“Normalization.”

What does that term actually mean? I think it depends whom you ask.

In some quarters it means “make aberrant thing X acceptable and standard”. But the trouble with that take is it doesn’t track.

1/22

Popular media has featured ghastly crimes for decades, yet ghastly crimes are no more acceptable and standard now than they were 100 years ago.

What I think the people who fear “normalization” are really worried about is something else.

2/22

I think they’re worried about shock value.

Shock value is when you’re able to distress, upset, and rile a cult of followers into a torch-waving mob over something they find too horrifying to countenance.

3/22

The greatest weapon against shock value is familiarity.

When a person is familiar with a thing, they aren’t shocked by it any more. They may not APPROVE of it, but it doesn’t horrify or shatter them.

4/22

Same-sex relationships were everyone’s shock-value bludgeon until comparatively recently. Trans people are getting the brunt of it now. And just half a century ago, “interracial” relationships were the heavy shock-value artillery.

5/22

But as those various targets were exposed and initially exploited by bullies, something interesting happened. Their stories started getting told. They became something else, something other than “other”.

6/22

They became human, and people began to see themselves reflected in them.

That made it impossible for shock value to be imposed any more, because the Average Citizen could say, “Hey, wait, I know someone who’s X. They’re a friend of mine. This is not okay.”

7/22

And that took all the momentum away from the anti-X movement.

Learn about the thing that frightens or alarms or disturbs you. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to support it. But you can stop hating or being afraid of it.

8/22

THAT message is the kind of message which most terrifies the people who decry “normalization” of anything. The real message is: “I hate this thing and I want everyone else to hate it too, and I’m afraid of what will happen if no one hates it any more.”

9/22

Which is, sometimes, a valid concern. Contrarily, precisely that kind of “normalization” has occurred via slasher movies, and we don’t see a lot of Jason copycatting going on.

10/22

There aren’t serial-killer societies that meet every month, socialize, drink crappy urn coffee, then go out on killing sprees until next month’s meeting.

Serial killing is still not okay. Serial killers still go to prison.

11/22

But there is an analogous society, a society of X haters, where X can be essentially anything. The identity of X is irrelevant. The true unifying factor is the hatred.

12/22

ALL human cultures otherize. All human cultures direct hatred toward those whom they have otherized. It seems to be innate to our species, and is hard to overcome.

13/22

And that hatred, that tendency to otherize and loathe the other, truly HAS been normalized.

And THAT is the thing to resist.

It’s easy to be swept up in the tide. It’s easy to shut off the brain and lock off the heart and be one of the mob.

14/22

That is animal behavior. It’s rooted in ancient reflexive hindbrain drives.

We can, and we must, do better.

The next time you feel yourself nodding in agreement with someone decrying “normalization” of a thing, ask yourself…

15/22

1. What is this person’s agenda?
2. What do I actually know about thing X?
3. Why might this person want to be dishonest?
4. Am I being manipulated?

These are four ways of focusing on an underlying issue.

16/22

That underlying issue is the way otherization and ignorance are often used to simultaneously create a lot of smoke and heat in one place, and divert attention away from something else going on, in another place.

17/22

And that thing your attention is being diverted FROM is almost always the thing you really need to pay attention TO.

Often it’s just a power grab. “If I get enough people behind me hating thing X, I’ll have power!”

18/22

Sometimes it’s trying to hide something else. “If I get enough people behind me hating thing X, no one will notice I do thing X myself!”

But you can be certain there is manipulation, and an agenda.

19/22

Your job, as the owner of the most highly-evolved neurological system in all of known space, is to figure out what that agenda is. But before you can, you must distance yourself from the hindbrain.

20/22

You must learn. You must research. You must familiarize yourself with thing X, from unbiased perspectives, and then ask why it’s supposed to be evil, and what the motivations might REALLY be for opposing it.

21/22

Normalize THAT, and you will undo the agendas, and become resistant to manipulation.

You will become personally empowered. You will be able to think for yourself.

And that, more than anything else, is what terrifies those who claim to fear normalization of anything.

22/22