Our lives contain degrees of narrative, story, plot, and sub-plot; each degree possessing many levels of meaning and substance. In the society we live, there are degrees of life that are defined, recognised, or generally accepted as normal (normative) or (if you will) the default.
The boundaries of what is considered normative in society cut a swathe through many aspects of being human: through the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional ways of being, even to how one identifies and defines themselves.
The language generally used to describe those outside these boundaries of ‘normativity’ is invariably negative or derogatory. The very word disability, for those outside perceived physical, cognitive, social ‘normalcy’, is to suggest that these people are without, or have little, ability (compared to those within ‘normalcy?). Groups that advocate for people defined as disabled, often accept and use this term to identify themselves. They ought think again.
Those who are normal to themselves, yet are outside the confines of what is considered to be normative, have, in my opinion, transcended accepted normalcy and gone beyond that specific normative.
The gay, lesbian, bisexual transgender, transsexual, intersex, queer… GLBTTIQ… the alphabet mangled identity of those communities are beyond a normative… they are beyond the hetero-normative – they transcend hetero-sex, heterosexual definitions of sex, and heterosexual definitions of gender (expression, roles and performance) and are therefore the community that is beyond the hetero-normative.
These communities have changed their alphabet mangle identity over and over again trying to be as inclusive, yet seemingly trying to identify each individual group in that broader identity. The GLB community became the GLBT, GLBTI, GLBTTI, GLBTTIQ, GLBTTIQQ, any number of conglomerations of letters and identities defining people who are all outside the confines of heterocentric normativity or like myself, are beyond the hetero-normative.
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