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What “Normal” Means To Me!

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Deadboy365
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12 May 2008, 12:11 pm

When Neurotypicals look at me... they think they can judge me by my image and label me as “normal”...
I ask you: What is “normal” but the stereotypical image of a NT human being created by and for the NT’s? But normal is nothing compared to who you really are...
When they say to me “You are Autistic”
I say “I don’t like ‘labels’!”...
Here is my definition of a label: - A label is just something that you would find on a product that is being placed on the consumer markets...
Why they say Autism is a “label” I do not really understand and never will...
I could give them worse names than just a label... but... I won’t because then I’d be just as bad as them...


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Specter
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12 May 2008, 12:13 pm

My belief is that normal is impossible to define.


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slowmutant
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12 May 2008, 12:48 pm

Everybody gets labelled, whether they like it or not. Getting labelled as AS doesn't single you out as much as you think. Since you can't peek inside the mind of another person, you can't know what kind of insecurity issues they've got going. Sometimes people label themselves and think it's externally imposed when in fact it isn't. The teenage girl who thinks of herself as "fat" just assumes the whole world thinks the same thing when they look at her. Sometimes the self-labelling is correct and the girl really is fat, but other times it's a self-applied description with no basis in reality. People everywhere deal with labels, not just Aspies. Labels are arbitrary constructs, fickle and without substance.



abstrusemortal
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12 May 2008, 12:51 pm

slowmutant wrote:

.........

People everywhere deal with labels, not just Aspies.


True.


The concept of "normality" is an illusion just as ( and this is the best example I can come up with at the moment), from a quantum mechanics perspective, determinism is an illusion - nature is inherently probabilistic, but from a macro perspective is seems like a deterministic one.


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Deadboy365
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12 May 2008, 12:52 pm

slowmutant wrote:
Everybody gets labelled, whether they like it or not. Getting labelled as AS doesn't single you out as much as you think. Since you can't peek inside the mind of another person, you can't know what kind of insecurity issues they've got going. Sometimes people label themselves and think it's externally imposed when in fact it isn't. The teenage girl who thinks of herself as "fat" just assumes the whole world thinks the same thing when they look at her. Sometimes the self-labelling is correct and the girl really is fat, but other times it's a self-applied description with no basis in reality. People everywhere deal with labels, not just Aspies. Labels are arbitrary constructs, fickle and without substance.


I get what you're saying but... did you miss the part, when you read, about "my definition of a label"?



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12 May 2008, 1:02 pm

To me, normal is a setting on a washing machine.


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trotz
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12 May 2008, 1:12 pm

Normal is just the way people describe others who share the same characteristics or live just like they do. Anything that doesn't fit in with their parameters is considered abnormal to them.

I have heard sports announcers describe some athletes as "not living the life of a normal teenager". What IS a normal teenager, anyway? Are all supposed to be the same? I don't think so. Each one of us does what is right for us. We're all really different.