To give some more context, the video I did watch was about a young child that was born with female anatomy but knew from a very young age that he was actually a male. The video I did not watch was the epitome of misogyny that the UCSB shooter filmed before killing and injuring 19 individuals in Isla Vista, CA. I send my love and condolences to the family and friends of those victims.
I believe the video about the transgendered child has had many positive reactions and helped people see that developmental difference from a new perspective, specifically a child's.
The media response to the UCSB tragedy has been unsettling. Instead of placing the blame on the killer himself, many people are making claims that he was crazy or a madman. As far as police reports prior to the incident are concerned, he was a perfectly harmless individual.
While these two videos and topics are incredibly different, they've sparked a thought in my mind. Our society categorizes people based on characteristics in situations where that categorization is crucial to the outcome of the situation. Instead of categorizing transgendered people into some outlier group from "the rest of us," why don't we just accept the fact that some people's anatomy doesn't match the gender they identify with? Just because that isn't the case for us, doesn't mean it's not "normal".
And instead of blaming the killers actions on mental illness, why can't we accept the fact that there is a vast amount of gender inequality (and an unsettling amount of expectations from men of women) in our society and do something to change that? Instead he's put into a category outside the "norm". Sexism and misogyny are ubiquitous. We just don't realize it until peoples lives are at stake.
My question is, what is normal? If no two people are the same, is there even a normal?
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