Respect your gender

Respect your gender

These are confusing times, when a three-year old boy wants to play with dolls so his mother says he is a girl.  This is my send article on this topic.  As you will see, I have been giving it a lot of thought.  These are my conclusions.  Please feel free to dialogue, through the ‘comments’ section. 

I was a tomboy.  I played cowboys and Indians.  In winter, with the neighbor boys, I built snow forts and fought off the invaders with snowballs. 

I remember a two-foot tall doll I was given for a birthday, perhaps it was my eighth.  I did not know what to do with it.  I propped it in a corner, looked at it, wondered what to do with it.  It felt so alien.

My favorite dress was blue jeans. I never enjoyed clothes shopping, I simply had no clue.  I remember a time in high school when, with my own money earned from babysitting, I went shopping for clothes.  Of course, mother took me, and had ultimate say over what I chose.  I picked out a gabardine pleated brown skirt that pleased her, and that was too small.  I spent all my money, and I never wore it.  My shopping mind set has always been to walk into a store with a specific target, hunt it down, buy it and leave.  Wandering the mall just looking at things gives me a headache.  What’s the point

I never wanted to marry.  High school flirtations were all about seeking the love, acceptance and intimacy that was denied me in childhood.  Boys were not drawn to me.  I felt like I just didn’t give out the right vibe.  I had my flirtations and explorations, but that feeling stayed with me throughout my life.

One of those explorations resulted in a pregnancy.  There were no options, no discussions.  I knew what the right thing to do was.  And maybe now I would finally have that love and intimacy that I craved. 

I have to laugh when I think of it now.  I didn’t have the usual slut vibe.  I was a serious kid.  But I was a horny kid, once I discovered the pleasure of sex.  I guess I had the masculine sensibility of it all.  Men sew their wild oats, while a good Catholic girl is meant to be modest, chaste.  Hmm.  I had a few wild oats of my own to sew, though my virginal pregnancy and marriage postponed that.

As a mother I was a good mechanic.  There was some kind of maternal connection that was missing.  I loved my kids, but did not find motherhood satisfying.  My mind lay fallow.

I left my kids, and suffered the condemnation of abandonment for the rest of my life.  They suffered it, too.  Yet to stay with them would have been suicide.  I remember being in the car with the family.  We were ‘happy’.  Yet I wanted to push open the door and jump out at a high speed, in hopes to end my futile existence.  Now, some fifty years later, I understand.

When I began to understand reincarnation, I made sense of my maleness.  Of course.  These feelings were simply left over from a previous life.  I am a man in a woman’s body.  So be it.

I had the best of both worlds.  I was perceived as a woman. I participated in the sacred mystery of having a life grow within me, three times.  My body was fertile!  On the other hand, I did not understand how to be subjected by a male partner, nor what it would entail to make him happy. No doubt, this is why my attempts at marriage were doomed.  I have always been fearless.  If I could imagine it, I could attempt it.  I traveled freely, which was my destiny.  I have had an independent life.  Observers say I am not homely, yet I have never been a magnet for men who were seeking a partner.  My intelligence, confidence and independence were surely effective deterrents. 

I cannot imagine what I would have become if I stayed in my marriage with my children.  It is simply unimaginable.  For their sakes, I am happy that I had the opportunity to bring life into this world.  That is a humbling experience.  They can never forgive me for that.  Had I changed my gender in my youth, as people today are doing, I would have avoided causing these people this pain.  On the other hand, they would not have been born!  Which is the more noble path?

People seek happiness and fulfillment today, IMHO to an absurd degree.  Of course my life had its share of emotional pain and suffering.  But what life does not?  I took my gender ambiguity in stride.  I did not obsess over it.  What has happened in our world to shift the balance, such that people are not willing to accept this dysphoria and get on with their lives?

As a woman, I have never knew an insurmountable barrier to doing what I wanted to do, to fulfilling my destiny.  I have worked on my car, changing the oil, replacing a manifold gasket for example.  I have remodeled a house, doing carpentry, plumbing, putting up sheet rocking, painting. Perhaps the greater difficulty is with a man who feels like a woman, who wants to wear makeup and high heel shoes.  Who would rather play with dolls, who likes soft and frilly things, who isn’t interested in ‘manly’ things.  Perhaps in our culture that is more an obstacle than to such as myself.  Yet in my childhood and among my peers in adulthood I have known of husbands and fathers who preferred to cook, to sew clothing and frilly drapes, and to do other traditionally feminine things while their wives worked and had a career.  Why is that not enough any longer?

