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About five years ago, I was in a psychology class at a local university. I was the oldest student in the room then at 55. We had a guest speaker who was one of the most intelligent, courageous, articulate, enlightened individuals I have ever encountered. Her name was Sarah.
Sarah was my age and she was a transgender woman. I use the past tense because I have never seen nor spoken with her since though I have often shared some of the things she taught me.
Sarah taught me one fundamental truth that seems obvious in retrospect but seemed revolutionary to me at the time. She said there are three distinct aspects of human beings that often get conflated. These three aspects are sex (our physical biological plumbing), gender (the continuum ranging from the feminine to the masculine) and sexuality which is who we are sexually attracted to and which may vary from no sexual attraction (asexual) to same-sex attraction, opposite sex attraction and both sex attraction.
Every human being has a different construct of the combination of these three factors. It’s easy to look at your own body and see your sex. Unless of course you are like Sarah and your body doesn’t reflect the sex you identify with. Sarah did have the sex change surgery long before I met her and she was quite pleased with the results. This physical plumbing is important to most of us in that it contributes to our identities, that understanding of who we are and how we want to be perceived by the world.
The second factor Sarah spoke of is gender, that feminine / masculine thing, and that is where I am the most grateful for her wisdom. Sarah taught me that maleness and masculinity actually have little to do with each other. Nor is the feminine the domain of females. Rather both genders are equally available to both sexes except as constrained by the cultures in which they live.
If this is true, and I believe it is, then our culture is stealing part of our human birthright by suggesting that as men we are not allowed to play on the feminine end of the spectrum. We must be masculine in order to be accepted. The only place for the feminine in men is if a man is gay. This is just so obviously wrong, false, and unreasonably limiting, I can’t imagine we haven’t rebelled against it sooner. Thank God we straight men have our gay brothers to lead the way in breaking down these detestable barriers.
And then there is the denial of the masculine in women. No one needs testicles to manifest masculinity. We all know women that show up with powerful masculine energy and this has absolutely nothing to do with their sexuality. And too often they pay dearly for it by being called dykes, ball busters, or worse. Again we are conflating sex with gender. Vaginas and penises are not determinates for the masculine and feminine. The sooner we learn what Sarah understood so clearly, the sooner we can move on to a culture of appreciation for who a person is as an all inclusive being with a sex, an ever-shifting gender and a sexual orientation that is not dependent on anything other than what turns us on.
Thank you, Sarah.
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