Normal

/ˈnôrməl/

adjective: conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.

Standards that are put on society are solidified not only in words but also in images and the way that certain things are represented in the media. The creation of the word “normal” was the first movement toward this idea of “disability” in comparison to the regular, well functioning human body. In society now, these things are everywhere, whether it be in the media or in places such as biology textbooks, which are meant to be unbiased and purely scientific. 

The idea of normality is a relatively new one, yet it has seemingly flipped society upside down. One of the points made in “Constructing Normalcy” by Lennard J. Davis was that in societies such as Ancient Greece, the concept of idealism existed, however, it was taught that only the Gods had features thought to be “ideal”. This means that no humans could be perfect because they could never have these God-like features, and thus, inherently, none of them can be more imperfect than any other. The passage states, “The central point here is that in a culture with an ideal form of the body, all members of the population are below the ideal,” and thus, there is no superiority between individuals of a society. The word “normal,” is then what ruined this existing social standard. In the 19th century, European culture was what brought up and made popular the concept of being “normal” in the realm of statistics. It was when this idea, usually used in mathematics was then applied to humans, using the “law of errors” to apply to the distribution of human features, including height and weight. From this arose the social standards that we have today for what “normal” is when speaking in terms of not only height and weight, but also the size of certain body parts, facial features, skin color, race, sexuality, and most other features of a human being that are now categorized and judged on a scale of how perfect or “normal” they are. 

The images shown in “From the Medical Gaze to Sublime Mutations,” by T. Benjamin Singer, are ones from a biology textbook in which the eyes of the subjects are covered in order to “dehumanize” them. Because the subjects are portrayed to be “abnormal,” or “disabled,” in some way, the pictures must be depersonalized. The way the background is set up also contributes to this. The gridded background and the way the subjects are standing makes it look like a police lineup or a mugshot, as the author points out. The fact that these are images shown in a biology textbook and that this is the way that sexual “abnormalities,” are taught is what contributes to the problems that society has with accepting anything that is not seen to be “typical, normal, or standard.” This idea reminded me of this image that I have seen used in genetics and biologies textbooks in which, instead of scientific terms, the words “normal” and “abnormal” are used to describe people with biological conditions concerning sexuality.

The establishment of the word “normal,” and its implications have found their way into modern society through the use of media and its contribution to the way we have been programmed to understand people who are not necessarily the “same” as us. An example of this if the movie “Gun Hill Road,”  which portrays a father being unable to accept and understand his “son” being transexual and identifying as female. The word choice in the movie is a strong indicator of how media often portrays the struggles that transgender people, as well as others who have similar experiences, such as most of the LGBTQ community, go through. The following are some of the phrases and dialogue from the movie that not only make it an accurate representation of the struggles of being considered the “other” in this society but also highlight the confusion that comes with the person experiencing the situation being unable to understand it themselves. 

                                                                        Faggot

                                                        Get the fuck off me dude

                                                   You’re a man. Fuckin’ act like it

                                                  You don’t disrespect this house

                You should see the way this n**** walks around, waving his arms and shit.

             That’s my life. That’s MY boy. He took that from me. He took that shit from me.

                           You’re my son. You’re a boy. My baby boy. My flesh and blood.

                                        You ain’t my girl. You need to chill out, alright?

                                           Don’t you understand this can’t happen!

                                             You’re a fucking man! Not a woman!

                                                 I can’t let you do this to yourself.

                                                         I’m not pretty anymore

                                                                  Be stronger