I shake my head.  Are these rhetorical questions?  My curious mind wants to know.  These things trouble me, as I see the culture, the social order crumbling around me.  The answers do not matter.  We have gone too far into devolution.  There is no remedy.  We are on a collision course, we cannot heal the planet nor our societies.  We are all doomed.  Pass the tequila.

Transgender

Transgender

Suddenly this concept is popping up wherever I look.

There is the Oscar nominated film, the Danish Girl.  My good friend Cal revealed to me that he is transgender. North Carolina passes a law around transgenders and public toilets.

I cannot give this topic a superficial pass.  Suddenly this condition is ascending to claims on constitutional rights.  I have to ask myself, where has this issue been all my life?

I was certainly aware of transvestites, men who like to dress in women’s clothing.  There were plenty portrayed in movies as being prostitutes, flirting with men.

In grammar school there was a boy who was in my dance class.  He was more sensitive, gentler than other boys.  He grew up, got married, and raised a family.

Another boy, handsome, Italian, slight build, flamboyant and a hairdresser to boot, appeared at the 20-year high school reunion with his wife on his arm.  I would not have predicted that.

There were what we called dykes.  Females with masculine preferences for dress and demeanor.

How did we come from that, to a state where a mother says she knows her three year old son is transgender?

Our culture is becoming more and more fractured, with everyone indulging their individuality at the cost of a cohesive society.  Why suddenly do they claim special rights and privileges, special concessions to their preferences.  I don’t get it.  As someone famously once said, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’

I look at my own life through these newly ground lenses.  I never played with dolls.  In our day, the name given to girls like me was tomboy.  No one ever called me a dyke.  I played nice with boys, when forced to, like having a crush in high school, and needing a date for prom night.  None of this ever came to anything.

Years and years ago when I was in the workforce, I had the sense that I was a man in a woman’s body.  I was independent, self-reliant.  I didn’t know how to pick up boys.  Boys sensed no pheromones from me.  Of course, I did live through the sixties when men suddenly had permission to screw anything that moved on two legs, and women were persuaded to think this brought them ‘hip’ status. 

It didn’t help that I was raised in a home without open displays of affection.  My mother was indoctrinated into the child-raising philosophy of the time, that to give too much attention to a child is to spoil them, give them an over inflated ego.  She took it to the extreme, closer to the ‘cold bitch’ side of the spectrum.  Once I discovered sex I had a spell of insatiability for physical intimacy.  But before long I was able to distinguish between the biological act of sex, and genuine affection and love based on mutual respect and admiration.  In fact, I found that latter to be extremely rare, though I held onto the possibility that it might be more than an urban legend.  I got tired of pretending that I was finding love in each encounter, when in fact I was being used as a dumping ground for male sweat and sperm.

While traveling alone around the world I gradually found my balance.  I developed a sense that I could do anything a guy could do, and often better.  I did not relate with the women whom I met traveling, who seemed to require a male counterpart to help make her decisions.  I did occasionally run into the rare couple who absolutely did complement each other, and I did envy them.  You never know a book by its cover, but they had the appearance of being best friends.

I did encounter women to whom I was attracted.  That is, their femininity and grace made the sun shine a little brighter for me.  And then there were the other women like me, such as the famous Miss Jones. 

We met on a Greek Island, and met again on a kibbutz.  I had already started to meditate, so we would meditate together.  Her energy helped me find my center, and my meditation improved.  Then we went our separate ways, only to meet again in Nepal.  I had heard of this American who ran a café in Kathmandu.  My colleagues at the monastery would visit her shop when they were in town.  It was a meeting place, also a place to dump the shopping while you go out for dinner, that sort of thing.  When eventually I had the opportunity to go into town with these people, she and I rediscovered each other to mutual delight. 

I think of her, when I see how my bakery in China has served a similar purpose in its short life.

Would my life have been easier if I taped my breasts and walked around in men’s clothing and hairstyle?  That seems weird to me.  I would have complicated my life even more.  The only possible advantage I could imagine would be if women were then attracted to me.  But in fact, I think my personality is a put off to men and women alike, so I doubt that would have been the result.

I speculate as to how different my experience is to someone calling themselves transgender.  I guess I will never know.  As I said, I didn’t play with dolls.  I played cowboys and Indians.  I dug out dirt to make runways and villages for what is now called matchbox cars and trucks, together with the neighborhood boys.  I climbed trees, played stick ball (when the cruel neighbor kids weren’t ostracizing me, for whatever reason of the moment).  I flew with the wind on my bicycle, exploring the town, visiting the far flung kids from my school class.  Alone, always alone.

