2 - Digging Deeper Into The Misleading Standard of Normal

In this second episode of Normal Is A Lie, Julie Harris digs deeper into the “standard of normal” and how it has incorrectly ruined lives over the three centuries since Adolphe Quetelet first created the definition. She explains how Quetelet’s bigotry and prejudices, along with those who promoted his work, have hurt far more people than helped, based on completely incorrect ‘standardization protocols’ that are nearly impossible for anyone to conform to in any situation where they are used. The standard of ‘normal’ not only isn’t accurate, it was never accurate from the very beginning because even Quetelet himself could not physically match his own standard. 

What is Normal is a Lie?

A podcast where Julie Harris dismantles everything about what normal means, with history, science, lived experience and reality - not some fabricated version of it.

NORMAL IS A LIE WITH JULIE HARRIS

This is Normal is a Lie with me, Julie Harris, where we dismantle everything about what normal means with history, science, lived experience, and reality, not some fabricated version of it.

In our first episode, we broke down the mathematical statistical lie of “normal” and where it originated. We talked about how the workplaces in our schools and our physical environments were all built for a statistical ghost that I call the paper human, which is a human that literally only exists on paper. And how that came from a 19th century Belgian astronomer named Adolphe Quetelet, who created this blueprint specifically by taking the average measurements of human beings and declared that that average was normal and not only normal but perfection. So what Quetelet measured, he didn't even measure all of humanity, he specifically measured 5,738 Scottish soldiers. So he was attempting to find the average human, but really all that he found was the average Scottish soldier. However, we've taken that data and applied it to every human. We can see not every human is Scottish, not every human is male. He found the average 19th century white European man. And then he, and all of the industrialists who followed him, decided that this specific man was the blueprint for all of humanity.

Now it's not abnormal for studies to start with one specific group that does not include everyone. It is not abnormal for studies to focus on one specific type of anything that they're studying. However, in this situation, it never expanded; we never expanded the studies; we never decided that we needed to include all different types of humans, all different races, all different genders, all different types of human bodies. And we are still basing so much of today off of this data that was based on Scottish soldiers in the 1800s.

So our entire concept of normal, which is the standard by which even today we continue to judge health, professionalism, capability, and belonging in general, is not only wrong for white men, which we discussed last time, not even any white men fit into the concept of normal. But it's exponentially more wrong for women, for anybody who is a race, not Scottish. And for anyone whose body or brain falls outside that highly localized, highly specific demographic. So today, I'm going to go into a bit more about what happens when your body is defined as abnormal by default, about how the stigmas that we face get applied and not just in one way, but dependent on how we differ from that assumption of normal, which in the workplace was based on Scottish soldiers, which is funny because our workplace never really included Scottish soldiers, but it was still based on the data that was based on Scottish soldiers.

So back to the quote from Adolphe Quetelet, which this one, if anybody hears, I think we'll know that it's disgusting quote, and we are never going to know his intention, what he meant by it. But it is how we apply it and it is the words that are said:
“If the average man were completely determined, we might consider him as the type of perfection and everything differing from his proportions or condition would constitute deformity and disease. Everything found different from the average would be comparative imperfection”. (The end of his quote).

So how does that even make sense? First of all, that means everybody is imperfect, which is true. All humans were going to have imperfection somewhere, but he's not saying imperfection in just, oh, that's a human nature thing. He's saying imperfection is deficient. It's going to constitute deformity. It's going to constitute disease. And if you look at medical model of disabilities, if you look at how we judge humanity, if you look at the workplace, that is how things are defined.

So if the average man is a white European soldier, specifically a Scottish soldier, and the average is defined as perfection, that means average in every way. So not just general average, but average in every way is defined as perfection. Then what does that make a woman? By Quetelet’s logic, a woman's body is imperfection. What does that make a black man or an Asian woman or an indigenous person? And what about an indigenous person from various places because an indigenous person from New Zealand is very very different from the United States of America. According to the math that built our modern world, their bodies are deformities.

So we built the current world around this math… around Quetelet’s math. We took the white male body and made it the invisible default for human design. And it’s not just including social attitudes, I’m talking about concrete physical environments and tools that can actively harm anyone who doesn’t fit the blueprint.

So, let’s talk about workplaces for a second, which a lot of episodes are going to talk about workplaces and employees. Whenever we get into the meat of it, not just addressing “normal is a lie.”

