“Ain’t No Normal” was written for an online event/exploration in January, 2023 called What are We? as part of the Brave New Works festival. A group of friends came together to explore how disability and impairment are entangled with the construction of the ideal ‘human’. Learn more about the ongoing explorations and inquiries in the crip-queer landscape here. What follows is an edited version of the original piece.
My dear friends, I hate to break it to y’all but there ain’t no such thing as “normal.” If I turn the kaleidoscope of perception and begin relating with myself, other people and the other-than-human through this belief-lens, I destabilize one of the basic fundaments of ableism. I undermine its very logic: that there is some ideal human form that we should all be trying to squeeze ourselves into; that I have to smooth out and cover up my strange, rough edges or discombobulated mind. This also reminds me that there ain’t no “normal” way that I gotta talk about ableism or disability.
In the Name of Rafa 