I just found on the internet someone telling about being bipolar. And I read about him having been confined in some kind of institution. And while reading the Wikipedia article on bipolar disorder I recognize things of myself. E.g. I guess most people might think my ideas about this website and my goals with it are out of the ordinary. And I guess they are. And knowing me and reading my posts you may read about me being desperate sometimes. Also people have considered me having Asperger Syndrome or something. And yes, as far as I know many people consider me as being introvert, another box being put in. And yes, I am gay, another thing people may like or not like, but again, yes, it puts me in a box.
But what is this, that ‘we’ put each other in boxes. What is this that ‘we’ try to ‘cure’ everybody who has treats that are out of the ordinary. Or at least somehow ‘mark’ people with certain treats and have some positive or negative opinion related to it, e.g. if someone is gay.
And I don’t have all the answers, as someone killing people because he has some ‘disorder’ I wouldn’t know what to do with except indeed probably locking him or her up in a place where he or she can do no harm to other people. And one of the major treats someone can have I don’t have any clue of how to deal with is someone being pedophile. As I guess for most people the sexual urge is one of the biggest drivers in life, one of the highest needs to fulfill. And being gay I know that sexual orientation is just something you ‘have’, at least for me it’s just a feeling, it’s just something that’s part of me and that feels like being unchangeable, feels like just ‘being part of me’, feels like it belongs to me.
So somehow I have thought a lot about being a pedophile. I presume when you are a pedophile you just also have their sexual orientation, just like me or you. So of course you would want, need to express that as I presume it’s the same type of urge most people have and if not met it would cause a lot of problems, at least it does for me. But yes, I agree, having sex with children in a way a pedophile would need does not fit my ideas of what is appropriate, what ‘should be’ as I indeed believe children should not experience sex in that way. But where does that put a pedophile? In my opinion in quite an impossible situation as he or she cannot express his or her sexual feelings in an appropriate way, although as far as I know there are also situations or cultures that would allow the behavior, the grown ups having sex with children.
Anyhow, that’s not really what I wanted to write about, about pedophiles, but for a long time already I have in mind to raise some understanding, sympathy, empathy for people being pedophile. Because their situation must be awful, making it virtually impossible to live a proper life.
So what did I want to write about? Well, I’m not a psychologist or something, but it seems that we try to put more and more ‘marks’ on people, like how they differ from the average Joe. And if it has some kind of inconvenience for society or other people we often want to ‘treat them’, cure them. But why? And who decides what’s normal and what’s abnormal. And why would we want to treat them or mark them as ‘abnormal’. As one of the first things I learned in biology class, as far as I remember our biology teacher even started the whole subject with it: everybody is abnormal, as everybody is different. That’s how we are built. That’s how the world was built.
So let’s be careful putting each other in boxes, in trying to change each other. Let’s first see what’s really there and appreciate it, in the other, the other person. And also constantly monitor the line between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, where in the last case I mean when to decide when to ‘treat’ people or in the worst case lock them up. As in the end everybody is normal, as being different is part of being normal, being human.