Friday Mood: Who are you two?
Really cool clothes are designed for kids. Of course, they don’t make them in my size. Sometimes clothes are not tailored for you; they’re simply something you’re not supposed to buy…
I was in the M&Ms store at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota recently, after another Covid-19 Booster shot. In the window display of the store, a very cool T-shirt with twisting rainbows. It was awesome; I wanted it.
I walked into the store the “welcome man” greeted me. I pointed to the cool shirt in the window and asked where I could find it. His response took my breath away.
I stepped back. Halitosis overwhelmed: broccoli-left-far-too-long-in-the-fridge mixed with something else: “Rotting Flesh?” I thought. “Vomit?” What is that? I know Jeffrey Dahmer is trending by my God, what did this man eat?
After olfactory stopped panicking, I remembered what he said... “This shirt is only for females.” He really pushed out the “F” sound in female: too much wind; sent me scurrying out of the store.
And then I thought about it. Why only for females? That’s so odd. Why didn’t I simply buy it? I should have. Strange that I stopped. But hey, I stop many things when I can’t inhale.
My mind roamed over the tread-ever-so-lightly topic of gender. Yes, I am not a female, but the T-shirt looked unisex. So, what? And if I wanted to buy it, why did Drano, Dragon Dung man stop me? He should have encouraged me to buy it regardless of my gender. Capitalism, right? Sales, right?
As if on cue, a transgender couple walked in front of me, and entered the M&M store. They were an interesting couple, morphed arm-in-arm they went, interconnected in their “indecipherableness.” Pleasant people out shopping. What would M&M greeter say if they’d asked him the same question I’d asked…
My mind drifted to Laverne Cox, Christine Jorgensen, Marsha P. Johnson, and many more who put their real selves in the world.
To me, Transgender people are symbols of freedom, and they have a prominent letter “T” in the LGBT acronym. There are many letters after “T” in LGBT, but God, I simply can’t keep up. I wish all the letters of the alphabet a very happy life.
There is a difference between people who are Cisgender (that’s a word I recently learned which basically means people who identify with the gender they are born with) and those who are Transgender. The difference, I think, is Cisgender people don’t spend too much time thinking about their gender identity as a thing; transgender people, on the other hand, probably spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. Questioning one’s gender must take up a lot of headspace. Cause let’s face it; gender identity plays a big role in life. “Please sign the form with your gender (M/F).” How daunting if you don’t want to be assigned. Or if you hate the letter “M" or “F”.
My neighbor related a story about how his friend married a woman who brought to the marriage a transgender child, from a previous marriage. He casually says the wrong gender pronoun about the child, from time to time, and is excoriated for it. He feels bad about it, but he’s trying.
“It’s real hard for him” my neighbor says. “It’s hard for all of us…”
There are many out there who find different-gendered people a threat to society; a representation of a world changing too fast, morals and a ‘common ground’ changing to a point they don’t recognize the world anymore. “Why can’t people just be how they’re born?” My colleague has a child coming to terms with gender. My colleague confided in me fears of parents in this situation and told me he’d met people with very different views, all leading to his confusion and angst.
“On one side you have a group of people who are fierce and vigilant, but incredibly off-putting. ‘You must call me by my correct name and my correct pronoun and only use language I approve of if you’d like to speak to me, etc.’ And on the other side you have ignoramuses who don’t care about the rainbow of gender identities and simply want to pigeonhole people into binary roles. It can be maddening…and exhausting.”
So deep, so encompassing. Gender. And 1000% polarizing. Sad to see politicians use transgender people as fodder for fear machines. Why? Cause fear works, sadly.
Imagine a world where Karl becomes Kate with ease, and no one bats an eye. Where laws protect people from blatant discrimination because they simply can’t “place them” due to non-binary bigotry. Haters gonna hate, so instead of creating a non-binary bathrooms, create one for Haters and one for Non-Haters.
I’m selfish. The more transgender people in the world, the less reluctance to sell clothes to those, like me, who simply want to buy something beautiful, regardless of M or F.
The picture here is around the corner from my house: a bunch of gas cans trying to be pumpkins. I think they are fabulous, whatever they want to be.