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Choices are easier when they are between two things. They’re not easy, but definitely easier. The gender binary appeared to me for many years to be an easy—actually, just a normal—way to understand people. I’ve come to learn how wrong that is. When we realize how many people are murdered or die by suicide from this belief alone we realize this isn’t just wrong, it’s harmful, it’s shameful and it needs to be undone as quickly as possible.
Do you Want This or That?
When talking to an early school-age child, it’s important to allow them some sense of control. What this often means is providing them choices but make sure that choice is between two things—we can either play Connect Four or Candy Land. Opening up a huge closet full of amazing and varied board games only makes their head spin. Two possibilities are the way to go for a 6-year-old.
I talk about kids but I do it myself. How much time do I spend looking at what’s available on Netflix instead of actually watching something? I could have probably made it through a whole movie (or at least a Law & Order rerun) in the time it took me to make up my mind.
It’s overwhelming.
One great way to deal with feeling overwhelmed is to limit choices and very often we go binary.
When it comes to something less bland than choosing a game or a TV show, we don’t give ourselves more credit. We’re not a 6-year-old. We can hold more than two things in our head. When it comes to gender identity, we can all expect more from ourselves and expand our thinking.
The Binary Idea
This idea is all over the place from the yin/yang to the anima/animus, we like to look at the two sides. Movies are based on this premise—so much of the best of Alfred Hitchcock is rooted in the idea of The Double. Sure, there are times like above (playing games with 6-year-olds, deciding what to watch on a Sunday afternoon) where it’s helpful.
Where is it not helpful? Where does it harmful? When it comes to gender and sexuality.
Masculine/feminine could be a part of that binary. But it’s lazy when we start fully defining people this way. It’s unhelpful. At its worst, it’s harmful. To many of us, it’s incredibly limiting.
One of the problems with binaries is we pretend we’re talking about a continuum, but we’re really only focusing—only trusting—the extremes of that. For example, we can understand gay. We can understand straight. But bi-sexuality really makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
Growing up, I remember people saying that a woman might be bi, but if a man is, he’s just actually gay and not willing to admit it yet. (It’s amazing how much more we know about other people than they do about themselves, isn’t it? What the hell is wrong with us?)
Those of us firmly on one side of that continuum (and it’s arguable if any of us are) really have a hard time allowing for shades of gray.
Well, that’s the nice way to put it. What I mean is, we really have a hard time allowing people to be just who they are.
Knowing
We want certainty. I generally feel better when I know something to be true or know something to be false. Living with the unknown makes me uncomfortable, makes me feel unstable, wobbly, it can immobilize me at times. I want to know so that I can firmly walk in a chosen direction. But that limits me. It stops me from appreciating other viewpoints, other ways of seeing the same thing, other ways of living. Other ways of being myself, even.
The greatest freedom we can ask for is to grow more and more comfortable with uncertainty. Not to be totally nihilistic. Not to decide to never decide anything or to not have strong, grounded opinions (I’ve certainly got a ton of them). But to not let any of that stop me from hearing other people’s.
Let’s bring this back to gender.
I recently heard some advice:
Question: “What do you do if you can’t tell if someone is male or female?”
Answer: “Don’t worry about it.”
It made sense, but I know how often I’m curious. I want to know. I may even go so far as to say I’m uncomfortable not knowing.
Becoming OK With Not Knowing
Aside from the arrogance and the entitlement in that, what I’m really curious about is why so many of us (me included) have such a hard time sitting with this idea of not knowing. This is part of what the binary does. It tells us that there are one of two choices and that we get to classify everyone else. In fact, we have a right to. Anyone who slips out of that needs to be policed, be reeled in, or they are doing something wrong, trying to grab attention, don’t know themselves well enough.
If more men spent less time trying to fit themselves into a masculine box and more time working toward being aware, understand, and express who they truly are we’d have a freer, happier, more open, less judgmental world. We’d be filled with wonder about ourselves and each other instead of classifying ourselves and how far or near we are to some standard.
What will it take to get us there?
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