4th of March is Weird Pride Day. This is a day for people to embrace their weirdness, and reject the stigma associated with being weird. To publicly express pride in the things that make us weird, and to celebrate the diversity of humankind.
Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.’
– Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
To be weird is to be alive. Sailing into the headwind, together. All over the world, people on the margins are converging on the universal language of ecologies of care, weaving new threads into the relational fabric of life:
We all know that the world is in crisis. We are all in crisis, and the path forward is a path through despair – together, participating in omni-directional learning and embracing the unknowable future.
“Normality” is shaped by the many things culturally well adjusted people don’t notice, and by the many things they take for granted. The hump of the bell curve is the false God of Normality.
On Weird Pride Day you are invited to write and talk, make art and videos about what people think is weird about you – and why (and how) you accept these things about yourself.
This could include:
- Stories
- Reflections
- Calls to action
- How to be weird safely
Jointly embracing our weirdness helps us to leave behind the WEIRD mono-cult, by nurturing emergent and beautifully diverse ecologies of care. Weird Pride Day started in 2021, but its roots go back a long way before that.
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17 Responses
This is my favourite post you have written, Jorn. Succinct, simple, and powerful. Here’s to weird pride day.
All is not as golden as painted. As ever in this world. The attempt at a Weird Pride Day, which has thankfully been poorly supported in the past, needs to be kept a dud by ethical awareness of why it’s wrong it’s because it’s inventor is a rejector. The autistic experience includes Rejection Sensitivity as a condition, therefore it’s ethically against us and an abuse of us for anyone to defend rejection from groups by leader fiat or by a feel of fitting in. This day’s inventor runs a group that does those things. It’s even a rival of another group in the same city Edinburgh that developed a model strong ethical code against rejection. See post from 2021 “pride days from rejecty sources”, in “Autistic Groups Fairness Watch”.
Weird Pride Day celebrates diversity, this includes a diversity of groups. We need appropriate levels of respect between groups with different perspectives, which may perceive each other as weird.
I love this! I didn’t know there was a Weird Pride Day. When my daughters were growing up, I often told them that Weird and Different was good. I don’t know if they totally bought into that. What we didn’t know was that we were all Autistic + ADHD. Thankx for the post!
There’s not, validly. The attempt at a Weird Pride Day, which has thankfully been poorly supported in the past, needs to be kept a dud by ethical awareness of why it’s wrong it’s because it’s inventor is a rejector. The autistic experience includes Rejection Sensitivity as a condition, therefore it’s ethically against us and an abuse of us for anyone to defend rejection from groups by leader fiat or by a feel of fitting in. This day’s inventor runs a group that does those things. It’s even a rival of another group in the same city Edinburgh that developed a model string ethical code against rejection.
autisticgroupsfairnesswatch.wordpress.com/2021/02/09/pride-days-from-rejecty-sources-human-rights/
Weird Pride Day is not about defending rejection from groups by leader fiat or by a feel of fitting in.
Weird Pride Day celebrates diversity. This includes an appreciation of the uniqueness of every human and their lived experiences. Furthermore, diversity of lived experiences is not limited to individuals. We need appropriate levels of respect between groups with different perspectives, which may perceive each other as weird.
Disagree strongly – (and regrettably write), especially if it’s an alliance with the Pride/Trans activism, or a copy and paste version. with all it’s faults This is very unfortunate and a self-inflicted wound on the part of ‘autism’ and some of it’s advocates. An alliance of difference isn’t a alliance of similarity, but a surface of signifiers and a naivety of politics and history. In other words, ‘we’ been here before. It’s a fantasy fantasy movement and alienation against the body and it’s complex shadow of sticky emotions. And the pride/trans movement are riding autism; and not for autism wellbeing – it clouds the situation with cult like terminologies, reinventing the wheel and hijacking and deigning debate for rhetoric and slogans, that proclaim a path to a paradise lost (a re-invention of the dubious, the untenable. and unsustainable). Hopefully, ‘Autism’ will fatigue of this this direction: take note of cautionary tales and subtexts that Oliva Laing has to offer in her book, ‘Everybody’. It may just provide an overview, and food for thought, if taken as a storytelling and reportage, and not a book of answers!
The subtitle of this page is a case in point:, and is pure categorical division. Like ‘Nationalism’, it unites ‘us’, while at the same time, divides us’.