Right now, we're going to talk about it in the context of temperature. A lot of women are very, very cold in office buildings and it's not just a preference. It's what office buildings, the temperature that it's set at is a mathematical standard. There was a thermal comfort formula that was developed in the 1960s. It is used in most commercial buildings and its core variable, the metabolic rate, was based on one specific profile. The metabolic rate of a 40 year old, 154 pound man. How many people are going to fit into that specific profile? Many men weigh more than that, are not the age of 40 years old. A nd then women aren't even accounted for it at all because the formula didn't even attempt to count for women. It just assumed that the male metabolic rate was the universal human default. By forcing that male standard onto everyone, the formula ends up completely disregarding women and overestimating what it would be in female metabolic rates by up to 30%. Because women generally have slower metabolic rates and less heat generating muscle mass than the 1960s, male blueprints, standard offices are structurally designed to be up to 5 degrees too cold for women.

That means women not only are in a workplace, you know, with the goal of performing the same way as others in the workplace, but they're doing it less comfortably. They have to consider temperature in a way that people who had actually considered their metabolic rate accurately don't have to consider temperature. This environment was built specifically for a 40 year old, 154 pound man who has the exact metabolic rate.

Well, what about cars? Until 2011, the standard crash test dummy used by regulators was based on the 50th percentile male from the 1970s. In 2011, that's as of today only 15 years ago. That's not very long ago. Cars have been around much longer than that. So again, it doesn't include all males, but it only includes males in the 50th percentile. Because cars were designed for that specific body, studies show that a female driver in a frontal car crash is 73 %more likely. That's a huge increase. 73 %more likely to be seriously injured and 17 %more likely to die than a male driver in the exact same crash.

So last time we talked about the Air Force and how airplanes were designed for one person that nobody actually fit. And so they started making adjustments where helmets, sizes and positioning of seats and tools that they're using to actually steer. Those were adjusted. And then once you actually included the different dimensions of the human body, the Air Force pilots were much more successful. In this case, driving nowadays, yes, we have where you can move the car seats. You can move in most cars, multiple parts of the car seat. You can move the steering wheel, the steering column where it's positioned. You can move a lot of things. But even then, for only 15 years, it's even been considering anything outside of the 50th percentile male. It's still based on cars that were originally built with that standard. So instead of completely re building cars to consider entire variations of humanity, we're just making adjustments to the original cars that were built. So it's still less safe for people who fall outside of that 50th percentile male.

And this bias extends deeply. So we talked really about male and female just then, but it extends deeply into race as well. And then, of course, if there is somebody who falls outside of a 50th percentile male in gender, add in race, well, that's double. That's not just one anymore. That's double. So the bias extends deeply into race.

We'll talk about the pulse oximeter. Or I mean, this is true for a lot of different things in the medical world. It was… there's lights or lasers, various things in the medical world where you put on skin, the skin, and it works through shining light through your skin. This one specifically measures blood oxygen by shining light through your skin. It was largely developed and calibrated using who? White patients. So studies now, of course, show what people have been telling us for a long time that the blood oxygen levels aren't accurate. And how does it actually measure the same through white skin or black skin or any skin in between? The pulse oximeter regularly overestimate oxygen levels and patients with darker skin, which, of course, leads to delayed medical care and worse outcomes for black and brown patients. And oftentimes because of other stigmas leads to disbelief in what black and brown patients are claiming. And by claiming, I mean experiencing and just explaining. So the tool doesn't work because, like many things, it was built for the Scottish soldier, the white male Scottish soldier. And when your body is defined as abnormal, the environment doesn't just feel unwelcoming. It lacks basic environmental integrity. It lacks safety. It completely makes it unlikely or impossible that you will be healthy, safe or be able to perform the same level that you could be in an environment that actually considered you.

Okay, so now take this back to the workplace. But this time we're going to talk about the expectations of how humans act and how what professional is and how rules are developed and how standards are developed and corporate policies.

We're often told by HR and leadership that corporate policies are neutral. If you're somebody with a disability in the workplace and you need accommodations or you ever tried to explain why something isn't working or that you needed something to be a little bit different for you to work because the environment and policies weren't built to consider you. You almost certainly received some sort of comment that was along the lines of, well, no, we treat everyone the same. Or, oh, that policy is already in place. Or, oh, we'll already do that for everyone. Or, oh, we don't want to set a precedent and we don't want everyone to want that. Or, oh, the rules apply equally to everybody. We have to apply the policies equally.

