Some years back I used to have a fantasy I called my Ikea fantasy. It involved having a secure income, a nice loft in the Brewery (an old Brewery converted to lofts for artists in LA.) and having a compact car that had less than 100K miles on it and looked decent.
Well now I live in a nice house in suburbia with a life partner a whole bunch of cats and just got a promotion at work. I supervise the crew of associates when the main supervisor is off.
That’s about as normal as it gets. Yes, I perfer museums to religion. Would rather read political non-fiction to almost any sort of romance or popular books. I’m probably further left than most Democrats.
I look at the people who shop the store. Most do not fit anyone’s stereotype and if they do on the surface that is often a projection onto them.
Those that work at the store are just as varied.
When people throw out the term normal without a definition how is anyone to define the parameters?
Your mileage will definately vary on this one.
Women Born Transsexual 
March 27, 2009 at 4:00 am
It breaks my heart hearing everything you had to go through Suzan, but you obviously came through it stronger and better for the experience, thankfully.
“Normal”, as far as I can tell, is the status quo or whatever people tend to pretend it is at the time. And society feels differently over certain subjects. There is definitely a “bad normal” and a “good normal” which is completely dependent on the likes and dislikes of the area one lives in and the way someone was raised. “Normal” in New York City is going to be different than normal in the heavily Mormon parts of Utah, in Western Africa, or in Thailand. Dig a little and I think no one will stand up to a “normal” litmus test.
I wonder how much the word “normal” will change in the future. Does anyone have a hope of being normal in a future where, with advances in information technology, all our secrets will be laid bare and open to scrutiny (I totally don’t get facebook)? Will there be a status quo if people can’t hide their dirty laundry?
I have a life that seems, in my area, as “normal”, but deep down, being WBT, I know very few would consider that “normal”. I didn’t have to go through the struggles that many WBT had to go through either. Even so, my friends, as I was growing up, still thought I was different because I went from doing modeling to getting a law degree to giving that all up to be a flight attendant (plus, I think I’m weird because I like playing video games with my nephew). It takes very little to fall afoul of being labeled as “weird”. I’ve found, in my life, that many people are even jealous of those that aren’t “normal”. Very few people seem to really dream of a normal life. Deep down most people hope their life will be at least a little interesting and interesting is very rarely “normal”.
I also find it interesting when dealing with some in the WBT community that some have the audacity to label themselves as normal and others as deviant. I started taking female hormones when I was still going through puberty and I’m not so bold as to say that I’m normal so how can someone who spent any time as ‘male’ in society, before transition, claim to be more normal than someone else? I find it odd when anyone from a fringe group think they have the right to judge what is normal in others. It’s funny for me to watch someone that’s WBT that transitioned after the age of eighteen, judge me as not being “normal” because I’m in a happy lesbian relationship (though this only happens to me by American WBT’s to be fair). They think that being WBT and liking men makes them “normal” which I find kind of funny. What makes it even stranger is that my partner, strangely, doesn’t like being around most WBT people because they make her feel uncomfortable because she thinks that someone that transitions is “weird” and if I bring up that I’m WBT she just says, “You’re not like those people”. De-Nile isn’t just a river that runs through Egypt.. lol.. It’s amazing how people twist things to make themselves the barometers of what is and isn’t “normal”. I think “normal” has a lot to do with someone’s comfort level.
Honestly, does anyone really want to be normal? Or are people normal because they are afraid to be anything else? Perhaps when society stops living in fear of everything that is different, they will discover that everyone is “normal”.
Sorry my reply’s are always so long. I have this bad “un-normal” habit of writing as fast as I think and I just don’t have the time to re-read what I send most of the time. I wish I had the talent to say everything I want to say in Haiku. Sorry..