No diss, but I'm so weird that I even feel weird by Hexbear standards, and that is an accomplishment.

I didn't feel comfortable when the Democratic Party of the US started using "weird" as an insult against and his cult. Weird is not bad; weird is cool and good and I myself have always identified with weird from the moment I understood what the word meant.

I have no interest in drinking or consuming any drugs, and I'm uncomfortable with the subcultures around drugs.

I can relate. Kids used to ask if I was on drugs back in my public school days, and I eventually started telling them I was "naturally high" and that somehow scored social points so I kept doing that. I have chafed at times with the "this particular drug can and will cure everything that ails you" subculture on Hexbear, seeing it like off-brand Joe Roganism myself. Drugs can help some people but dogmatically saying that the human brain just needs sufficient amounts of a specific happiness juice is vulgar materialism that devalues individual differences to me.

My taste in music is odd and hard for a good deal of people to relate to, but that's one of the lesser of the problems with my weirdness, as there are plenty of fans of various prog metal bands, both obscure and mainstream, to vibe with.

This is very relatable to me, too. I find nearly all vocals in music to be distracting in a way that may well be neuro-spiciness on my part and prefer instrumental (or synthetic, specifically) without distracting repetitive vocalizations, unless it's some arbitrary exemption that I find hard to define.

It goes hand-in-hand with my internalized racism in a way, as my taste in metal music always got other people, both black and white, to call me an "Oreo."

I myself can visibly pass for "white-ish" and that's had people make some very abrasive presumptions about what I like and what I believe; it's amazing how many times out and out cracker racists thought I was good company to share their hatred with, and I had to sometimes keep my disgust to myself because they were people I had to work with... or bosses.

Don't even get me started on the neurodivergence, alongside how my mind perceives so many subjects differently than a lot of other people do. That makes me feel broken.

That's painfully relatable to me, too. Often, if I feel very strongly about something, I get outright told that I must be broken/ill because of my opinion or because I hold that opinion strongly. It takes emotional energy to stand up for myself when that happens.

I should get to a point where I don't see any of my "weird" traits as bad because that goes hand-in-hand with my internalized bigotry. The more I accept "out of the norm" as meaning bad, the more I'll continue to question if I even deserve life simply because of my race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and neurodivergence.

I don't know if this is also the case for you, but what helped me was to realize, accept, and remember that the people telling me I was "weird" as a bad thing were by and large hateful, bullying assholes that were like plague carriers of misery to people around them, where hurting others was the point. If that's "normal," fuck normal.

I'm kind of rambling a bit, but to sum things up, I genuinely don't know if I'm "good" or "bad" or "neutral" for being so weird.

If it helps at all, I like your posts and I think you're "good" weird, comrade.

What is "weird," anyway? That word has different connotations, honestly.

This. For me, all of this (well, aside from the fact that I'm white) is perfectly normal and relatable. I'll disclose that I do have autism (under the former diagnosis of "Asperger's Syndrome") and a still somewhat uncertain relationship with gender too as a result.

Why should "neurobland" (term I'm coining here based on "neurospicy" for neurodivergents) people get the monopoly on what's considered "normal"? We'd call that bigotry if it was any other mainstream group doing that to a marginalized group.

As a black enby with several conditions and that's generally weird, I understand. Especially the Oreo comment lol.

My parents look at me with disgust when I open up about my struggles. Not even of the gender kind, but medical. I felt like a freak for not wanting to have any secondary sex characteristics and reproductive organs at first, as if I needed to have another issue on top of that.

But to me now, I am fine with being considered weird. The internet helps a lot with finding like minded people. It makes it less lonely being like this. I am fine if people consider me a freak now, but I hope in the future, people will see me for who I truly am.

For clarity, I'm in no position to speak with authority, as a het-passing cis so take everything I say with a grain of privledged salt. Even if I'm pan, I'm in a het relationship. I want to put that up front because that contextualizes the of my take here.

First, I want to say that, as you already know in your head if not your heart, "weirdness" has no materialist basis. It's just divergence from the norm, it can't be bad by virtue of differing from the norm. Communism is not the norm, that doesn't make it wrong, just like your individual characteristics like your taste in (awesome) music (fuck anyone calling you a slur for that), your gender identity, your neurodivergence, your sexual identity, your ethnicity, and more. All these differences just mean you are a different person, but given that you're a leftist, you're fundamentally focused on solidarity despite these differences (likely because of them), and that's awesome.

I should get to a point where I don't see any of my "weird" traits as bad because that goes hand-in-hand with my internalized bigotry. The more I accept "out of the norm" as meaning bad, the more I'll continue to question if I even deserve life simply because of my race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and neurodivergence.

As a it is far easier for me to say you're correct here because that has been the norm for me, and can seem hollow. However, I want to stress that you said this, not me, and you're 100% correct here. You, not me, said this, and you, not me, are correct.

I dunno, maybe I should just shut the fuck up when it comes to situations like this, and let others speak up. As a I don't have any right nor authority to speak on complex internal struggles faced by gender-diverse, POC, and so forth (of course not). I just want to offer solidarity and point out where I think you 100% accurately analyzed the situation with your brain, if not your internal feelings. You're cool as shit and I want you to know it.

What's being called "weird" gonna do?

To each their own, anyone's weirdness is another one's normality

All you have to do, is be good with one another, and be noticed with some modicum of care...

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