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Bullying and the enforcement of normal
June 11, 2015 in Culture, Gender Issues, personal | Tags: Bullying, Conformity, Growing up weird | by The Intransigent One | 1 comment
Via Shakesville, I stumbled across this powerful and insightful article about bullying among school kids. As somebody who grew up bookish, queerish, funny-looking, and with poor mastery of social skills and “appropriate” gender performance, this totally resonated with me.
The furthest I have come is to accept that I have both been bullied and a bully, both oppressed and oppressor, and that I have thoroughly soaked in a definition of “normal” that I am still trying to undo, day by day. Some of that “normalization” has been enforced by other marginalized people, too — even my own friends — which makes it much, much harder to unlearn.
That is why it’s been tempting for me to just keep doing “normal.” I couldn’t when I was a kid. But I have since learned how.
I’m just not sure that’s such a good thing.
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