The concept of normal has always been a difficult one for me. I always felt I wanted to be, without ever being able to define what normal actually was. When I was younger, normal was this religious cult and abnormal was everyone else. Then I realised they the cultists were not the normal ones. Or were they just normal for their environment?
Sometimes we find it scary to be linked with things we don't like or don't understand. This user is lashing out because they consider themselves normal. This is what they are responding to:Another word that works is "NORMAL".
Ah yes, it's a thread about transgender people. This always gets the blood flowing for some. The first user is disliking the concept of "cisgender" as a word, preferring "normal". This has the effect of painting themselves in the right, the everyday man, the clean upstanding American citizen stereotype, etc, etc. The "normal" person as opposed to the abnormal, the degenerates, the people who really should probably be kept a close eye on becauseAnd cisgender is used in academic context to differentiate from transgender, so it’s not even an unneccessary word, it has its purpose. People not wanting to use it is something else entirely.
Of which comes through ignorance, willful or otherwise. The stigma of mental illness is automatically applied, regardless of if mental illness is even a valid consideration, but it adds to the arguments of the "normals" vs the "abnormals".The influence that a tiny fraction of mentally disturbed people has on society is worrisome. Transgenders are irrelevant and should be ignored.
A good quote
I'm not normal. I'm somewhat OK with that now. I spent a lot of time trying to be what the people around be wanted to me to be. These days I have to use labels for me to understand, which is fine for some extent. Transgender, bipolar, etc, whatever. But those labels simply allow people to fit me into their boxes in their mind, allow doctors to balance treatment packages around me that at least somewhat apply. The labels don't make me normal, or abnormal, and they don't define me. They simply allow a process to complete.The problem here is the desperate clinging to the right to call oneself "normal." When someone challenges the idea of any group of people considering themselves "normal" and all others abnormal, they have a stroke. On the other hand, reinforcing the idea that x group is "normal" and group y is not in turn reinforces the supremacy of x group and validates their perceived right to dominate those who are in any group other than x.
I'm not sure I've ever actually met anyone who is really normal as they would like to be. They all want to understand their place in the world. The problem comes from when people like some of the above users start to declare their normal is the "right normal". When they won't talk to people who are outside of their personal definitions, not because of their actions but because of their physical and mental being. They start to advocate for laws to oppress the "abnormals". They start to take physical action against them.
People who talk to me about this sort of thing sometimes wonder why I struggle to be more "myself" in the real world.
I wonder with the level of hatred and violence against the "abnormals" still present in the world, how anyone can be "themselves" at all.