There are systemic, horrific problems in our society that the tools of psychology are not equipped to address. The fact that marginalized people have learned to cope with some of them does not mean the fight for equality should ebb.

However, in other, more subtle ways, social exclusion affects a broad swath of humanity. We can learn how to overcome it from those who have dealt with it best. We can look to people who have battled stigma, coped with social anxiety, and smashed stereotypes in order to learn more about those phenomena—and what we can do about them.

Finally, a word on “weird.” I have several reasons for using a word that’s sometimes considered offensive, or at least negative.

First, I hope to reclaim it. People who have different beliefs, appearances, or identities are often written off as just plain weird. In the worst cases, we’re actually called weird under people’s breaths or to our faces. But I’ve come to view weirdness as a strength rather than a hindrance—even if aspirationally. Maybe in becoming comfortable with applying the word to people who are successful, we’ll start to see difference as less of a negative trait.

Second, it surprised me to learn, in the course of my research, that the word has not always had a negative connotation. “Weird” has had, frankly, a weird history. The word’s usage gained popularity after the 1850s and fell again after the 1920s,15 only to reemerge, with spandex and big hair, in the 1980s.

“Weird” developed its more positive, quirky meaning in these more recent decades. Travel books came out urging you to explore “weird and wonderful” something. A book called Weird Maryland,16 for instance, promised to show you the state’s best-kept secrets. In 2000, when Austin Community College librarian Red Wassenich coined the phrase “Keep Austin Weird,”17 he meant we should preserve its one-of-a-kind culture. (In a Washington Post interview, he even used “weirdo” the way I mean it here: “You’ve got underpaid, highly educated people, and that makes for a breeding ground for weirdos,”18 he said, attempting to explain the city’s urban-Western je ne sais quoi.)

But it was an earlier definition of “weird” that captured my interest. Before the 1800s, weird was more likely to mean supernatural, or fantastical. Shakespeare, for instance, called the witches in Macbeth the “weyard sisters.” Wyrd is the Old English word for “fate,” and by the eighth century, a form of it, wyrde, was used to refer to the three Roman mythical, goddess-like Fates. The first one, Nona, spun the thread of life; the second, Decima, measured it; and the third, Morta, cut it as she saw fit. The three Fates represented the idea that our futures are determined, in part, by our circumstances.