That said, I work from a disability studies/justice field and yes, regular, normal, typical, etc can be offensive.
What would it mean for someone to have a “normal” body? And what would it mean if you didn’t fit that? Who decides what fits that?
What about “normal” mentally?
Like when politicians talk about “regular folks” they often imagine a straight, white, cishet male without disabilities and working-middle class. That is not the average person at all.
Historically (and presently), not fitting the defined norm at the time leads to social, physical, and/or economic exclusion. Abnormality would often mean confinement and abandonment.
Personally, when people use terms like normal/regular/whatever to describe people, I will push them. I want people to understand what the words they use mean and what they can mean to people who fall outside of that “norm.”
For me, “regular” is just describing the 80th percentile, middle of the bell curve, for the social group, area or topic under discussion.
If you live in Beverly Hills, a “regular student” is different from one living in Haiti. But that doesn’t mean parents of those areas are deliberately being rude or exclusionary when using the word amongst their own social group. “Their own social group” being the operative phrase there.
Instinctively we might add a qualifier or use different phrasing when talking to someone outside of our normal socio-economic group, like “He’s a typical student for his school”, vs “he’s just a regular student”.
People like the OP’s acquaintance are possibly lacking understanding of these instinctive, silently acknowledged conversational norms. Either that or they’re particularly sensitive for some reason.
The woman’s non-sequitur insertion of ballet into the conversation would have thrown me for a loop. Her lack of logic - not to mention manners - made almost moot whatever larger point she may have had. Chalk it up to a couple lessons learned and move on. Life’s too short.
I think the ballet reference relates to what I mentioned at some point about bullying. The OP’s son is “regular” and does sports. We all know that many high school milieus honor athletes and boys who do ballet get bullied mercilessly. They are not “regular.” The acquaintance may have a sore spot of some sort related to this.
I find this to be an interesting discussion. It makes me think about what “average” means too. I appreciate all the posts.
I was in an eastern European supermarket, and bought fewer meat items than expected. Finally the owner recommended his friend’s restaurant, called him, and shouted “You’ve got one vegetarian and two normals coming over”.
We have two young adult children. They are each so unique (as I think each child is)
Son was an academically advanced student in social sciences, horrible math student, mediocre baseball and soccer player, and extremely gifted and driven musician. He’s a FT music teacher and PT gig musician, loving life.
Our DD has an intellectual disability. She also is a hard worker at her part time job, a great mothers helper, a very good knitter and a pretty mean bocce player.
We use the words typical and atypical in our family for lack of anything better.
Although I think both our kids are atypical as their strengths and challenges are diverse.
The world will label our son typical, our daughter atypical. If the focus is on cognitive ability, I’d agree.
I do think normal is a poor choice.
Average is less subjective as there will always be a mean in any population.
I wonder what would have happened if instead you described your S this way :
“An irregular boy next-door type who who enjoys many sports, Xbox, and ice cream.”
Usually, tone and intent far outweigh the choice of specific words. When a person is triggered by a word when there was clearly no malicious intent, it says more about that person than anything else.
@romanigypsyeyes I am interested in your lumping in of normal/abnormal with typical/atypical. I have been clarifying to my students not to use “normal,” because the converse, “abnormal” has clear negative connotations. But I generally suggest using typical, because to my ear, atypical is neutral, not pejorative. Do you find that not so? (like, the rise of the term neurotypical, which is a descriptive, value-free usage, not privileging it over neuro-diverse). happy to hear another view on that, and I do value yours.
@garland because typical has the same connotation as regular. It means that there’s an “average,” a standard and you live up to that or you don’t.
Neurotypical is slightly different because it was coined by the neurodivergent community. It’s almost a bit tongue in cheek because it’s, by definition, someone that “society” defines as “normal.” I’m actually not a huge fan of it but considering it was coined by the target group instead of the privileged one, I’m much more willing to roll with it.
Here’s what I tell my students: “regular,” “normal,” don’t have a meaning outside of a specific cultural context. Since you (the student) and I don’t necessarily come from the same cultural context, you have to define what you mean by “normal.” And then once you’ve defined what you mean, reread/resay it - do you still need the word “normal” (or typical or whatever) in there?
Sometimes the answer is yes - you do. There is a specific reason why you’re choosing that term. Most times though, it becomes unnecessary.
It’s pretty hard to stay ahead of this. Because schoolyard taunts change the meaning over time. Idiot was a medical term. When that became an insult, r—— came into use as a medical term without the pejorative connotations. At this point I’m afraid to even spell that one out for fear of getting shunned or banned.
I agree that there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. However, I think unless there was a negative history with the parties involved, regular does not cross that line. I have 4 kids and depending on the context all of them could be considered not “regular”.
“I have a daughter who likes sports, video games and ice cream” is enough to draw the picture.
If it bothers someone to modify the description, I don’t want to hurt them when it doesn’t really matter. But I do expect good manners and basic kindness in return. If someone is clearly making an innocent statement there’s no reason to be rude or attacking. That’s not cool.
It’s hypocrisy to be rude to suggest someone was being unkind.
But “daughter” isn’t gender-neutral, and “ice cream” might offend the lactose intolerant. Sports might be a problem for the differently abled. And video games has a host of issues.
Safer to stick with “I have a human offspring who exists.”
But wait, “I have” suggests ownership of another person.