Normative Quotes

“It is critical to note that our biases against the other are empowered less by our assumptions of their otherness and more by our assumptions about our own normality.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“Deviant' is the weapon of the normative to discredit and demonize the Other.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“When you're accustomed to being considered 'normal', difference feels like a perversion.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“One of the deadliest tools of powerful systems is narrow definitions of what is "normal" and the reduction of difference to deviance.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“Once something is no longer illicit, punishable, pathologized, or used as lawful basis for raw discrimination or acts of violence, that phenomenon will no longer be able to represent or deliver on subversion, the subcultural, the underground, the fringe, in the same way”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“A lack of concern about the plight of a “breeding” sow on a factory farm is also a result of normative systematic oppression – speciesism.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice

“One of the biggest problems with so-called "cancel culture" is not the "cancelling" itself. Instead, it the crisis of imagination that exposes our collective inability to engage the complexities of social issues with nuance.

What generally happens is that when there is any significant call for accountability and justice, it is uncritically deemed "cancel culture", pointing to the few extremes as "proof". Without question, ruthless public shaming and ostracization is never ultimately beneficial to all involved. However, that fact is too often forced through a binary lens that fails to address the individual and systemic issues at play, posit restorative/transformative consequences, and require better, more informed accountability.

This is further complicated by the tendency of those with social privilege to lean into the rhetoric of "dialogue" and some variety of "bothsidesism" that fails to address underlying systemic imbalances of power and relative impact of social issues, all while policing tone and emotion as though anger and hurt are disqualifying.

If there is a tendency for some to lean too strongly into "cancelling"- a legitimate issue that we need to address- it is largely because it is an attempt at correcting the over-emphasis on biased, normative systems that benefit the privileged and perpetuate harm.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“Some things that are common should never become commonplace- usual, expected, the "norm". Hate crimes, for example, are increasingly common.
Never stop being outraged by them.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“All common minds are trapped within the world, and within it, themselves.”
― Sov8840

“All of these people are, approximately, repeated copies of a single person. A single entity produced billions of times is occupying every space on Earth.”
― Sov8840

“...and they absorb the world shaped by these, "constructing" their thoughts, feelings, words, actions, identity, and beliefs accordingly. Which means they will think in the same way, feel the same things, use the same words, do the same actions, have the same identity, and carry the same beliefs as the rest of the society.”
― Sov8840

“...and they absorb the world shaped by these, "constructing" their thoughts, feelings, words, actions, identity, and beliefs accordingly, which means they will think in the same way, feel the same things, use the same words, do the same actions, have the same identity, and carry the same beliefs as the rest of society.”
― Sov8840

“Normal people have nothing to forget, for they never even possess the ability to form memories—because they do not have an inner life to begin with.”
― Sov8840

“Any judgment born of collective agreement is, by nature, arbitrary, no matter how widely it is accepted.”
― Sov8840