I Really Don’t Care About “Normal” People

wew, absolute mad lad! *"We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister blares in the background*

From Nerd Teacher

Every so often, there’s a discussion in anarchist circles about how we need to tread lightly, sound more realistic, and stop dreaming about “perfect utopias” because otherwise we’ll “scare the normal people off.” If we keep talking about a world so drastically different from the one we’re in, the “normal” people won’t even want to participate! We’ll never get traction! No one will want to do it!

This sentiment is beyond infuriating, and it doesn’t make me care about “normal” people because “normal” people—or anyone who claims to be “normal”—just don’t care about people like me. Queer and disabled people are never seen as “normal,” so we’re automatically written out of this statement by virtue of existing. The world in which my neurodivergent self can happily and safely exist is not the same one that “normal” people even want to support because they’d rather pretend that everyone understands everything in the exact same way.

Every time we say that we need something, we’re told that it’s “too much” or that it’s “too hard” or “too expensive” to possibly include everyone.

“Normal” also often implies a certain set of hegemonic values that are frequently colonialist and patriarchal in nature. This means that a lot of people, based on a race and ethnicity alone, don’t get to be “normal” in whatever geographic location they live in. They’re often seen as “strange” and “weird” and “foreign,” and their needs go overlooked because “normal” people wherever they live just “won’t understand.”

And yet people keep saying that we should be more considerate of “normal” people, as if we haven’t spent our whole lives doing exactly that. What they’re us is that we’re not allowed to loudly and collectively envision a world in which we want to exist.

Because it “scares people.”

“Normal” people need to be scared. They need to start realising that they aren’t in control of everything anymore and that they don’t get to decide who is and isn’t acceptable. They need to recognise that the world isn’t made in their image and that they don’t own it, that the people they’ve written off as “abnormal” and “weird” and “undesirable” for simply being who they are is abhorrent. They need to know that we no longer accept their constant and systemic bigotries in the ways they choose to try to deny us safety and joy.

They need for us to make it clear that everything they have been doing to us and the planet is unconscionable. “Normal” people need to be forced to reckon with the pain, frustration, and abuse they have made so many of us endure just to fit in and deal with the world they created for their own benefit.

I don’t care about “normal” people.

When I’m told to be less scary and to make myself more legible to “normal” people, it enrages me. Why should I have to accommodate those who see themselves as “normal” in envisioning the worlds we want to exist within when they’ve never accommodated anyone else? Why should we make sure that people who have always been comfortable remain comfortable in envisioning and building the kinds of worlds that we all need?

It doesn’t make any sense. Why is it that we seem to think that they should be coddled while the rest of us are left to struggle?

We’ve already seen what a world controlled by those who are perceived as “normal” looks like, and it seems to be one that they’re intent on killing. It doesn’t even seem to matter to them that they’re willing to go down with it, that they’re willing to die with it as long as they get to live in comfort and luxury and lord it over everyone else that they perceive as “abnormal” or “wrong.” They want to pretend that everything is fine because, for them, it has been.

We’ve been shown repeatedly, especially through the COVID pandemic, that “going back to normal” is what everyone supposedly wanted despite the fact that it left many of us in even worse situations than we already had. Many immunocompromised and disabled people were, almost as soon as people started going back out, left to figure out how to remain connected to their communities and be safe. Anxiety and fear increased among whole populations, and instead of dealing with it in ways that would be healthy for everyone, we were forced to just manage it and figure everything out for ourselves.

“Normal” people don’t care, and I don’t know why we should care about what they think.

Because “normal” benefits them even when it’s lethal to the rest of us.

The concept of “normal” is hard to unpick and to really define because it contains so much within something so incredibly small, and these things all change and have different meanings based on where we are and who we’re around.

