 |
| Unidentified White Man Smithsonian Institution. |
This man is considered our normal. He is white, cis-gendered, neurotypical, heterosexual, with slightly (but only slightly) above average sex drive, able to form romantic attachments. He is conventionally handsome (but not so handsome he looks fake), Christian, thin, able bodied, average intelligence, between the ages of 24 and 49. Chances are he was born into an upper class family although he does not admit to being part of the one percent. He was more than likely the oldest son, started school at 5, graduated at 18, has a bachelor’s degree, enjoys football and belonged to a frat. He lives in either New York or Los Angeles, works for either a financing firm or in politics.
If you see him, tell him we’re all pissed at him.
The further you get from being him, the harder your life is. If you are trans*, lesbian, gay, disabled, a person of color, a religion other than Christian, old, fat, poor, scary intelligent or developmentally disabled, or indeed, live anywhere in fly-over country, you’re pretty much screwed
If you watch television, you can pretty much be guaranteed that unless you are that one guy, you are not going to be shown in a positive light. Unless the creators wanted show-off their “open minded tolerance”.
Unless you are that guy, when you watch two women talking to each other in a film, you can be pretty sure that, unless the film is one of the rare ones that pass the Bechdel test, you are NOT the person being discussed.
If you go to high school, studies have show that unless you are that one guy (and in high school it might really be one guy), you are convinced you are not popular and well liked.
If you are not that one guy, you are less likely to be taken seriously by the medical profession. Medications were not tested to be efficacious (or even safe) for your ethnic group or sex. Medical lab tests are not designed to recognize possible differences due to genetics or gender. You are more likely to go to prison or be diagnosed with a mental disorder. If you are not that one guy, you are more likely to be viewed as deviant.
In short, if you are not that one guy, you are a minority. And yet, there are more of us than there are of him. Why we are letting him define normal? Why do we measure ourselves against him? Moreover, why are we internalizing this normal, when it turns out that most of us are not and never will be this guy? I have never yet found a satisfactory answer to this question.
The people who are defined as normal in popular culture are such a narrow and small group that they couldn’t get a healthy enough gene pool together to repopulate the planet after they got rid of the weirdos and freaks. The strength of the human species lies in our diversity. Every time a community rejects that diversity, the community is weakened. One of the most interesting results of the Utopian Movement of the Nineteenth Century is the discovery that, for the most part, intentional communities don’t work. The reasons for this are varied, but in a nutshell, it seems to come down to “Too much us and not enough them.”
Intentional communities tend to be created from people who have similar beliefs, interests and skill sets etc. They are often trying to get away from the people who are not like them. Interestingly, the Utopians were radicals and weirdos. Indeed at the time, they were quite queer in the old sense of the world. They also did not accept people who were not queer in the way they were. They, for the most part, died out.
It has baffled me for years that the Queer Community insists on dividing itself. And, naturally there are those who are just not Queer enough (or perhaps too Queer) to be invited into the tent. Twenty years ago, I was told I was not Queer because I was bi--clearly I was just posing at being a lesbian. Or I was confused. Or I wanted to be special. I didn't really need to be part of the Queer community.
Now, I’m in my forties and the same accusations are being leveled at those who are coming out as ace and grey-a (I won’t even talk about the unwarranted vitriol directed towards the trans* community). It’s all very discouraging.
One of the things that keeps us as a culture from redefining normal to mean “the experience of the majority” rather than “the experience of that one guy” is this very division. This urge to pass judgement on each other because your normal and my normal differ somewhat is painful. This creates the idea that we (somehow) can’t work to the common goal of recognizing that human behavior is much more varied than anyone has ever thought possible.
The gains in the Queer community that have been in my lifetime happened because the diversity was celebrated. Not always and not everywhere, but in those days, you took your allies where you could find them. That’s something that needs to be rediscovered because otherwise it’s always going to be about that one guy.
Follow @FRW
