Your Right To Be Weird

In a nation built on the principle of freedom, you have a right to be weird.

And thank goodness, because we're all weird! Normal is just the average of 1,000 abnormal people.

You can dress in drag for laughs, like the guys in Monty Python or [insert literally any comedy troupe here].

You can dance around in a dress literally made of meat (Lady Gaga).

You can bite the head off of a live bat on stage (Ozzy Osbourne).

You can make being a drag queen a financially successful lifestyle (Ru Paul).

You can become Internet-famous for mimicking the sound of spitting on a boyfriend's cock (the "Hawk-Tua girl).

You can be a teenage TV star and do a wildly inappropriate, creepy-assed, near-naked photo-op with your equally famous country/western singing father (Miley Cyrus).

You can have hundreds of plastic surgeries done on your face until it resembles a goddamned cat (Jocelyn Wildenstein).

You can make your mark by dancing around in Times Square wearing nothing but underwear, roller skates, and a cowboy hat (Robert John Burck, the "Naked Cowboy").

You can not only be attracted to humans dressed as furry animals, you can attend entire conventions which cater to exactly that weirdness.

You can convince millions of gullible believers that by giving you 10% of their income, they too can become wealthy.

You can even dance to the biggest homosexual anthem known to mankind, namely "YMCA" by the Village People, and still be seen as a defender of conservative values (hint, hint, hint).

But apparently it's become vogue for one major political party to campaign on anti-weirdness. If they had it their way, they'd take away your right to be weird.

In particular, you are told you cannot be weird by identifying as a different gender.

(I wonder how many people who make that argument have a Boy George song or two in their play list?)

Unless, of course, one happens to be a National Treasure in the form of an Olympic gold medal winner in the Decathlon, who gets a picture placed on the most famous Wheaties box of all time, then becomes transgender and becomes a step-parent to a bunch of ultra-hot reality stars named Kardashian. (Do I really need to name this person?) We can go after any other transgender person. Just not her. She gets a Gold-Medalist Pass, apparently. (Or maybe a Reality TV Show pass? Trumpy being a reality TV star himself, you know.)

You see, so long as one's weirdness doesn't impinge upon someone else's business, there is really no limit on the level or style of weirdness one can engage in. And as soon as someone says, "You can be X kind of weird, but not Y kind of weird!" it sets the standard by which rights and freedoms slowly get taken away, bit by bit, until all our freedoms are gone.

I can hear the conservative pundits now. They'll criticize me for ignoring some impossibly rare thing that gives them an excuse to oppress. You know, like the usual urban myths about perverts in the women's bathroom, or maybe a high school girl's locker room. Or the one about a twelve or thirteen year old getting "mutilated" by sexual reassignment surgery. And, of course, there's the one instance of the trans-female NCAA swimmer who won a championship no one would have given a crap about otherwise.

Hey, look, I'm all for the sanctity of locker rooms and protecting the bodies of those too young to legally consent to radical surgeries. How could any of us be otherwise? I'm also conflicted about what to do regarding trans female athletes at the college level. Its all right to be undecided. But none of that contradicts my main point: weirdness is your absolute, American right.

I think this principle was best summed up by former Obama spokesperson and Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor, when he recently sat down with Fox News pundit Jesse Waters on "Jesse Waters Primetime," who almost immediately asked him, "So, how many genders are there?"

Vietor's response was spot-on: "I don't care!"

As a man of science, I acknowledge that there are certain biological realities at the gametophyte level regarding gender. Doctors of medicine must acknowledge those during treatment. But on a sociological level, I agree with Vietor. Who gives a shit?! If someone chooses to be weird by gender-flipping themselves, why should we give a damn? It's nobody else's business anyway.

One has every right to swing one's fists. But that right ends with someone else's nose. And it might look really bizarre to others when they see you swinging your fists through the air for no reason...

But then again, that weirdness is also your absolute right.

So fight for your right to be weird! Because the alternative is oppression.

Eric

**