I Say “Humbug” To Society
(“21st century genetic engineering will not only eradicate the Siamese twins and alligatored skin people but you’re gonna be hard pressed to find a slight overbite or a not so high cheekbone. You see, I’ve seen the future and the future looks just like him. *points* Imagine, going through your whole life lookin’ like that. That’s why it’s left up to the self-made freaks like me and “the conundrum” to remind people.”
Scully, “Remind people of what?”
“Nature abhors normality, you can’t go very long without creating a mutant. You know why?”
Scully, “No, why?”
“I don’t either, it’s a mystery. Maybe some mysteries were never meant to be solved.”)
Why the random X-Files clip? Well, it’s from an episode titled “Humbug” and is one of my favorites. I think it presents an important point about nature and current society’s need/desire to change or intervene in the course of it. Certainly I have felt like a freak in many ways, but none so much as my fat body. While it’s been admired and desired, it’s also been demonized and shamed. I have embraced the power that being the boogie man can hold. I never felt this more than when I participated in Marilyn Wann’s flesh mob in SF a couple of months ago. The looks on people faces were priceless. The woman who said, “Shame on you” to me/us and my gut reaction to that. It was a powerful day!
The point of the video above is simply that we should be embracing our differences, not hating or demonizing or worse: cutting or removing or erasing or altering them! My purpose as an activist is to shed light on this and to point to ways in which we can spread this message and help people to stop judging and hating themselves and each other. It’s not such a bad thing. Yet “they” say we’re trying to recruit a big fat army or something. Ha-ha! We’re not! And we’re not promoting fatness as a lifestyle choice, it’s not (generally speaking). Most of us did not choose to be fat and have done everything we could to try to fit into a societal demand that nature just doesn’t agree with.
When you go against nature there are repercussions. Instead of harming our bodies with hate and medical procedures (is it still “medical” if it’s basis is harm itself?) why not embrace and celebrate the vast diversity that nature has given us all? Why not give ourselves the chance to blossom or bloom in the light of the sun and moon? Wiggle your toes (webbed or otherwise), jiggle those arms (or wings) and shake whatever you wanna shake, but enjoy and celebrate the wonderful body that nature has given us. <3
From memory from Lafferty’s _Fourth Mansions_: Norm is from the latin for a carpenter’s square, and it has two opposites: abnormal and enormous.
As I recall, the book had a strong theme of weirdness being an essential part of the world, and probably most of it.
Very cool. Thank you!
Yay for human variety!
Oh yes! Absolutely! Variety is the spice of life! <3
Nature, God, the Life Force… whatever you want to call it made me just as I am. Why would I want to fight that? Who and what I am is pretty damn terrific.
Every time I see something about making everyone the same, I keep flashing back to reading Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin. The premise is that there’s a man who dreams, and when he wakes up, whatever he dreams is true. Not only that, it has always been true. He goes to a psychiatrist for help, but the psychiatrist decides he can fix all the problems of the world by directing her patient’s dreams.
The guy has met and been falling slowly in love with a black woman. But when he’s asked to dream a solution to racial hatred, the only thing he can come up with is that everyone is – and always has been – the precise same shade of grey… and the woman he loves isn’t there, because her blackness is so much a part of her identity that she cannot exist in this grey world.
I don’t think I could exist in a grey world, either. I have always stood out, for better and for worse. I cannot be neutral. I cannot be grey. I cannot wish that I had not known the people I have known who are blind, deaf, living with cerebral palsy, or born in other ways that would be wiped out in a completely homogenized world.
When I was seventeen, I was introduced to a guy. As was (and still is) my habit, I initiated a handshake. He offered me what there was of his right hand. It was simply a palm with a thumb and a couple tiny, twisted proto-fingers. When I just went ahead and finished the handshake without making a big deal about it or asking what happened, he decided I was one of the cool people worth knowing.
I can only imagine how many people got so hung up on the fact that he was born with a less than useful right hand that they missed out on knowing one of the most creative, funny, and interesting people I’ve known. Their loss.
We’ve lost track of one another several times over the years, but I know if we ever meet up again, we’ll just pick up our friendship right where it left off. Nothing grey about him.
What a great story! Thank you for sharing it here. I think it’s terribly sad (and wrong) when people look at someone with different abilities or birth defects or anything not seen as “normal” with shock and horror. Like you said, it’s their loss! What a shame that people can’t get passed the cover.
I still call it eugenics.
Oh yes, absolutely!