identifying' as trans-species?"..... so what? (Putting aside that that's literally like half my friends), so what's it matter if people feel like they're actually a dog, or a lizard? Who's it hurting?"Well it's hurting people who are actually trans, because people will stop taking real transgender people seriously!"
And why would they do that, except that they've lumped the two groups together and shoved them both under Abnormal?
So yeah, getting rid of those circles is good, actually.
I wrote a somewhat different writeup around this once, which raised for me more questions than answers around this and authenticity. I've just reread it, and found this:
Normal is safe.
Normal is safety based in fear, in repression. If you won't even acknowledge any Abnormal impulses, no one else will ever see them and judge you as Unacceptable.
Losing these distinctions is a different sort of safe.
Losing these distinctions is safety based in comfort, in authenticity. It's supporting people to be who they are, moment by moment
Image is three concentric circles. The centre is labelled "normal", the next labelled "quirky", and the outer ring labelled "abnormal". "Normal" and "Quirky" are labelled "acceptable" and "abnormal" is labelled "unacceptable"If you're talking broader society than this would be better drawn as a gradient, but the programme wasn't cooperating. Individual's lines are drawn in different places (or they put different traits in different places on this, whichever view suits you better.) This is here to describe how different traits or behaviours are viewed.
None of this has any actual correlation whatsoever to harm.
Traits that are Abnormal, and therefore Unacceptable, are usually treated in one of two ways. They're not taken seriously, mocked, and derided. Or they ARE taken seriously... and people come up with reasons that the trait is harmful, to justify their bad feelings around it. You know, the bad feelings that are often only there because the thing is considered Abnormal.
I think part of the reason so many people desire normalcy is not because they actually want to be Normal, it's because they know Normal is socially safe. And many people don't want to be Normal - they'll happily be a little or a lot Quirky, because that is still Acceptable.
Any given person is not one trait, however. They have a whole bunch of traits. People are odd and different. So often, I think, it ends up being Acceptable for a person to have just one Abnormality.... maybe two, if all the rest of their traits are very firmly in the Normal circle, so that the average of their traits ends up classed as Quirky, and therefore still Acceptable. If you have a few Quirks, then you might only manage one Abnormality, as a second would bring your average out into Abnormal, and therefore Unacceptable. And if you're Very Quirky, admittance to any one Abnormality would put your average there, and make you Unacceptable as a person. Being Unacceptable is unsafe.
These traits can be things like disability (and disability type / visibility), ethnicity, clothing and appearance choices, speech patters and accent, anything and everything.
And so, often, marginalised groups want to be safe and accepted, and tend to aim to go about this in two different ways: either they aim to be included in Normal, or they say "fuck these circles". This divides marginalised groups a lot.
One example, terribly overgeneralised and oversimplified, is queer and gay folk. We were all one Unacceptable group, fighting for Acceptance. As we got closer to that, one group made up predominantly of white cis lesbians and gays saw that they were closer to Quirky/Acceptable than the Queers were, and started saying, "hey, look, Normal folk. We're just like you, we're gender conforming monogomous 2.5-kids-white-picket-fence-dreams, not like those queers, the genderfucks and transes, the polyamorous, the kinky freaks over there. We're Normal, like you!" And so they seperated themselves from us, pushed off of us to get closer to Normal and pushed us away from that in the process.
And it's not like us queers generally want to be Normal, what we want is to be safe. Not Acceptable, but accepted.
"Normalisation" and the fight for Acceptablility is this. These circles are so strongly ingrained, that fighting for Normal (or Quirky) leads to far, far faster results than fighting to destroy these circles. It's a short-term solution, and if there's one thing I've been noticing, short-term solutions are never good for the long-term. (Unfortunately, long-term solutions are slower and harder, and suck in the short-term, and sometimes, you need immediate safety more than you need the next generation to be comfortable.) All that happens when you fight to Normalise things, is you continue to perpetuate the idea that these categories are Objectively Right and Good, and you get one specific group conditionally accepted at the expense of other groups. The only way you can have a Normal is if you have an Abnormal, and you continue to judge things based more on normalicy than you do on harm. Actual harm, not rationalised-bad-feelings harm.
This is where, I think, "so what?" is such a good thing to think. "Oh no, if we just allow people to marry any gender, men will want to marry their pot plants!".... so what? (putting aside the whole marriage-as-contract thing) So what if people wanna marry objects? It's weird as fuck. It's abnormal. Where's the actual harm though?"But people will think -" so what if they think that? People are allowed to think things.
"If people think they can just 'identify' with a gender whenever they feel like it, what's next, people 'identifying' as trans-species?"..... so what? (Putting aside that that's literally like half my friends), so what's it matter if people feel like they're actually a dog, or a lizard? Who's it hurting?"Well it's hurting people who are actually trans, because people will stop taking real transgender people seriously!"
And why would they do that, except that they've lumped the two groups together and shoved them both under Abnormal?
So yeah, getting rid of those circles is good, actually.
I wrote a somewhat different writeup around this once, which raised for me more questions than answers around this and authenticity. I've just reread it, and found this:
Normal is safe.
Normal is safety based in fear, in repression. If you won't even acknowledge any Abnormal impulses, no one else will ever see them and judge you as Unacceptable.
Losing these distinctions is a different sort of safe.
Losing these distinctions is safety based in comfort, in authenticity. It's supporting people to be who they are, moment by moment
