(no subject)

[naath]

A thing I am interested in (but not, I think, very good at actually DOING ANYTHING ABOUT; I suck) is in expanding what counts as "normal" in social terms.

A lot of the opposition to ideas of expanding "normal" seem to fret that what I want is to *change* "normal" to be me, not them, and to exclude them. But I don't really want that at all - I want a bigger "normal", not a me-shaped "normal" (if everyone were just like me the world would be a boring place).

I guess expanding "normal" makes it harder for people who conform to the current normal to find like-minded people; because with the narrow normal they get to assume that everyone is "just like me" and that people who aren't will be polite about correcting them (or just let it slide). Whereas in a world where more choices are normal you have to spend more time on working out what option a person has chosen rather than just assuming they are "like me".

I'm not sure how to make it easier for people who are current "normal" to adapt to a new, wider normality that includes them but also many other people.

Comments

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

I think that makes sense. Instead of "normal" being a tall, narrow bell-curve, with some "non-normal" outliers beyond the curve, it seems reasonable to suggest that perhaps the bell-curve should be wider and have longer tails, with fewer outliers, encomapassing new defintions of normal that are quite different to you or me but are still functional and valid. Works for me.

I think people have more capacity to be flexible than you think. At least, most intrinsically well-meaning people. It's like, if a new person starts in your office and they're a bit unusual, for a while they might be "That weird person in the office," but for most decent people I'd hope that within a short period, the person would become, "Oh, yeah, that's just the way XXX is. We'd more or less stopped noticing. You get used to it." It probably depends partly on their level of exposure to people outside the ordinary as well though (whether it's appearance or personality or behaviours) - probably hanging out with geeks and the non-neurotypical broadens your horizons!

I guess it's like if you know someone who's being treated for cancer or has a facial disfigurement or something - if you met them for the first time, you might be surprised by their outside-the-mainstream appearance, but if it's someone you've known for a while, you don't sit there thinking, "They look odd," you just think, "They look like YYY," the same as Naath looks like Naath and Eni looks like Eni and whatever.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think people are pretty flexible *in person*; but a bit less so when they don't have a personal experience to fall back on. Of course as more people are more "out" about more things then more people have those personal experiences.

I also want people to be aware that lots of things are possible; so they can go "oh, you can do THAT, I've always wanted THAT but not known how..."

I think the internet really helps with this stuff too. So much variation on display.