"Normal"

One of the worlds I really hate is "normal."  I know I have used it in the past, to say that we all need to normalize same-sex relationships, normalize breaking gender norms, etc.  But I also think that the word "normal" can do a lot of harm. 

My favorite scene from a great movie:

I may be biased with this movie because it was filmed in my hometown and I have a brief cameo in the movie, but here's my point.  This scene speaks to exactly what I feel.  There is no normal.

The concept of normal is something that is regular, accepted, something everyone should strive to be.  Alas, I don't believe anyone should strive to be anything other than themselves.  As Angus says, we are all different.  Nobody is the same, therefore, there can be no normal. 

I play roller derby, as I may have mentioned before.  A couple of months ago, my mom and dad visited me from across the country to watch me play in a bout.  Now, my parents and I don't have the best relationship, and they tend to ignore a lot of who I am as a person.  But I was sort of excited to get their take on my passion in life.  But I wish it had never happened.  My mother was excited to attend, and apparently had been looking up my team online and getting information from there.  She called me a couple of days before their trip, and said something to the extent of "I saw the group picture of your team on the website, and what a bunch of freaks. Nobody looks normal."  I questioned her about what normal meant, and she was silent.

Then the visit came, and after the bout, I was getting my parent's responses to roller derby.  Again, in typical mom fashion, she replied "there aren't a lot of normal people that play roller derby, are there?"

Again I asked, what is normal?  She had no response for me except "not that."  So apparently I am a freak of nature.  Which made me feel oh so good.

Here's the thing.  When you say something is "normal" or we innately normalize something in our society, we are creating a dichotomy of us vs. them.  And that creates exclusion, it creates oppression, it creates otherness.  It creates problems. 

There is no normal.  There is no "new" normal, there is no "old" normal.  We need to start checking ourselves and our vocabulary, because by saying these words and by thinking there is a "normal," we are only creating oppression and otherness.  Normal is a terrible word to say to describe something or someone.  I understand there are ways to say it, and necessary times to say something is the norm, but be aware of when you say it.  Be aware of how you say it, and be aware of what you are calling normal.

Because there might be some people out there that are not freaks of nature, but still want to feel like a whole person.

We need to talk about it

There are two things that made me realize how important this post is for me to write.  Again, it focuses on personal stories, but I have a point, I promise.  If you would like, read along and wait for the point.

1. I have been working on training college student leaders for the past two weeks now, and one of the big parts of this training is social justice training.  We are working to make our college as inclusive as possible, and make it a positive place for all people and all identities.  This starts with student leaders.  Most of the activities we did with the students were met with mixed results.  Some people had trouble understanding their privilege.  There was a lot of guilt associated with some of the activities.  Other people were extremely triggered because of feelings of oppression and hurt that came up.  One of these students was my biggest lesson in this training.  Because of the identity this student had, they had been oppressed on a daily basis.  This student was frustrated, and sometimes left the sessions crying because they were so triggered.  The thing that got me though, is near the end of our two week training, the student found their voice.  And shared stories. 

This made me realize how important storytelling is.  I have often heard about it, and in teaching students about leadership and social justice, I preached the importance of storytelling.  But I never understood just how powerful it is until this training.  Storytelling, especially our personal stories, really make oppression personal.  It gives a face to something that you hear about in passing, but never really think about.  For me, it forces me to take action as opposed to just saying "oh, that sucks...."

2. In the past few weeks I have also been doing a lot of work with sexual assault on the campus.  Every year we do a training on sexual assault for our student leaders and for the first-year class.  Cool, and I typically volunteer every year.  Except this year was different.  This year, it was personal for me.  And I had a really tough time dealing with that.  And it made me realize that I needed to heal.  And how am I going to heal anything if I refuse to confront it?


So here's my storytelling/social justice spin on my points.  Let's talk about sexual assault and sexual misconduct.  Let's talk about how this is still such a huge stigma in society.  And let's talk about how most people don't even understand what it means to be sexually assaulted.

I don't share my story.  It has taken me so long to come to terms with my story and actually realize I don't have fault in what happened, and I still am not there yet.  But I am realizing more and more that I need to share and I need to put it out there that society in general still doesn't understand sexual assault.

I was manipulated and coerced by someone I trusted and was in a relationship with.  Yes, this is a form of sexual assault.  In New York state, and in most people's minds.  I'm not saying this looking for sympathy or support; I'm fine and working on this.  As I said, I haven't really shared this with anyone.  But for the few that I have shared, here are some of the reactions:

"Well, why didn't you just leave?"  "It's not sexual assault if it's consensual."  "Ok, so?"  Or even nothing, and some people made a joke out of it all.  There were several times when I disclosed I was in an abusive/unhealthy relationship, and people just shrugged it away.

Let's talk about this.  I don't blame individual people, because I honestly think society doesn't do a good job of education when it comes to sexual assault.  When I got reactions like this, I burrowed myself deeper, placing the blame on myself more and more.  And it seems like a contradiction- I am still embarassed by the fact that I have had so much education when it comes to sexual assault.  I have been a trained advocate for 6 years now.  And really?  This could happen to me?

We need to start talking about it.  We need to start talking about respecting people, and we need to start making society a safe place for people to share their stories without being oppressed.  We need to make society a place where sexual assaults don't happen, because people are respectful and don't try to coerce control on others. 

And here's where the points come into play.  Storytelling.  If survivors are embarassed of their experience, and if they have my experience where there's not a lot of support from the general population, how the hell are we going to know the real story? 

As a side note, I also participated in a role playing activity to train these student leaders about dealing with situations, and I volunteered to play the sexual assault victim for students to "confront."  It was a 10 minute role play that I did 5 times, and before it happened, I was super nervous.  Like, I wanted to vomit and punch something at the same time.  But to my surprise, it was a really healing experience.  I was able to tell my story in a "safe" environment, meaning I don't think anyone that went through and confronted me actually thought the story I was telling was my own.  So I was able to tell my story, for the first time, and hear my voice.  And it felt good.  It felt good to actually acknowledge that this is my reality.  I hadn't had that opportunity before.  And that helps to heal.

So storytelling, in my opinion, is a two-fold positive thing.  It helps the person telling the story heal, it brings the experience into reality so they can confront and start to deal with it, and empowers the person to understand their experience.  Storytelling also is beneficial to the people hearing the story, because it puts a personal spin on the injustice and causes people to have a more direct emotional response than just a passing random statistic.  Again, just my experience, but I wanted to share it.

Now is where the social justice part comes into play.  In my experience, storytelling was not a positive thing a first.  The people I told my story to weren't receiving of it, didn't believe me, didn't understand.  So what can we do, every single one of us, do to make sure that we are open to any story that wants to be told?  It doesn't have to be about sexual assault.  It can be about any injustice or oppression, or anything at all.  If someone is strong and is choosing to disclose their story, we all need to be an open, safe, and supportive venue for them to tell their story.  So what are you doing to do in order to be this for someone?

This is my challenge for everyone that reads this blog post.  Think about what you can do to be that person.  What can you do and how can you act if someone chooses to disclose something to you?  How can you validate their story and be that source of comfort for them?  All I was looking for was someone to validate the fact that I was feeling terrible.  I wasn't looking for someone to be my personal counselor, I wasn't looking for someone to solve my problems.  I was solely looking for someone that would validate the fact that I went through a terrible situation, and I have every right to feel the way I was feeling.  And that I couldn't find.  So that's my challenge.  I challenge you to be that person.  The one that listens.  The one that makes it ok for people to feel the way they are feeling, whatever the feeling is. 

My personal counselor: