What is normal? (and the title of this blog)

I am not normal.

This seems to be a controversial thing to say. I'm always getting told 'There's no such thing as normal'. My housemate (a psychology student) once answered this with a fantastically geeky, matter-of-fact 'There is. It's within two standard deviations of the mean'.

Of course there's such a thing as normal. Just as there's such a thing as 'hate' and there's such a thing as 'beautiful'. Words that are not easily defined still have meaning to most of us. Even without my housemate's scientific definition, we all have an idea of 'normal': normal is what you'd expect to see.

As I assume you understand, the title of this blog is from the scientific measure of how typical something is. (If you don't understand, go and Google or get someone to explain the normal distribution. I'm not doing it here, it makes the post look too dull. You could alternatively read something where the writer is more interested in people being able to read his/her stuff...)For many things, I am outside the two standard deviations, on the edge of that bell curve. I say this, but I have realised many of my oddities/abnormalities can't really be described like this. You cannot plot my bisexuality on a bell curve, or the fact that the laptop I am typing from is resting on a toilet lid. I do not know any system of measuring the volume of one's hair, or if the results would follow a normal distribution. But, still, that's where the blog name comes from.

Of course, most (I always hesitate to say 'all') people will have something 'abnormal' about them. Some people will have more, some people will have less. You could probably make a normal distribution of the number of attributes people have that lie outside of normal, but that'd be a bit silly (but I'd admittedly love it). I believe I'd be reasonably far from the centre of that bell curve, that I am not a very 'normal' person, but perhaps I'm wrong.

As for the people who say it's offensive to say people's characteristics are normal or not normal, I think it's them being offensive. They're implying that somehow only normal is good. Was Einstein's intelligence normal? Is having purple hair normal? Abnormal does not mean worse. Even where it does, it don't see any reason to pretend it's actually ordinary. Everyone's on the worse side of normal for something. I am abnormally anxious, and I think you'll all agree that's a bad thing, but I doubt you're thinking I'm a bad person for it. Saying it's 'normal' for me to hyperventilate if unexpectedly invited to the neighbour's house for tea is just patronising, in my opinion. It reminds me of this article from Ouch! which discusses the idea that people can't just accept that some people have disabilities. But it's worse than that, saying normal is ideal is failing to except that people aren't all identical.

I admit maybe my view on this is due to my Asperger's Syndrome; we tend to have a blunt and literal take on things. But that's how it seems to me, and that's all I can provide: my edge-of-the-bell-curve view on normal. Feel free to comment with your own.

A Basic Understanding of Genetics

The general public needs one. I know that as a biology student, I’m biased, but I really think we need some understanding of genetics to make responsible, informed decisions about our beliefs and behaviour.

Last year, as part of my course, we used a computer program which featured some videos about Down Syndrome. We were using the program for other stuff, but I decided I’d take a look at these videos. A woman was saying that her son had Down Syndrome. She said she didn’t get the test for it done while she was pregnant because her and her husband were healthy and non-disabled, the child would be too.
I sometimes wonder where people think disabled children come from. Do they think they fall from the sky? I’ve seen on TV and YouTube parents saying ‘I never thought I would be the parent of a child with special needs’, and been puzzled by this. Now I suppose it’s due to the same misconception the woman in the video had. Presumably, these people believe disabled kids come from either disabled parents or illness in pregnancy.
I don’t know how common the idea she had is, but I feel that if it’s not rare, the doctor really ought to have explained to her how congenital disabilities arise, and therefore why they offer to test for them. The woman then went on to say that she received pretty much no help or information after her child was diagnosed. I wonder if she worried if it would affect any future children she had, if she still doesn’t understand what causes the condition. Things like this stop people from making informed decisions about having kids and having tests during pregnancy.

The thing that triggered this post though, is the recent stuff about genetic copy number variants being associated with ADHD. Bizarrely, one of the authors of study claims that it proves ADHD is a genetic disorder. Despite the fact that only 16% of ADHD kids have these CNVs, and 8% of non-ADHD kids have them. There are now a load of debates and stuff online saying ‘is it genetic or is it junk food or bad parenting?’. How difficult is the idea that most (if not all) things about us are the result of both genetics and environment? I’m not even going to talk about the leap people make from ‘it’s caused by their environment’ to ‘they must have rubbish parents’.
I’m reminded of a lecture I went to by Susan Greenfield*, where she said that not a lot of how the brain ends up is genetic. She talked about a study on transgenic mice with Huntington’s disease. The mice had much slower symptom progression if they were in a more interesting environment with more to do. They still had Huntington’s, because they still had that gene. Nothing in the environment could change that, but it could drastically change how bad the disease was. ‘It’s genetic’ doesn’t mean nothing can be done about it, or nothing could have been done. I don’t know why so much of what I read seems to ignore this.

I accidentally ended up in the same room as an evangelical talk the other week. The guy was saying that his understanding of The Selfish Gene was that everything about us is determined by our genetics. Everything. I tried to correct him, but wasn’t articulate enough to get my point across. If everything was genetic then identical twins would be the same person, as they have the same DNA. Part of his religious beliefs, I fear, are based on him not understanding science.

I have friends who did not even do a GCSE in Biology. I feel that this kind of stuff needs to be taught to people. Maybe less about how the heart works and how a plant is fertilised, and more about stuff like this, stuff that can affect people’s lives. But I suppose a useful education will always be something we want and never get, and that's perhaps a different rant...

*In case anyone wonders what I think of Susan Greenfield's views on modern technology, I really don't agree with her.

Masculinism

I went to some talks on feminism a while ago, and when I told a friend of mine, he asked if he could set up a society for masculinism. I was annoyed by this response*, but I have no idea why, really. It fits in well with the ideas I have and the reason I wasn't sure if I thought of myself as a feminist. I have tried calling myself a feminist, but I am leaning towards rejecting this term. I hope this post may explain why.

I have been thinking about what issues masculinism would deal with, and there are quite a lot. I found a brilliant blog post recently: 5 Stupid, Unfair and Sexist Things Expected of Men. For those who can't be bothered to read it: the article outlines that men are expected to:

- be prepared to get into physical fights

- not look like they care about their girlfriends too much

- be promiscuous

- not show emotion

- always 'prove' that they are not gay

These are fairly stupid expectations that men are pressured to live up to. Men also are expected to put up with physical pain, not look like they care about their appearance, not show affection, not be victims of violence or sexual assault, have stereoytpically masculine interests and skills, accept challenges and not be a 'wuss' - even if something totally stupid is thrown at them.
If masculinism existed, it would challenge the idea that this is what men have to be like. And people bloody well should.

Seaneen Molloy's brilliant post on being labelled a 'woman blogger' also made me think, this time about the differences in how we think of men and women with mental illnesses. Men are less likely to talk about mental health and depression. Because, as I mentioned earlier, men aren't supposed to have feelings. Not talking about it leaves them at risk; rates of suicide are far higher in men. Worse still, I think men with psychosis are more stereoytped as violent. And that's the worst kind of stigma to live with.

(to go slightly off-topic, the bloke who did those 'schizo' videos with Time To Change is awesome - for being a bloke talking openly about his mental health, saying he has schizophrenia, probably the worst-stigmatised condition, with a 'so what' attitude)

The expectation of violence is a disturbing issue. At the feminist talks, I remember one woman pointing out that men have far higher rates of violence and suicide, and this is just sort of seen as an inevitable thing, 'how men are'. In reality, we need to look at the culture we have that drives this.

I've said many times I'm glad I'm not a man, because of the expectation of men to act 'manly'. I can walk down the street wearing men's clothes and shoes (and often do) and no-one will notice, let alone care. The reaction to a man walking down the street in a skirt and heels would be very different! Women are more accepted having 'masuculine' hobbies or careers than men who do 'feminine' jobs or hobbies. This is partly a feminist issue - you could argue that women are accepted doing masculine things because they are seen as better; the idea that 'feminine' things are inferior and men doing them are degrading themselves. But men are still coming off badly here. There was a very good 'Opinion' section in New Scientist about this, which, sadly, I cannot find to link to.

I'm not saying there aren't a lot of problems women face in society; I'm saying that men's problems and sexism towards men is ignored. And that's why I'm not going to say I'm interested in feminism. I'm interested in gender issues: problems faced by all of society - not just one half of it.

*So was my spellchecker: