Being Weird

Is it good? Is it bad? Is it effective political framing?

The word “weird” has been in the news a lot lately, so it’s been on my mind.

I have a long history with weird.

I’ve been called weird many times in my life. More often than not, it was not meant as a compliment.

There were many more times when people didn’t say it out loud, but I knew they were thinking it. I realize that can’t be verified. But whether they were thinking it or not, I knew they were.

I can’t pinpoint the moment, or even the year or the decade, when I became aware that I was weird. (Notice I didn’t say I was “considered weird.”) But over the years it gradually dawned on me that, at least, I wasn’t what you’d call mainstream. I had a tendency not to fit in.

Of course, that’s not all bad. In fact, at this point in my life I’m just fine with being weird. I seek out other weird people. In many ways, I prefer weird.

I’m also fine — more than fine — with the way Kamala Harris’s campaign has been using the word.

What does weird mean?

I didn’t know that the adjective “weird” derives from the Old English noun “wyrd,” meaning fate or destiny. Apparently, Shakespeare had something to do with its transition to signifying frighteningly odd, which then settled into something more along the lines of simply peculiar.

As someone who’s often been considered weird and who often prefers weird, I strongly agree with those who would like to reclaim the word. I mean, to me it really isn’t a putdown. As English professor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock recently wrote, weird “is that which introduces cracks into the edifice of the status quo, liberating possibilities for different futures and forms of expression.” Sounds good to me!

On the other hand, I’m not immune from using “weird” as a putdown. In fact, I often use it that way jokingly with friends, or even with myself. What do I say to my friend who enjoys editing footnotes and bibliographies in manuscripts? “You’re weird.” She’d be the first to agree. What do I say when explaining to people that I created a spreadsheet to track which coffee flavors Rafael and I preferred? That I use the same two starting words for Wordle every day? That I don’t like pickles or raw blueberries? “I’m weird.”

Hey, if you can’t take a little joking about your friends and yourself — well, maybe you never grew up.

Why it works to call MAGAs weird

I certainly didn’t appreciate being called weird when I was a child. And I’d love to live in a culture that accepted and celebrated the weird. Yet I don’t feel offended in the slightest by the Harris campaign’s use of weird. In fact, I think it’s brilliant and long overdue.

Others have explained much better than I ever could why this strategy is so effective. To sum it up:

• Fascists, like all bullies, thrive on inspiring fear. Democrats have already expounded ad nauseam about how dangerous MAGAs are, and that’s gotten us nowhere. Calling them weird disarms them. As Gloria Steinem and Margaret Atwood both apparently pointed out, what women fear most from men is violence — even death — while what men fear most (especially from women) is ridicule. Laughing at the MAGAs is the worst thing you can do to them. Suddenly, they lose the source of their power: being perceived as threatening and dangerous. That’s the last thing they want.

• The only thing MAGAs want more than to elicit fear is to be considered normal. Whatever that is. Calling them weird shatters their illusion of being normal. It shatters the illusion that their fascist tendencies are normal. Given the extent to which their insanity has been normalized in recent years, that can only be a good thing.

• To counter accusations of being weird, you can’t argue your way out with facts or lengthy explanations. All you can do is deny you’re weird. That doesn’t tend to convince anyone, and it can come off as protesting too much. Especially if everyone can see that you are, in fact, weird.

• Speaking of facts and lengthy explanations, those have not been working to further the Democrats’ agenda. The people want sound bites. Finally, that’s what they’re getting. “They’re just weird” is easy to remember.

As much as I agree with the aforementioned English professor’s call to reclaim the word and “keep America weird,” I don’t agree with his conclusion that “there are many different, more specific adjectives politicians and others can use to characterize their rivals.” Weird is clearly getting under the MAGAs’ skin; weird is working. And its lack of specificity only helps, making the accusation of being weird all the harder to refute.

This one little word can mean so much. As Salon writer Amanda Marcotte notes, “‘Weird’ works because of its vagueness and ambiguity, not despite it. ‘Weird’ has an array of connotations, possibly dozens or hundreds. It can encompass a staggering number of diverse offenses the MAGA forces commit against decency, democracy, human rights and good taste.”

Context is everything

As a counterculture-ish Flower Child, I appreciate those on the fringes. The outcasts, the creatives, the norm-breakers. The weird.

If you call me weird, I might respond, “Thank you!”

But authoritarians can’t stand weird. They want to stomp out anything that deviates from the very strictly defined norms that they establish. As much as they seek to elicit fear, they’re clearly driven by their own fear: fear of the other — fear of anything they consider weird.

Our perceptions of weird are context-specific; our current incarnations of liberals and conservatives see weird very differently. As Marcotte reminds us, what MAGAs consider weird about liberals tends to be “fun and life-affirming”: drag shows, Harris’s laugh, enjoying cats. In contrast, the MAGA brand of weird is “creepy and obsessive,” focusing on things like shaming women for not being married and having cats. Not to mention that they’ve been made extra weird by “years of Russian propaganda,” as John Stoehr of The Editorial Board points out.

I’ll take our weird over theirs any day. Let’s hope we get that for at least the next eight years.