The Statement on this page excludes the ‘norm’ as aberrant: ““Normality” is shaped by the many things culturally well adjusted people don’t notice, and by the many things they take for granted….The hump of the bell curve is the false God of Normality.”, is the blindside that NT antithesis brings. This blindside is turning informed bias into superciliousness bigotry. Not something to sanctify!
This page reeks of ‘NT/Norm’ antitheses:, it’s a falsehood with a false foe – and the only real thing the Pride/Trans/Autism alliance has in common. Be ‘woke’ (trad) of how you validate yourself.
This is somewhat a repeat of what I have already comment on, but I feel strongly about what I see is a misstep and clouding in Autism for gloss and gloss. Autism need advocacy and profile, but not this………
You are making a simplistic unfounded assumption “if it’s an alliance with the Pride/Trans activism, or a copy and paste version. with all it’s faults” to then proceed and attempt to dismiss the intersectional solidarity of marginalised people that we are seeing in many societies today, which includes and goes far beyond the rainbow communities. I collaborate with intersectionally marginalised people every day, on many topics, on the very real challenges we are facing in a hypernormative society that is shaped by a misguided myth of perpetual technological progress, entrapped by increasingly life denying institutions and cultural norms.
Did you follow any of the references included in the article? Did you take the time to listened to the embedded dialogue between Alexandros Liakopoulos and Nora Bateson? If not, then you are missing the frame for Weird Pride, which opposes commodification. The arbitrary anthropocentric cut-off points of the bell curve that shape “normality” are an artefact of WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic) culture. I have lived in many cultures, and grew up surrounded by less-WEIRD cultures. Life is too complex and diverse to be squashed into the neat unambiguous categories and binaries demanded by the industrialised paradigm of technological progress.
But Weird Pride Day is contradicted and ethically invalidated by coming from a source that defends that.
Whenever rejection of individuals is excused and not stood against, rejection of identity groups follows. They are tiers of the same dynamic.
From the time he was old enough to listen, I’ve always told my son that being called “Weird” was among the highest compliments. It meant that you didn’t give in to the status quo, and you didn’t fall into what was expected (which lately seems to be hatred).
When told at the beginning of middle school last year that he was weird, he responded with “Why Thank You! It runs in the family!”. I was a very proud mom.
Incredible
It’s all self-congratulator BS and narcistic diatribe. The fantasy revolution of our times – it’s all been done before – and it will fail just the same; and again there will be a whole bunch of looser, and few winners – the revolution with not be happening on-line!
“Normality” is shaped by the many things culturally well adjusted people don’t notice, and by the many things they take for granted” = Delusional nonsense and displace victimhood. This is not how social change happens that is lasting, and based in the real – and sadly Autism alliance with ‘Pride’ is naïve. It creates a rigid and identity based dichotomy, and a false notion of righteous inheritor of humanity – ye olde ‘in group out group’ problem, fuelled by fears, self preservation, bigotry under the name of freedom. To use an old maxim; your right to throw a punch ends at someone else’s nose. The Pride movements are going to burn themselves out; or at least the people in them, and that will take ‘autism’ with it.
The problem: an alliance of difference is not an alliance of similarity, and the antithesis towards the ‘norm’ is a bias that will be eventually be detrimental. This Pride alliance is already stomping all over the advances Equitable Feminism made, and threatening women, and is being Identify as a misogyny. ‘Pride’ dances gaily, but without the acknowledgement of it’s shadows. Welcome to the school of separatism, division and it’s masters; where separatism only give forth to further separatism and strict definition (more boxes) under the guise of inclusion with it’s displaced sympathies. This is the politicised body, and that is always more divisive, and separates us from ourselves than revolutionary. Someone is promising you a rainbow – but that’s a problem, cos like the horizon, you never get there! It’ out of balance; It’s paradise lost, a dysphoria and disconnection. As with Nationism, it unites ‘us’ why simultaneous diving ‘us’. Be ‘woke’ to how you affirm yourself: this is not the arena of the Suffragettes, the resistance to the NSDP, the Freedom Movement in America, or the student protests in Germany 70’s – but some want you to think that and plunder that language! I use ‘woke’ in it’s tradition/primary source meaning; not the politically reframed and mis-framed version.
Celebrar la diversidad de la humanidad es una invitación a abrazar nuestra singularidad. Cada uno de nosotros es único y especial en nuestra propia forma, y eso es algo para celebrar, no para esconder. Al aceptar nuestras rarezas y diferencias, creamos un mundo más inclusivo y enriquecedor para todos.
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