Normality

Me pointing out there is no normality probably seems self-serving. It is not. This piece is about you. It is about politics and, therefore, society.

The Guardian published Am I Normal? by Sarah Chaney review – it’s OK to be strange and I suggest everyone read the review, maybe even buy the book, for its history of normality. Before that, think about this:

Later in the 19th century, “a more sinister chapter in the history of normal began”, as Victorian polymath Francis Galton began to advocate for eugenics to “improve the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally”. Galton’s self-professed “race science” would encourage the “fit” to have more children and the “unfit” to have fewer, “perhaps even preventing certain people from breeding at all”. By the late 19th century, eugenics had infiltrated much of western medicine and, in 1907, the world’s first eugenics law, which made sterilisation mandatory for “criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles” in state custody, was passed in Indiana. German eugenicist Eugen Fischer conducted medical experiments on children born to Herero women raped by German soldiers in Namibia (then German South West Africa) during the 1904-1908 German genocide of Herero and Nama peoples. He concluded that children born from bi-racial unions were “inferior” to their German fathers. His work influenced Adolf Hitler, and lent support to the antisemitic Nuremberg Laws.

Normality eas born out of the abnormality that is racism. Humanism allows for a wider variety of human beings. But I guess that depends on your willingness to embrace all people as human beings.

sch 8/5/22