“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, or evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind.“ – Henry Miller
A transgender woman I know said, “Maybe it confuses other people, but being my son’s mother and father at the same time makes perfect sense to me.” I warmed to her bluntness, but I wondered how her son felt. How would he introduce her to his friends? We are lacking the most basic tools, such as clear pronouns, to perform social functions like that one. Our approach to gender fluidity has been, up to now, a call for either condemnation or acceptance of the individual, and we have made progress toward tenderness in that regard that would have been unheard of only a decade ago. We have not, however, resolved the larger question of how this person will be accepted into society so that a son doesn’t have to explain how it is that this person who looks sort of like a man is his mother.
My late husband Terry was probably transgender. I say “probably” because he killed himself without revealing all the details to me. He was born in 1943 and when he was growing up, there was “no such thing” as a transgender person. My 86-year-old cousin told me, “I grew up in a small town in Kansas and we didn’t have any homosexuals.” In those days, there was “no such thing” as a homosexual either. Because of my closeness to Terry, I have a degree of understanding of the tension involved in having a person inside you who can never see the light of day. Keeping this person hidden under the threat of death, assault, or social exile is a daily, hourly struggle. Living in fear of discovery is exhausting. (See my memoir The Sweet Pain of Being Alive for that story).
I’ve been listening to the political talk about gender and trying to square it with life. One’s personal opinion about another person’s gender will not prevent or cause your own relative or friend from being transgender, or even you yourself. All condemnation will do is push that person into that place where the siren song of suicide lures them all the time.
Changing genders can be confusing, even alarming, to others. When Terry told me he liked wearing women’s clothes, I was confused. It was a big deal for me because I’m not sexually attracted to men wearing women’s clothes…and we were married. Part of the reason for my confusion was that, aside from laughing with Monte Python and Eddie Izzard, I had no sophisticated prism through which to understand this need to stray from one’s given gender. My first reaction to Terry in women’s clothes would have been laughter.
Christianity has hobbled our minds, though it’s more complex than we think. The pillars of Christianity are the female Mary and the male Jesus, though there are two other spirits in there, God and the Holy Ghost, which are thought of as male but sexless (a third gender), and Jesus was not a sexual being, at least not as presented in modern Christianity. “Asexual male” is an identity, too. I believe I know at least one man who fits that identity. He’s thought of as gay, but he told me, “I didn’t have any interest in that sort of thing.” I’ve thought him lucky at times, though couldn’t imagine a total lack of sexual attraction.
In America today, we generally recognize two sexes (male/female), three sexualities (gay/straight/bisexual), and two genders (male/female), but we can see with our own eyes that there is greater variety than that.
Here are some examples of the way other cultures and religions have defined gender/sex/sexuality. Better leave sexuality out of it—better not to enter people’s bedrooms. Heterosexual couples do horrifying things in their bedrooms but we give them a pass because they fit the sex/gender categories.
I’m not going to identify the religions and cultures where the concepts below were common because we have too many unconscious biases. Maybe we think of one culture as “primitive,” or “savage” or “infidels,” or too close to home.
Here are the eight genders of one culture. They have a name for each one.
- Male.
- Female.
- Having both male and female characteristics.
- Lacking sexual characteristics.
- Identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics.
- Identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention.
- Identified male at birth but later naturally developing female characteristics.
- Identified male at birth and later developing female characteristics through human intervention.
Some cultures allow their shamans to pick a gender for themself regardless of what gender they appear to be.
One culture uses the words “sistergirls” and “brotherboys.”
Some populations have a high incidence of an intersex genetic trait known as five alpha reductase hermaphroditism. When this gene is expressed, the person is born with ambiguous genitalia and develops male characteristics at puberty. There’s a medical name for that.
In some cultures, people can choose to live between genders. They play a key role as mediators, spiritual leaders, and artists, and can perform both traditional women’s work as well as traditional men’s work. In some, these people play a social role that is considered sacred as educators and bearers of traditions and rituals such as child naming.
One culture contains a category that, roughly translated, means “manly-hearted woman,” and has a broad definition, encompassing any way in which persons assigned female at birth lived outside of the social constraints placed on other women in the their society. This could include performing traditionally male professions, wearing male clothing, engaging in homosexuality, or participating in war. There are also tales of Christian women going to war dressed as men during the American Revolution and other wars, and, of course, Joan of Arc.
In ancient Greek mythology, Teresias, a prophet of Apollo was transformed into a woman for seven years. There are ancient gods who were recognized as embodying both genders, sometimes presented as two-faced.
Many cultures have sex-specific rituals when a child reaches puberty, and in some of those cultures children of uncertain gender did not undergo these rituals, but were given special status as dancers, musicians, shamans, or guides.
In the Middle East, castration (the ultimate tinkering with gender) was performed to provide eunuchs to guard harems. The castrati of Europe were men who had been castrated around the age of nine to prevent their voices from changing and, for the several centuries when this practice was common, they were rewarded by being regarded as operatic superstars.
In our culture, we are confused by people whose gender is not clear because we have been trained to be confused, yet contemplation of these varied views of gender can serve to open our minds.
The only commonly used nomenclaure that I can think of, other than a scientific or academic one, to define people of confusing gender is “drag queen,” which lights many fuses in our society and applies only to males dressing as females and not the other way around. Maybe “tomboy,” if the girl was young.
Our marriage and Terry’s ultimate suicide have added another assignment to my life’s work–evangelizing for clarity, for the creation of a place in society for two-spirited people. Or one-spirited people who look like something other than what they feel like. Such people have been valued across the globe and throughout history for their unique sensibilities and sensitivities, their position as neutral arbiters, as peacemakers and guides. They can be fun; they can be wise; they can shake us up; they can love in a way that others do not.
The first step is to name them.