If someone’s part of a culture that deviates from that of where they live, they’re often seen as strange and weird—as abnormal—because that “isn’t what we do here.” They often aren’t even allowed to participate in their own cultural practices unless it’s seen as something that can help them assimilate into society, even if it means sharing cultural practices with people who use them as costumes or to pretend they’re more “culturally enlightened” than everyone else. Companies will find ways to capitalise on the existence of these new traditions, trying to increase their audience by pretending to be far more inclusive than they ever really care to be.

Representation is great and being able to see people like you is immensely helpful, but at what cost when the people capturing it are only doing so to profit? When people are still being shoved into some narrow definition of “normal?”

When those practices can’t help in assimilation, they’re often relegated to being hidden behind closed doors when they can be practised at all. The people of the dominant culture will refuse to understand them and intentionally misrepresent them in the least charitable light possible to make it stop or at least force it into hiding. They will enable and use their children to exert pressure on the future generations of a marginalised culture, ensuring that they feel guilt and shame for being themselves. All of those children grow up learning what’s “normal” and what society deems as “acceptable,” and they enforce it upon everyone else.

That’s what we’ve all done. We’ve seen “normal” as we’ve grown up, and we persist in forcing everyone else to do it.

We police everyone into these narrow confines of what we feel is “acceptable” unless that version of “weird” can be capitalised on in some form. Being “normal” is an act of domination. The kinds of food we eat, the clothes we wear and when we wear them, the ways we want to live our own lives are all things that other people feel they should have control over. Because they hold their beliefs and behaviours to be “normal,” they see it as part of their duty to police and dominate everyone else until they fall in line.

We shouldn’t want “normal” people to feel comfortable. We should want them to recognise that shit’s got to change, and there isn’t any way around it.

We’re trying to change the world we have. We’re trying to create space for multiple and connected worlds within this single planet, and we’re scared of what happens when “normal” people find us just a tiny bit terrifying because it unsettles their reality and upsets what they value?

It’s absurd. So many of us have spent our whole lives knowing that we don’t fit in, and we’ve dealt with a lot of years of being made uncomfortable by the “normalcy” of it all. We’ve watched as we’ve been forced into unhealthy situations all for the sake of “normal,” and we’ve seen people completely neglected by “acceptable” society.

I don’t give a shit about “normal” people. It’s their turn to be made uncomfortable, to know that we don’t want their world because their world is harmful and dangerous. And at the worst, the most they will ever have to deal with is recognising that they will have to be a little less comfortable than they were before.

And I especially don’t give a shit about anyone’s anarchism if it coddles them and leaves everyone else to drudgery, abuse, pain, and neglect. If your anarchism is scared of creativity and imagination, if it’s scared of trying to find new pathways out of this garbage world, I don’t want it.

It’s not worth having.

There are 17 Comments

All the world old is normal save thee and me, and even thou art a little normal.

Beneath every normie there is a unique individual, so drop the cynical ressentiment seething tantrum and get a creative life!
The fun bit about normies is delving into and stimulating the anarch deep down inside trying to fight their way out through the multi-layered mire of spooks and rules!
-The Way

"We we we we we we we we we should we we we we we ................"

What is this narcissistic dogshit doing on my beloved anews?

Isn't this more about the specific person making the statement?

Like, if I tell somebody to chill out cuz they're scaring "the normies", I wouldnt be doing it for anything less than like, waving a weapon around?

or ... this one time, an old sketchy acquaintance of mine was sitting in a meeting with some bambi-eyed young student types and goes off on a tangent about mixing powdered glass in to wheatpaste so that when people go to rip down the posters, it slices up their fingers

And when he stops talking, theres the long silence from the whole group with no blinking, so I said

"Think you scared them dude!"

But yeah, context?

I would expect to see "normies" and a frog together on something written by the alt-rigjt circa 2017

This image is taken from the cover of the book "Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right" (2017) by Angela Nagle. The book is written by a normie covering such subcultures which express their own brand of anti-normie sentiment.

