Since birth, we have been subjected to the status quo and fitting in norms, like, for instance, growing up as a girl and being told that you shouldn’t play sports or you should like the color pink, or telling young men that they cannot cry and they have to remain emotionally stoic at all times. While we were reading from Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, I just kept on thinking about this random song from High School Musical, and while this song focuses mainly on students knowing their niche and sticking to it, whether they be the jock, the braniac, etc. I think it relates to the topic at hand because they focus on how any efforts to stray from their niche will overthrow the whole system, and they have to stop that from happening by any means necessary.

“Stick to the stuff you know
If you wanna be cool
Follow one simple rule
Don’t mess with the flow, no no
Stick to the status quooooooooooooo”

Anything that does not follow the status quo, for instance, being nonbinary, elicits such vehement responses. While I don’t identify as nonbinary, I deeply appreciated getting to read the memoirs from people of various walks of life talk about their experiences, and I think this meshes so well with the video from Chimamanda about the dangers of a single story. When identities that society has not deemed to be the status quo arise, society imposes its own labels on them and forces them to fit into a box, thus pushing this single story on a vast group of people. While the memoirs vary in their own ways, a common theme among them is the way other people impose their assumptions about one’s identity on another person, or very clearly display their discomfort with constant stares or looks of disgust because they stray from what we have deemed to be the status quo. There is this itch that society has to oppress people, and if one tries to exist in some sort of gray area, it will pick you out of that gray area, forcefully, to maintain control.