All of that is rooted in the belief that the environment, the policies, the structure is neutral. There's no such thing as a neutral environment. When a company enforces a single standard of behavior, a single standard of communication, a single standard workspace, they're not being neutral. And we know this because there is no organization, there is no company… I mean, I guess I can't say no because I haven't gone and audited every single company. But I feel pretty confident that any company more than 10 people does not get the exact same workspace for every single employee, does not get the exact same computer for every single employee. We know, does not get the exact same tools for every employee, whether that software, hardware.

There are some software that marketers are going to need that sales do not need. There's software that IT people need that marketing definitely does not need. There's software that an entry level customer service person needs that someone in the C-suite doesn't need. We know that in other areas. We know that we cannot possibly apply the same policy, apply the same product, provide the same exact things to every single position and expect them to perform equally. Yet we somehow act like policies need to be applied equally and that that is fair, that that is neutral somehow. It's not neutral. It's just enforcing the preferences of that paper human, the human that only exists on paper.

In the last episode, I talked a bit about the dandelion effect. Most companies are built for dandelions, the people who naturally align with the standard blueprint, and they don't necessarily naturally align with the standard blueprint, but they can just thrive in standard conditions, whatever those are. But the workplace is full of tulips and orchids. Orchids definitely cannot thrive in standard conditions. They need very, very specific conditions and each orchid might need different conditions than the next. And the tulips lie somewhere in the middle. Well, when an orchid starts wilting under fluorescent lights, or when a tulip starts to wilt simply because it can't thrive in the exact same environment of the dandelion, we know that it's the conditions. We know that. We don't blame the flower. Oh, why can't you just be resilient like a dandelion? Like that would be so ridiculous yet we do it with humans all day. The soil specifically formulated for the dandelion. The temperature was set for the dandelion. The watering schedule was designed for the dandelion. If we take that to the workplace, the temperature was set for the paper human, the Scottish soldier, the desk size, the desk height, the mouth size, all of these originally were designed for that Scottish soldier for the paper human that does not exist.

And now there's a lot of options. You can get so many different mice. There's so many different kinds yet when somebody with a disability asks for a different mouse because they need it for their disability. There's so much pushback. They have to go through an entire process to prove that they actually need it and to prove that the $23 to spend on it or $63 or even if it's $133 to spend on this mouse, you have to prove that it's worth it, which is so ridiculous. We know that it's ridiculous, especially if you look at, let's say that that employee is $100,000 employee or an $80,000 employee or a $500,000 employee or a $45,000 employee. If it enables them to be the $45,000 employee, then why would we not do that? Why would we not spend that money on a mouse? Yet the process is, wait, you have to show us that our very neutral, very supportive environment doesn't work for your body. You have to give us a doctor's note to explain to us why it doesn't work for your body. And then maybe, maybe you will get it approved so that you can get the mouse that you actually need. Meanwhile, your hand is spasming. Your hand is in pain, excruciating pain all the time. You have to take breaks way more frequently than you would have to if you just had a mouse that actually worked for your hand. You have to accommodate the pain. And then when you say that you heard, oh, why are you being so dramatic? Who knows? I mean, it's so many more things you have to deal with just because you don't have a right mouse. A mouse that actually works for your body, even though in this day and age, there's a mouse that works for pretty much every hand. There's mice that even work for people who do not have hands. They've made it so that you can use a mouse with nearly any configuration. You can use your eyes to direct things anyway. That's a little bit of a side note. But to say that the system is neutral just because everyone is in the same environment is a lie. That's like saying a greenhouse is neutral and that every plant in it.

And sure, the greenhouse might be neutral. It might be the exact. And of course, the greenhouse is the greenhouse. It has the same oxygen and has the same light and has the same everything. And so sure, the greenhouse might be neutral, but doesn't have a neutral impact on every plant. If a plant needs more water and it's not giving that plant more water, then it's going to have a negative impact on that plant. It's the same thing in the workplace. So true equity, true environmental integrity isn't about treating everyone exactly the same. It's about recognizing that the same was built for one specific type of person, a Scottish soldier that literally does not exist. It didn't even exist within the Scottish soldiers. There's not one of the Scottish soldiers who fit every single average, not one. So it doesn't even stand true for Scottish soldiers, but it was built for the average Scottish soldier.

