Normalcy is Not Desirable

When I first read Throw Away the Master's Tools, I was very confused by the coinage of the term "neurotypical". There's a section titled "I Don't Believe in Normal People", where the author goes on and on about the absurdity of the concept of a "normal person", how it exists purely as a consequence of some social inequality which allows for the dominant culture to take certain characteristics for granted. A new word is needed, then, to replace "normal" in the context of neurodiversity. "Neurotypical".

But, uhh... doesn't "typical" literally mean the same thing as normal? How is this any different??

I've eventually come to understand that "normal" is usually interpreted as a value-judgement, with a positive connotation (as opposed to "weird", which is negative). Intuitively, I understand "normalcy" as a purely statistical property, synonymous with "common". Rereading the text, it's clear that here the word is being given much stronger implications.


I don't want to be accusatory, but I feel like there's an irony in the fact that this essay about the implicit prejudice of language is unquestioningly using the word "normal" this way.*

Now that I understand this implication more clearly, I've begun to notice it more, and have become a little bothered by it. Phrases like "please just be normal" seem somewhat common on the internet, used as moral judgements, to look down on the "weird" people with their annoying or icky, perverse interests and attitudes (especially in the context of sexuality, I think). Why is normal good? If anything, it's boring...

This is a particularly admirable property of otaku culture, I think. The embrace of the weird, the "degenerate", the socially unacceptable. There's a flippant self-depreciation common in anime circles ("Anime is trash and so am I"). It seems that "weird" maintains its negative connotation even in this context, so there's a sense that in order to embrace weirdness, one must embrace immorality. I'd rather just drop the connotation, personally.

I don't really have anything against the word "neurotypical", to be clear. It sounds better than "neuronormal". Although I am tempted to take the "I Don't Believe in Normal People" idea seriously and suggest that neurotypicality doesn't exist, as humans are very heterogeneous, and there may not be as significant a neuro-majority as these terms seem to imply.

* To be fair, the essay always puts "normal" in quotes, as though to imply that the connotation is only borrowed from the common usage.