This was all excellent preparation for the long and adventurous life I led, taking me around the world, learning languages, absorbing cultures, and having many careers.  This life was well-suited to someone who has given up romantic dreams of idyllic love.  The romance was in the travels, the possibilities that lie just around the corner.  Had I been a dependent woman, waiting for my identity and security to be provided by a male, I would have been stopped in my tricks thousands of miles and decades ago.

I feel bad for people who are not confident in expressing themselves.  For that poor little boy who likes to dress up as a girl and play with dolls, that he should have to be stigmatized for the rest of his life by his mother telling him his gender roll was confused, I feel for him.  Why must everything be so black and white.  Why cannot I be both male and female, in whatever body God gave me?  Why do I have to choose one or the other?  From talking to my transgender and gay (or should I say LTGBQ) friends, I feel that the real problem is a lack of tolerance in our relationships.  If a guy wants to wear ruffles and laces to work, why can’t he?  Why must he be gossiped about, judged wanting in masculinity?  If a woman chooses a mannishly short haircut and is given to wearing three-piece suits, what’s the problem?  Why must we treat these people differently, to where they develop a chip on their shoulder, and feel the need to run from civilized society and develop a subculture?

My cousin, when here four children were under ten years old, came home and found her husband in flagrante with a man in the basement.  Did she have to get hysterical?  Did she have to treat him like he was a felon who should never be near his children again?  For the rest of her life, does she have to go ballistic whenever they need to have a conversation?  He did not go on to develop a stable relationship with a man.  She forced the breakup of the marriage, and her children to grow up without a father, for what?  I admit I am not walking in their shoes.  Maybe I would not feature being penetrated by a tool that had been dunked in shit.  Or maybe, just maybe, enlightened people could find a way around such traumas and let their friendship go deeper.  We are all flawed human beings.  Can’t we make a better effort at loving each other unconditionally, accepting our flaws and theirs, and just get on with life?

Why do we have to fragment our society into smaller and smaller peer groups, and then demand special treatment because our decisions stand in the way of our sharing the rights and responsibilities of the society we have chosen to leave?  Many States have passed laws given gay couples legal rights, such that if one of them were hospitalized the other would have the right to be treated as family; they can be on each other’s medical insurance.  Why must they go a step further, and demand the right to shatter the milleniums-old established institution of marriage?

Truly, our culture is on the brink of extinction, no less than our planet as we know it.  Young people can’t see it, they are caught up in the moment.  Like not seeing the forest for the trees, they are blind to what is happening.  We old people are marginalized, so clearly our perspective is quaint and irrelevant.

There is nothing new under the sun.  When we have to develop a whole new vocabulary to describe what has been going on forever, we are ascending a tower of babel.

uncivil discourse

How do I work my way out of a social dilemma. I am Christian, important people in my life are Christian. I do not have any homosexual friends right now; in fact, it is safe to say that there are no close friendships in my life at the moment, gay or straight. But I move in a world that is rich in diversity, and I feel a need in my heart to be balanced. There is a war raging, but I cannot take sides.

On the one hand, there are those ‘eternal verities.’ There is a ‘creator’, a great intelligence we can only sense in our spirit, but cannot prove with scientific certainty. This created world has its natural laws that keep the planets orbiting in their proper space. There is inborn in humankind the longing for goodness, a distaste for hurting self and others. Alongside this there is also the urge to gratify ones own self. In a world governed by divine love it is possible to balance these divergent longings. Yet as man strives to live in society with other men, people do develop the capacity to hurt and to pursue what goes against the greater good of society. This fact only underscores another verity, that man is born with free will. He can choose to follow his yearning for goodness, or abandon it to his self interests.

The portion of the population that has chosen to follow Christ have as their guidebook for right living the many books and chapters that comprise the Bible. A large portion of this Book is shared by followers of Islam. Exercising that free will, these disciples of Christ and Muhammed have chosen to interpret this great book in many divergent ways. There are clear statements in different places of the Book that indicate a natural formation for society, and an unnatural one. Sexual love of man for man or woman for woman has clearly been placed in the latter camp. Even the word ‘abomination’ has been the English translation of choice from the original.

Weigh this against the teachings of Christ himself, as reported in the New Testament. He has asked us to learn how to love and to forgive. He identifies his people, speaking through the apostle Paul, as a peculiar people, set apart. In this world, but not of it. Even so, we must render to Caesar his due. We must abide by and respect the law of the land, and when that land is a republic functioning as a representational democracy, then we are called upon to participate in creating as well as abiding by this law.

