That's Weird

It's an adjective, it's a verb, it's Super Weird!

Weird might be a very good word for us these days, especially when you verb it.

We’ve been verbing weird for years. Example: English usage can be strange, and sometimes, it really weirds me out.

Most of the time, weird resides peacefully in the land of adjectives. And then, once in a while, it puts on its verb hat and weirds us out.

We should give it more leeway, I think.

Here’s my proposition.

Much of what appears in real life as prejudice, as a phobia, or as some other kind of broad brush stroke of negativity is actually a matter of people being weirded.

Person A enters a situation and encounters something outside their experience. Person A has a set of expectations. They are not being met. Other stuff is going on. It is weird in Person A’s experience.

Person B, on the other side of the experience, knows that something is wrong. Person B is responding oddly. “Oh,” thinks Person B, Person A is prejudiced. Person A is a bigot. Person A is a ‘phobe’ of some sort.” (Homophobe, transphobe, etc.)

A Petrie Dish for Weird

I thought a lot about this at the Flurry dance festival this year because there were so many people there who were clearly being purposefully, happily weird, and enjoying themselves doing it.

The most obvious weirding showed in what people were wearing. There were lots of (apparently, to my eyes) men in dresses and skirts—all sorts of people in wild and crazy outfits. Piercings and tats abounded. And there was, all throughout, this flavor of “gender fluidity” that exists among young people today.

As someone who has been around the dance community for three decades, I expected it to be pretty much what I expected. But what would the experience be like for someone who dropped in from Middle America? Think about the moms, dads, and grandparents of these young folk—how would they react?

I think they would be weirded.

The experience would be new and different. The newcomer might feel uncomfortable. They might be so focused on the unusualness of the experience that they lose track of other things going on. In short, they might be significantly weirded.

And—I think this is really important—that’s okay.

It’s Okay to Be Weird and/or to Be Weirded

We all experience times when we are confronted by the unusual and unexpected. Our reactions are—in a word—normal.

If we are dealing with an experience that will be repeated many times—there’s a good possibility that we will stop being weirded. We will get used to new situations. We’ll get over being weirded. Exposure therapy—that sort of thing.

As I watched the dancers at the festival—several thousand people attend it every year—I was also struck by the fact that many of the attendees were being, intentionally weird. They were being weird with pride. They were showing off their weird and doing it quite successfully. They were making a personal statement and sharing it with us all.

And that, of course, is all okay. Nobody is being hurt. No laws have been broken. Everything is cool, right?

Except it’s not.

Some people are still going to be weirded. They are going to feel uncomfortable. And the heart of what I’m thinking about all of this is: That’s okay, too.

If people set out to express themselves in unusual ways—one obvious example being men wearing dresses—then they really do need to expect that some people will be weirded.

The scenario is so simple. One person decides to be weird or share their weirdness. They succeed. Other people have now been weirded. Maybe, someday, they will get over that feeling of weirdness. Maybe not. My point is, they are not bad people. Nobody is at fault.

Some Personal thoughts about Weirding

In the dance world, there has been a movement over the last few years to make all contra dancing “gender neutral.” The most obvious sign of this is that instead of referring to men and women or ladies and gents when describing and calling dances, callers are now calling for larks and robins. Larks are the left-side dancers, formerly the men. Robins are the right-side dancers, formerly called women or ladies.)

I don’t especially like this change. I’m working on an essay on the subject. There is one thing that bothers me especially. One of the other efforts accompanying the change in language is a message to “dance the other role.”

I remain pretty much an old-fashioned person and

a guy, and I dance the men’s (larks, gents, etc.) role. But with more men being encouraged to dance the (formerly) ladies role, when I dance, I find myself having to dance a ballroom swing with other men.

It weirds me.

I’m not a homophobe. I’m a nice person, actually. But I don’t like doing a ballroom swing with another guy. It weirds me and reduces my enjoyment of the dance. And with all due respect to anyone who cares to offer an opinion, I think that’s okay.

One of my responses to this has been to promote a different sort of swing, one that is symmetrical and not as intimate as a ballroom swing. My effort has not yielded great results, but I still think it is something that ought to be done so that I can be more comfortable when dancing.

Now, maybe someday, maybe, I’ll change, get used to these changes, and enjoy doing ballroom swings with other men. I think it’s much more likely that I will trundle off this mortal coil long before that happens, but hey, ya never know.

The Bigger Picture

In my musings on weirding, I am now wondering about how much weirding is being used to foment division and bigger problems such as racism, sexism, and the rest of the issues that are tearing at the fabric of democracy.

To what extent have politicians, political activists, election industry profiteers conspired to take a little bit of weird and turn it into provocation, insult, and a cause for hatred and retribution.

I think it is—maybe—a lot. I think one of the powerful negative forces at work in American Society is an conscious effort by profit-seekers to turn a little bit of weird into something that sparks outrage. What do they do it? To make money.

I don’t know, for sure, but it’s something I’m thinking about.

Anon.

Ridge