Normalizing Deviant and Unhealthy Behavior

Townhall 

You've seen them at the checkout counter, in supermarkets and health foodstores, in head shops, and around town: employees who wear nose rings, or piercings in the center of the nose, through the nasal septum, or through the thin piece of cartilage underneath the septum that separates the right and left nostrils.

When recently scoping out a new dental office, to my complete and utter amazement – shock actually – two of the front office staff, both females, sported nose rings. Call me whatever you want, but at that juncture, I didn’t seek to learn anymore about the practice.

Too Prevalent, Too Risky

What prompts a person to have a bull-like nose ring? Even if the chances are low, why risk incurring an infection, a septal hematoma (broken blood vessels), an allergic reaction to the metals in the piercing, or scarring? Why riskdeveloping a blood disease, including hepatitis B and C, HIV, and tetanus, from an unsterilized needle? Why risk bumping into something and hitting a nerve, potentially causing permanent damage? And how, exactly, does one effectively handle a runny nose?

How long before the advocates of “anything goes” seek to normalize nose rings so that no one should be aghast when someone in a public position has one? So, why not doctors and nurses, police officers, firefighters, postal workers, and, for good measure, elementary school teachers?

Let's induce everybody to have nose rings because, after all, this is simply an option for expressing oneself! Let's not refer to them as nose rings; they’re facial adornments …or something like that.

Deviance on Parade

One of the two major political parties seeks to normalize human behavior, which, in a saner society, might be a sorely needed topic of discussion and derision. This political party employs a variety of tactics, such as the renaming of issues. Consider pedophiles. They are attracted to children and would like to groom them, have sex with them, perhaps keep them as sexual slaves, and ensure that they stay silent.

Pedophiles revel in having children at their beck and call, for years on end, if possible. Leftists now refer to pedophiles as “minor-attracted persons.” Voila! You are no longer a predator if you seek to have sex with a child. You're a “minor-attracted person.” It's a lifestyle! It's a choice! Some people opt for it; most don't. It's no big deal!

Once a notable segment of society opens Pandora’s Box and proceeds as if dubious behavior is normal, there’s no end to it. A case in point: The fat acceptance movement is growing in the U.S. With two-thirds of adults now either obese or morbidly obese, and the number growing all the time, it was inevitable that fat acceptance would ‘inch’ forward.

How dare you criticize my lifestyle choice? So what if I can't make it through the bus door, or I need two bus seats, or my health is so precarious that I might drop dead at any moment? Who are you to charge me for two plane seats? This is my body, and I'm entitled to have it extend as far as it does. Who are you to look at me skeptically? Who are you to pass judgment at all?

Far Too Predictable

Have the “facial adornment” movement, the “minor-attracted persons” movement, the “fat acceptance” movement, and other such movements been predictable? Likely yes, and with a traceable origin. To illustrate: Once there were bums, tramps, hobos, and vagrants. If you merely hung around town, without anything to do, for hours on end, you could be arrested for loitering.

Why would any community have had such laws on the books? It does not benefit a community to have people hanging around bus stations, train stations, libraries, and park benches idly for untold hours. While local governments don’t seek to make everyone workaholics, especially for grown men and women, continual public idleness is undesirable.

Today, vagrants, bums, and hobos are called “homeless people.” Certainly, some individuals are homeless due to unforeseen or unfortunate circumstances. Still, once the blanket term “homeless person” came into vogue, elements of civilized society began to fray.

Voting With Your Feet

If you have a nose piercing and work at the checkout counter, I might have little choice but to have you ring up my goods. If you work in a medical facility, I'm going elsewhere. No, I do not spend my day contemplating how to avoid people with nose rings. Concurrently, I don't want to spend my day around them.

If we all spoke up at the outrage of having people in various professions and industries with nose rings serving us, perhaps employers would get the message.

Incidentally, some anthropologists, physicians, and sociologists have a term for when people pierce themselves in questionable locations. They call it self-mutilation.