So if we actually want innovation, if we want actual inclusion, we have to stop trying to force every human to act like 19th century Scottish soldiers. So we have been living under the tyranny of Adolphe Quetelet's math for nearly 200 years. We've let a bad mathematical theory define our worth, our safety, our professionalism, our BMI, which we know is incredibly wrong. And if you're listening to this, you almost certainly have spent your career exhausted from masking, exhausted from code switching, exhausted from trying to seem normal, trying to shrink your personality, or trying to highlight certain parts of your personality or alter your body to fit a normal standard that does not exist. You're not a Scottish soldier. And if you are listening and you're a Scottish soldier, then I'm sure you don't feel normally there in some ways because you're not a Scottish soldier from the 1800s.

Anyway, you're not the problem. You never were. You're just being judged by a broken standard, by a standard that literally never was accurate from the very beginning. So this week, pay attention, bring some awareness to where you're being judged by a standard that does not, and some of you are already going to know this, but anywhere there's shame, anywhere you're shaming yourself, anywhere you're saying that I'm the problem, anywhere you're saying I'm too slow, I'm too big, I'm too small, I'm too stupid, I am too smart, I… oh, that's a, okay, I'm going to give a little, this is funny because that was supposed to be, not supposed to be, but I was planning on it being the end. But now this is interesting because it's something that I never would have thought the problem I was just adapting in life how I needed to. But a friend and I were talking about what it's like for us to show up to a doctor's office and to be taken seriously. And I show up to a doctor's office and dressed down intentionally. I'll go in sweats, a loose T-shirt, hair in a ponytail or down but not done. And I don't mention any of my success in life. I don't mention any of my profession. I don't mention anything like that to be taken more seriously. For me, it's because if I show up to the doctor and talk about those things, they dismiss any of my disability, they dismiss any symptoms. They treat me as if, oh no, you're successful so you can't actually have whatever symptom you're talking about. It can't actually be anything significant because you're successful.

Well, my friend was talking about how when they go to the doctor's office, they intentionally highlight that they're at director level at a company that they have success. They dress in their best clothes. They make sure that their hair is done well, that their face is done well. And this is because they're a black queer gender nonconforming professional who isn't taken seriously in the doctor's office. And so actually it needs to highlight the successes, needs to be respected, needs to show up in a way that will command respect first so that they're believed. Which, what an interesting thing. And of course, I've known this, but talking to somebody and talking about the exact same scenario and how we have to navigate it in the exact opposite ways in our lives and it's correct for both of us to navigate it in those ways to get the most success that we want out of the doctor's office.

But both of it is we're trying to conform to this standard of, and we're not trying to we're adapting, we're not trying to conform to being normal. It's not about our ego and trying to appear a certain way because we want to, it's for survival. It's what we have to do to be believed in the doctor's office. It's just so interesting, and I'll go into this in future episodes, but it's so interesting that depending on how you differ from normal, from the Scottish soldier judgment of a normal body, that what you might have to do to adapt in the world could be the exact opposite thing that somebody else has to do. And if I were to give everyone advice, oh dress down, dress in sweats, don't highlight your professional success. When you go to the doctor, if I was to give everyone that advice, it'd be incredibly harmful to a large majority of people. And just like if my friend gave me advice, oh, well go where your nice is close, highlight your professional success. That wouldn't work for me. It immediately gets dismissed, or I immediately get dismissed and any of my disability symptoms. But it's interesting that, how we have to navigate environments that lack environmental integrity is going to be drastically different, and sometimes not just different, but exactly opposite.

And it's not because of you. It's because of the environment. It's because of the judgments. It's because of the stigmas that are all rooted in this one idea of normal. And to any leaders listening, whether what we previously said applies to or not, if you're a leader listening, look at your policies. Look at your definition of professional. And ask yourself, is this policy actually driving good work? Does it actually account for humanity? Or is it just enforcing the made up aesthetic of the paper human, that human who only exists on paper? And it's time to get rid of that. It's time to throw that away. It's time to review the policies. It's time to make some flexibility, build in flexibility to adjust for humanity that comes along. Anyway, that was me going on a little bit of a tangent. But thank you for joining me for episode two of Normal Is a Lie.

This was Normal Is a Lie with Julie Harris. If you want more information on accommodations in the workplace, you can visit ernestemployee.com. That's ernest (e-r-n-e-s-t) employee.com. And if you want to hire me to speak with your organization or at your event, you can reach out via LinkedIn or email in the show notes. And you can always buy my book, Boldly Belong Anywhere, Books Are Sold. Always remember, Normal Is a Lie. Be you.

Normal Is a Lie was produced by Julie Harris and Blazing Kiss Media.