I believe that all of this has led us to a cultural civil war. In ever increasing numbers, people are choosing to focus on their own gender in their search for loving companionship, for stability, for their fulfillment of the natural yearning to belong. This is an alarming trend when viewed from the perspective of social history, where the extended family has been the traditional bedrock of stability and cultural continuity.

This schism did not arise spontaneously. There is no virgin birth here. It is the inevitable outgrowth from the destruction of the traditional extended family unit. We have brought it on ourselves with the industrial age, where factories supplanted farms as the source of income. This apparently simple shift has spawned many unnatural alliances, sundering the natural order of society.

Workers left the extended family in order to find work. Without the natural support of the extended multi-generational family, the stressors that afflict all marriages could not be contained. Cracks formed in the nuclear family unit, infidelity became easier when greater distance was put between the home and the work place, and the inevitable divorce occurred. The restless spirit was no longer contained within the walls of the defining rural social community. The anonymity of the city permitted experimentation with alternate forms of gratification. With divorce comes single parenting, step-parenting, week-end parenting with divergent values. The suffering, confused and alienated children produced in these environments have grown to adults with a very different concept of home, family and community.

Arranged marriages such as seen in Asian cultures, and formerly in European cultures, has no formal part of the modern post industrial culture. In rural America, however, when young people grew up with their entire extended family living within miles of them, coupling of young people having similar values and temperament was a given. Choices were limited. This usually worked to the benefit of all involved, ensuring continuity of the family, of financial stability, and ultimately of the strong community. Droughts occurred as well as bounty, recession as well as plenty, but the community leaned upon its own resources and rode the tides of good and ill together.

There are hardly any such pockets of healthy communities left in America. Young people are faced with options that will easily take them away from the security of whatever community they came to know, and in spite of their best intentions they may not return except perhaps for weddings and funerals.

A good mother learns quickly that a child needs boundaries. As the child grows within these boundaries, gaining in confidence, experience and wisdom, the boundaries can safely expand. But even adults find comfort in boundaries. Given the breakdown of society, boundaries have expanded beyond anything healthy, yet humans need these boundaries no less, to feel safe. We all have heard the phrase, “It’s a scary world out there.” It has never been more true.

Single young adults have a daunting task in the search for a life partner. The 2009 film He’s just not into you portrays this world with humor that masks a deeper angst. It is economically practical to find a housemate, rather than living with parents or tackling the emotional uncertainty of living with an uncommitted lover. Compatibility can arise, making for a satisfying home life. The definition of ‘family’ blurs, when no blood relation lives in the same city, and the majority of your free time is spent with this housemate. Years can pass, and these two can become each others strongest supporters. But what if one suffers a medical emergency, or a car accident? Will these two not experience the same drama as any sibling or husband and wife in this situation? The injured person would want the security and comfort of that housemate by their side. It is that housemate who will carry on with the necessities of life—bill paying, pet caring, keeping friends and coworkers apprised of the situation. And here arises a conflict. The hospital has rules keeping ‘non family’ out of the ICU, for one example. After decades of growing numbers of people in this situation, policies have finally changed to give recognition to vital life relationships outside the traditional definition of ‘family.’ And so we have ‘civil union’ laws, to extend insurance and other benefits to householders not having a blood or legal relationship.

All of this makes perfect sense, so far. Then love and sexual gratification enter into the picture, and sensibility is fractured. The relationship takes on a whole new meaning within the context of community. Beyond civil union, there is the romantic notion of marriage, a gesture to all the world demonstrating that the universal search for love and marriage has been fulfilled. Who is it that desires this romantic gesture?

There are two camps, in my opinion. There are life partners who have a solid and discreet relationship. They have no desire to call attention to themselves, they have found stability as well as emotional fulfillment in their relationship. Having filed for ‘civil union’ status, they are ensured the civil right to take care of and protect each other. "Marriage" would be the icing on the cake, a cake perfectly edible without icing nonetheless.

The other side of the coin brings us back to that young adult search for a life partner. How does someone identify themselves as gay or straight? This is a complicated issue. Each person is born with the capacity to find beauty in the same gender as well as the opposite. We are acculturated to prefer the beauty of the opposite sex, a healthy natural urge built within us to propagate the species and continue the social order. But in an unhealthy society where natural boundaries have been torn down, a young person can be without a true compass. They may have gotten the message to seek love and marriage, but the traditional urges such as for species propagation may have been extinguished. It is also a scientific fact that a small number of people are born with gender ambiguity, a small number.

