Stop just asking “is it normal?” and start asking “is it harming anyone?” Lots of harmful things are normalized in this society and lots of things considered weird or rare are completely harmless. Whether something is considered normal or common shouldn’t be the deciding factor in whether it’s okay
Like a lot of disabled and neurodivergent and mentally ill ways of living and expressing yourself are both not normal and not harming anyone and it’s the last part we should focus our attention on
Yeah.
This SO MUCH.
Also: (and this addition to the rant is dedicated to… a lot of unspecified people, idk)
Stop treating both “it’s normal” and “it isn’t normal” as conclusions to the conversation.
Because 1. they don’t matter, and 2. there is lots of stuff after that realization that DOES MATTER
Example: “Your point is valid; that thing you want your friend to do is a perfectly normal expectation for you to have.”
Answer: So are a million other expectations in this society that are toxic as hell. Normal doesn’t mean valid. And both my friend and I are aware of that, so neither of us give half a shit whether it’s normal. And acknowledging that it’s normal does absolutely nothing to resolve the fact that 1. I want my friend to do it, and 2. my friend doesn’t want to do it. So, when you say “it’s normal” and act like that’s somehow an answer to our problem, you sound as batshit as someone walking in with a non sequitur like “there are penguins in Antarctica” and expecting that to fix the conflict. Shut the fuck up and think for half a second.
Example: “That pain you’re having isn’t normal.”
Answer: Yeah, no shit. But I’ve been to every doctor I can physically get to, and they have all told me they think it’s no cause for concern and they don’t know anything they can do to fix it, and it’s still bad enough pain I can’t even get up sometimes. So from my perspective it doesn’t matter if I’m the only person in history who’s ever had this pain, or if literally every person in the world has it– because proving either one of those things, right now, would make absolutely zero difference to what I’m able to do about it, which is fucking nothing at all. So telling me it’s “not normal” is about as fucking helpful as telling me it’s not an octopus.
If you can’t think of anything to say that isn’t a statement about completely meaningless qualifiers like “normality,” then you do not have anything to say that is useful to my problem.
end rant.