"Our essential differences from the norm are both huge and deeply offensive to those among us who wish to be quietly integrated into society without particular reference to our nature"
About this Quote
Boyd frames difference as a kind of unavoidable scandal: not merely noticeable, but "huge and deeply offensive". The provocation lands because the offense he names isn’t aimed at a hostile outside world first; it’s aimed inward, at "those among us" who have the most to lose socially. That pivot is the quote’s engine. It treats assimilation not as safety but as a bargain that requires constant small acts of self-erasure, and it refuses to romanticize that bargain.
The key phrase is "quietly integrated... without particular reference to our nature". Boyd is describing a familiar survival strategy for any stigmatized group: if you can just be seen as normal enough, you can pass through institutions, keep your job, avoid the sermon, skip the fight. But he also exposes the cost: the people who need integration most desperately may become the ones most threatened by visible difference, because visibility endangers the fragile arrangement they’ve negotiated with power.
As a clergyman writing in the long shadow of mid-century moral policing and church-centered respectability politics, Boyd’s subtext reads like pastoral counsel sharpened into critique. He’s arguing that liberation movements don’t only confront external prejudice; they also disrupt internal hierarchies of acceptability. The "essential differences" aren’t presented as quirky lifestyle choices but as truths that keep resurfacing, forcing a choice: be "quietly integrated" on someone else’s terms, or risk becoming the embarrassment that makes honesty possible.
The key phrase is "quietly integrated... without particular reference to our nature". Boyd is describing a familiar survival strategy for any stigmatized group: if you can just be seen as normal enough, you can pass through institutions, keep your job, avoid the sermon, skip the fight. But he also exposes the cost: the people who need integration most desperately may become the ones most threatened by visible difference, because visibility endangers the fragile arrangement they’ve negotiated with power.
As a clergyman writing in the long shadow of mid-century moral policing and church-centered respectability politics, Boyd’s subtext reads like pastoral counsel sharpened into critique. He’s arguing that liberation movements don’t only confront external prejudice; they also disrupt internal hierarchies of acceptability. The "essential differences" aren’t presented as quirky lifestyle choices but as truths that keep resurfacing, forcing a choice: be "quietly integrated" on someone else’s terms, or risk becoming the embarrassment that makes honesty possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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