In my Slate piece, I misused the word normal, using a dictionary definition which left out the words cultural importance. I referred to “Parents who preferred a happy child to a normal one.”
In rewriting the piece for syndication (which seems like it isn’t going to happen) I struggled to fix the sentence, and came up with “a happy kid to a suppressed one”
I realized, I wouldn’t use the word ‘normal’ to refer to an African American in a nearly all-white school, or a Chinese-speaking child in an entirely English speaking school. I have never personally identified with the word ‘normal’ in a positive way, but that’s not really an excuse for the lapse.
Normal doesn’t have to mean ‘not a small minority.’ It can mean, “part of an understood and accepted part of a spectrum of difference.”
Even if there’s only one kid like mine in his school of 500, he’s normal.
Of course, I think he’s exceptional, brilliant, beautiful, and somewhat problematic independent of any gender stuff, but I’m his Dad.
Because, like in Lake Woebegon, I think that all our GLBTQ kids are above average.
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Perhaps ‘normative’ works?
yeah, I kinda meant normative, but that word has this scientific kinda smell; I thought of ‘ordinary’ but that seemed disrespectful of the cis-gendered, plus, nobody thinks their kid is ordinary. Anyway, I did my best.
I think you can wear yourself out trying to come up with terms and expressions that will placate everyone. I gave up trying to categorize Chris. Is he is he or a she? A boy or a girl? Trans something?
No he ( or she or whatever ) is just a happy healthy child. Normal, not normal who knows? Who cares?
The words are for other people; inside the family there is no need. We do try to reach out to other families so they can understand and respect ours, and then, like it or not, we run into language.
Language that is easily accessible to those not in the know can be offensive to those who get it. Tortured, weird, awkward constructions, third gender pronouns, etc, are annoying, like adopting the metric system, something sane and rational which we refuse to do. Suddenly we’re asking people to learn a new language.
So there’s a tension there; you look for the middle ground.
Morgan asked her dad (folk singer Utah Phillips):
“Why can’t you be normal?”
Morgan’s godmother, Dorothea Brownell, responded:
“He is normal – what you meant to say is ‘average.’”