There’s a conversation I had with a tall, lanky woman in a sex positive coffee shop over a copy of “The Joy of Sex” that’s been hanging around in my mind for a very long time. I’m not sure if she was trying to shock me with her admission that she was trans or just owning up to the fact that she was very awkwardly female in her heels and skirt. But when she opined that the female form was beautiful and she always wished she’d had breasts, I told her I’d gladly give her mine if I could because I’ve never wanted them. The conversation led on to how much easier it was for me to be a tomboy than it was for her to be a sissy, which I conceded at the time. But there she was, in a skirt and heels and claiming her pronoun, and there I was in jeans and hiking boots, still the tomboy after all these years.
In our culture where we don’t have a comfortable box for the kid who really isn’t cis-male or cis-female, it is hard being different, and it really doesn’t matter what that different identity is. The bulk of the population sees themselves as male or female, and everyone else has to be one or the other, either like them or not, easily identifiable by outward markers of gender. I, by not embracing the gender that my body very obviously wears by decking it in the socially acceptable fashion of dresses and facial makeup, am obviously confused, and perhaps in need of professional help.
I actually spent a long time talking honestly to a therapist. And did that professional “cure” me and turn me into a sugar and spice and everything nice girly girl to match my outward and inward primary sexual characteristics? No. She very helpfully encouraged me to be who I am, and to develop strategies for dealing with the rest of the human beings that I share the planet with. She brought up the valid point that no matter what, I can’t change everyone else or what they do, I can only change myself and my reactions to them.
My choice of reaction is to let the world see me as the gender my mother goddess curves suggest to them. I circle the “F” on forms and my driver’s license reports that I am female. What my body genetically is is pretty undeniable, after all. What my gender is inside my own head is less specific, more fluid, never comfortable with either extreme. But I don’t let that worry me. The outside world can see me as a woman who dresses ambiguously and that’s fine with me.
It’s fine because only rarely do I feel called to make someone else uncomfortable, and trying to explain my gender identity tends to do that. If someone is curious, I’ll try to explain so that they can understand, just like I do when someone asks about my not so easily defined religion. Or what I write. Or my identity as a BDSM switch. Or that what I’m sexually attracted to has nothing to do with the body before me but has everything to do with the soul and the personality within. I fully realize that to most people, I sound confused, even though I’m not. I’m very secure with my own self, which is very comfortable being mostly in between all the dichotomies into which the bulk of people divide themselves.
What I’m saying is that if my outer body matched my inner gender, it would have neither broad hips nor broad shoulders. It would have both small breasts and a modest penis. It’s facial features would confuse the eye, soft curves and hard lines blended androgynously. It would likely even have three “sex chromosomes”, XXY, just to add to the ambiguity. It would be hard for me to look “normal”. It would be impossible to classify as “M or F” on those forms. It would have made growing up even harder for me than it was.
Look. I grew up a tomboy. I complained every time my parents made me wear a dress to something until they stopped making me. I played with Barbies who weren’t fashion models but loved to camp out. I played with Hot Wheels and didn’t care which was the fastest, but loved the ones that stuck to the track no matter how convoluted I twisted it. My favorite books were the ones about horses and dogs and more fantastical things, not the ones about princesses or sports heroes. I’ve confused people most of my life, in other words. I reacted by choosing friends who didn’t care, who took me as I was - which was exactly what I did for them. I sat with the rest of the outcasts at lunch, and generally ignored everyone else. I took more than my fair share of abuse, but at home, I always knew I was loved, and that helped me understand that I was okay. And yes, I did therapy, because at one point in my life I stopped being sure that I liked who I was.
Being different isn’t easy. I feel for my trans-gendered friends who have to decide whether or not to disclose their histories. I feel for my kinky friends who have to hide that part of themselves to keep their jobs. I feel for my homosexual friends who don’t hold hands in public because other people judge. I feel for my pagan friends who don’t discuss religion because theirs isn’t mainstream. I feel for my poly friends who get tired of explaining their relationships. But I also feel for my cis-gendered, vanilla, heterosexual, Christian monogamous friends who have never had their own identity challenged, who haven’t gone through an agony of self-acceptance and come out the other side with the extra strength that being yourself despite what everyone else thinks gave me and my outcast friends. I feel for the ones who’ve never considered suicide to avoid the pain of being different and had to reject that because it was the easy way out. I feel for the ones who’ve had an easy life, and who might now, because they know me, have to actually think about why they judge others, or look down on them, try to change them, or even ignore that any other way of being is valid and liveable.
I preach tolerance and kindness and love because these are the things I value and these are the things that help bring people together despite differences and differing choices. I’m more than happy to help people think through their own beliefs, to try to help them understand what they’ve never had to before. To help people relate more harmoniously with each other. To show them that my beliefs and lifestyle do not invalidate or endanger their own. To share the strength I gained through my own journey.
Our individual differences only make our whole world stronger and more beautiful.
I wish you love and happiness, but I hope that your own path hasn’t been so easy that you blindly judge. I hope that you can see the beauty around you, both in the bountiful variety that nature provides us and in the glorious variety of people you interact with. Be kind to each other, please. And even more importantly, be kind to yourselves.
