Gender, Sexuality, and False Dichotomies

Hank Green is one of my favorite people on the Internet. He and his brother John share one of the most prominent YouTube channels, VlogBrothers, and they talk about all kinds of stuff, from the fascinating and deeply profound to the nerdy and trivial. Today Hank posted this video addressing the whole concept of the gender binary and why it's an inadequate framework for understanding the incredible diversity of human experience (from physical sex to gender identity to physical and romantic attraction). If you've got 4 minutes, give it a watch:

Wasn't that a great video to share with people who think we're crazy and all this "trans stuff" is just in our heads? Life is, as he says, complicated. Or, put another way, as Hank's brother John often puts it, "the truth resists simplicity."

Anyway, I just had to share this with you, dear readers. Now I need to go to bed. Until next time, as Hank and his brother always like to say to one another, don't forget to be awesome.

On blanket answers

Earlier today, my friend Laurie posted a new entry to her blog, talking about how great it is that recently she, Christian Taylor, and I have all seemingly arrived at a similar place in our transgender-tinged walks with Heavenly Father:

1. Each of us has some measure of gender dysphoria / feelings of feminine gender identity.
2. Each of us was born & raised male, received the priesthood, married a woman, had kids, and is active in the Church.
3. Each of us would likely lose all of these things if we were to pursue gender transition to live as a female.
4. Therefore, we have each decided to remain with our spouses, remain in the Church, and remain primarily male, finding ways to embrace and express our femininity from this side of the gender divide.

I agree with this characterization of my thoughts and feelings today, as well as my agreement with my wife (I know, I still haven't blogged about how I came out to her! Next post, I promise!). But I confess to feeling a little bit uneasy with the overall message that appears to be coming from Laurie's post (I'm not going to ascribe this to her directly, because this may not be her intent at all, and just my interpretation * I'm positive that this wasn't her intent, and she has since said as much, but someone might still get that impression in reading over our blogs without the proper context).

It reminded me of a conversation going on over on Josh Weed's blog right now. The gist of it goes like this:

1. Josh Weed is a self-declared homosexual man.
2. Josh Weed is happily married to a straight woman.
3. Therefore, some argue, these so-called "mixed-orientation marriages" can work and are the solution for all gay men (and women) of faith.
4. "Not so," reply others -- Josh & Lolly's situation is unique. It works for them, and though there are other charter members of Club Unicorn for whom mixed-orientation marriages work, saying "wow, I can't wait to show this blog to my gay friend!" is harmful, because there are many gay Mormons (perhaps most?) for whom such a marriage wouldn't work at all (or who have tried one and failed).

I think the same can be said of our mutual position on our transgenderism. It works for the three of us, and we can rightly rejoice in having found a way forward in our lives that preserves the things we hold most dear, but there are other transgender Mormons for whom this wouldn't be a solution at all. Like Christi said a few weeks ago, our thoughts and ideas should NOT be taken as the official position of the Church, or the One True Way(™) for transgender Mormons to live their lives. Just as gender identity and expression is along a continuum, so too I think are the ways each of us has to come to grips with it.

* I edited this parenthetical to clarify my intent. I'm not trying to criticize Laurie here at all, I just wanted to make sure not to make things harder on transwomen for whom our solution isn't the right one.

"Club Unicorn" goes viral

If you haven't seen this yet. My wife shared this couple's story with me yesterday, and it's worth spreading. It's very quickly making the rounds in the LDS blogosphere, and their story is pretty awesome. Obviously gay issues aren't the same as trans issues, but the fact that people are even openly talking about these kinds of issues represents a huge step forward in my mind. And the fact that my Sweetheart thought to share it with me is significant as well, but that's the subject for another post.

Labels

I'm going to try dictating this blog post from my cellphone. Here goes...

I've been thinking a lot about labels lately -- what we call ourselves, what we call other people, what other people call us -- and it occurred to me that I tend to play kinda fast and loose with the words I use to describe my own situation.

I remember I was young teen when I first found the Renee Richards biography, Second Serve, that talked about her t************ and eventual gender reassignment surgery. (Wow, Android voice recognition censored that last T word. Interesting...)

Anyway, I think it was this book, or another of the very few my library had on the subject, that first helped me put words to the feelings I had inside... where I learned that there is a difference between "transsexual" and "transvestite". (I don't think "transgender" was really in common usage then, if the term had even been coined at all). I knew that I wasn't a transsexual, not exactly anyway -- I didn't want to change myself into a woman (well, most days, anyway). But the literature I read said that that transvestites get some kind of sexual charge out of dressing in women's clothing, and I didn't (more on that in a minute), so that didn't really feel like the right term either.

Now, fast-forward a couple of years.

Over the years while I've been wrestling with my GID, I've wondered exactly what it meant for me and my family. I know I'm not a transsexual. I don't think of myself as a transvestite, at least not in the "gets turned on by women's clothes" sense. (I dress because it's comforting and reaffirms my occasionally feminine feelings). For a long time, when I thought those were the only 2 options, I wasn't really sure what to make of myself: someone who doesn't feel very comfortable in a lot of the traditional male role, but doesn't really want to be a female either; someone who loves his wife and children and wants to stay with them and be a good husband and father, but doesn't want to be a "Ward Cleaver", Father-Knows-Best sort of a dad. These past few months, in reading a lot about this it seems that I fall more into the "squishy middle"... where we now have this neat word, "transgender," which seems to kind of cover a wide range of people -- myself included, I think.

So, that's my gender identity: feminine-leaning male, mildly androgynous... transgendered.

And then there's my sexual orientation, which, it may come as a surprise to some people, is really a totally different subject. Teenage-me used to think they were the same thing, which led to a lot of weird self-searching, because although my gender identity is a bit muddy, my sexuality isn't. I am, always have been, and probably always will be attracted to women -- and one woman in particular, my amazing wife. Sometimes I hear transwomen refer to themselves as "lesbian" because they identify as female, and are attracted to females. Okay, that makes sense. I also know of male to female transwomen that are attracted to men, making them effectively hetero. There also appear to be a growing number of genderqueer folk that you don't really care to be pigeonholed as either male or female, and who are attracted not to a gendered body, but to a person's mind and spirit, be it male or female.

I guess I come back to the point that I've made a few times already on this blog that things are just not as binary as everyone wants them to be. Yes, there are "mens' men." There are "women's women." And then there are all the rest of us.