The nerdy kid in the picture is taken from this meme in which is says "I don't care you broke your elbow" which was meant to be the ultimate unhinged insult unleashed by the final straw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvW206mI7tM

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-know-what-im-just-gonna-say-it

can't say i know of any normal people, when you get down to it.

and as i was saying elsewhere, this tension between totalitarianism and utopianism, between being antagonistic to the whole (because one does not fit in) and being enveloped sweetly in the whole (because one does fit in), is still present in anarchism. by which i mean getting beyond this tension is key.

"enveloped sweetly in the whole (because one does fit in)"
"getting beyond this tension"

If one can just get beyond the tension one can fit sweetly in the whole.

( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

filthy rabbit.

lol, interpretation is a Rorschach

i hear and feel this author’s sentiment. the thing is anarchists are a bunch of somewhat distinct groups of “weirdos” pit against each other as well as against “normies”, which in turn are bunch of somewhat distinct groups of weirdos pit against each other and “anarchists”, and other information silos, echo chambers, cliques and subcultures.

some anarchists might find this text to be milquetoast, while those who find it adequate might find those other anarchists too “spicy” for their taste

some of us are more equal than others, or more unequal, more normal or more weird? backhanded demands for inclusivity and consideration vs unrelenting attack against society and attempts at reform, reconciliation, integration, assimilation and prefiguration of utopias? angsty teachers begrudgingly participating in a system they’re against vs feral troglodytes gnawing at lamposts and flinging shit. there’s a difference

I bet this person would be a good teacher to have, however their blog (on quick review) seems to be full of these kind of vague, generic posts. I think either as a teacher or writer it’s important to make concrete points to your audience, to attune oneself to collective intelligence - what have you learned from your students? - and if you don’t have anything original to contribute, it’s okay to remain a student.

are you here to enforce the roles of teacher and student? they can write whatever they god damn want in their own blog. there is some truth in what you said at first; they did that piece about anarchist publishers in which they don’t mention names

I’m not enforcing shit; I’m saying if you don’t have anything interesting to say, maybe focus on learning more instead of enforcing your own identity as a “writer”

That’s pretty funny of you to say though considering the poster is (allegedly) an actual teacher

As a person with cerebral palsy, i was often pushed to the sidelines by normal, healthy folks. Instead if getting to know me and accepting me as who I am, they gave false "kindness" so that their peers can pat them on the back about how good they are. I barely got accepted to school because no school in my country has easy access for people in wheelchairs like me.

The author is right, "normal" people need to be made uncomfortable and need to be faced with change. It's good to be weird, and breaking social norms is a necessity. Otherwise the undersirables won't have a place in the world.

The terms "colonialist" and "patriarchal" have been normalized. I reject them utterly. Shall I kill my father (patricide) or deny my Anglo-Saxon blood (as so-called "colonizers")? I am also N.A. N.A. tribes tortured and slaughtered each other for centuries prior to "white colonization." How about "indigenous matriarchal" to describe the violence of Indian tribes toward each other. Anyone can twist language. Anarchists are masters of the obliquely turned phrase.
Fuck normies. I was born an outcast and artist. From day one I resisted (though never quite descending into the black pit of self-loathing despair). It has been a long, hard life in poverty. Capitalism and I never got along.
I do love ancient history, though. The rise and always fall of empires, white or indigenous, Middle East or South America. Hubris is the key. The Maya probably thought the Gods would bless them forever. Little issues with drought and plague (and internecine strife, no doubt). The Celts spanned the entire "European" continent. The same statues of Taranis found everywhere! A thunder god for the ages, for all peoples. I do not reject my heritage (82% Celtic, as I call it, with that 18% splash of Mexican Indian). I do reject normalized language, the same usage again and again, mainly to make a point to people who already agree with you.
Fuck normies. Fuck "anarchists" who speak and write like every other "anarchist."
Kill the rich. Eat the yuppies. Punch normalized anarchists in the face.
Long live the fighters.

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