Out there cruising for love and acceptance, it comes as it comes. We have heard that women are from venus, men from mars. This translates to mean that women tend to ‘get’ women easier than they ‘get’ men. Yet the acculturated desire for the romance of marriage to the object of love and adoration remains.

It shouldn’t be surprising that same-gender coupling is on the rise, an innovative solution to the breakdown of the more traditional means of find ones life mate. It is also a very practical solution to the complex personal finance dilemma, where the mortgage for a house requires two incomes. Can we heal these cultural diseases just by outlawing committed relationships between same gender couples? Oh, if only we could. In fact, homosexual marriage is just one more nail in the coffin of our decaying society.

The moral outrage of the more conservative, traditional minded to the idea of escalating the ‘civil union’ to the level of officially sanctioned marriage is a volley in this civil war, scorching and tearing as it flies. In the wake of its trajectory lies pain as much as ignorance. It accuses these relationships of tearing a rift in the community, of not carrying weight, of not bearing children. Would that I had statistics here to get a clearer picture of reality. Same-gender couples do raise children. Such children have an equal chance to socialize normally, following traditional gender roles. Are civil unions more or less stable than traditional marriages? The often heard statistic on male-female marriage is that there is a 50% chance it will end in divorce. We don’t yet have statistics on this recent innovation, same-sex marriage. Perhaps it will reflect the anecdotal breakdown of hetero couples who live together peaceably for years, only to get divorced after going through the wedding commitment.

I fear the outrage is misdirected, much like putting a band-aid on a broken bone. If we attempt to legislate who can get married, why not go a step further and revise the laws governing who can get divorced. Legislate against single parenting. Legislate against taking the influence of grandparents out of the lives of their grandchildren. Why don’t we make laws that will force 5% of the population to live in communities organized like the original kibbutz in Israel, which were self-contained communities. Children raised in those communities grew to be outstanding citizens. During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, 25% of the commanders of the army were products of these same kibbutzes, which were comprised of a mere 5% of the population of Israel. In fact, we cannot legislate behavior. It is closer to the truth if we say that behavior dictates legislation.

We have created a society with a heightened sense of entitlement to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A society where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been redefined. Because these changes are being aired in a public forum, thanks to this era of all-pervasive multi-media technology, we cannot sit quietly and try to adjust to these changes. We are polarized, a rift is forming, social civil war seethes just below the surface.

I wish there were a solution—easy or difficult, if only we could find a path to chart through this morass. In fact, it will escalate. We have also seen alarming upheavals on the surface of our planet—tsunamis, earthquakes, war-induced famines and genocides. It is likely that nature will once again intervene, to take our minds off this social upheaval. In the face of disaster, we work side by side no matter what our social agendas might be, to feed and to bandage and to shelter the victims of tragedy. We ourselves might be such victims. Would we refuse to quench our burning thirst if the hand holding the bottle of water was a hand we saw betrothed in a same-sex marriage?

Laws change in two ways. Our elected officials can vote for change, and the citizenry can vote for a referendum to direct the lawmakers. Our citizenry has shown an appalling indifference to the great right and privilege that is our participatory democracy, as reflected by the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast a ballot when given the chance. I would like to see mandatory attendance at refresher courses periodically required of all citizens on our constitution and how government is supposed to work. But we can no more legislate that than we can legislate who will fall in love with whom. I do not like the idea of getting voters to the election poles by whipping them up with emotionally charged rhetoric, bypassing reason and logic. More often than not this is how it is done, and I abhor it. I would so much rather discuss ideas through civil discourse. But I am spitting in the wind.

What I would wish for is that people of power and influence would call our society to conscience, reminding us that we most of all desire to be a loving and forgiving people. That a self-regulating society that disciplines its self-interests to yield to the higher interests of the greater good is really what was intended for the United States of America. That includes tolerance for different interpretations of ‘greatest good’, allowing for separate but equal public services. That there would be hospitals that protected its staff against the act of abortion, and hospitals where abortion was protected. Schools where more traditional curriculums were taught, and schools for progressive curricular choices. That communities would have the right to permit public prayer in their schools, and communities that prohibited it.

These are the words of an idealist, ignoring the realities of the times. If such a vision were ever to come into being, it could only be at the hand of God allowing a great natural calamity to destroy the world as we know it. We all pray that will not happen. But we also pray that each one of us will seek within us for the voice of peace and love, from which can grow a greater respect and tolerance for each other. May this prayer stem the tide of civil war that threatens us all.