At Play in the Land of Identity

My essay, “Our National Conversation About Gender is One Big Miscommunication,” was published in The Philadelphia Inquirer a few weeks ago. I was fortunate enough to work on it with Commentary and Opinion Editor, Devi Lockwood. I am always grateful when my work goes through the fine-tuning filter of professional editors. I was quite happy with that piece when I submitted it. It says a lot more than pretty much anyone else has said on gender and identity in a long time (check it out if you don’t believe me). However, I wonder if people fully understood that I was pointing my finger at all of us and our growing collective inability to communicate in this nutso country, not just those who have demonstrated political and kneejerk prejudices about transgender culture.

I was surprised that real flame throwing attacks didn’t come my way in social media or my email, given all the emotionalism and vitriole created by right wing politicians and their minions around the country. An interesting aspect in the criticisms I did receive were how gentle and overtly academic commenters were in their disagreements with gender transitioning or in pointing out implications they saw from my idea that no owns the rules that define gender.

Readers of all stripes jumped right to the question of transitioning. I was not writing simply about transgender and transitioning issues. That was made pretty clear in the opening paragraph of the essay. Our sense of how males and females should behave and the rules each basic biological category is supposed to follow are obviously constantly called into question here in the 21st century. We certainly challenged them in the latter half of the 20th century. I have challenged those rules my whole life. We need more very clear public commentary pieces on sex roles and gender in America to remind everyone that defining who we are is a unique, creative decision each person makes.

I worked on versions of my specific commentary for months before I submitted it to the Inquirer. It is connected to my novel, Old Music for New People. But I’ve been thinking about gender and culture since the spring of 1978 when I took Developmental Psychology in college. My senior thesis at Reed College two years later was titled, Mothers In-Law and Big Men: an examination of sex role differentiation in Tiwi Society. While I did a poor job of it in that exercise (more than 40 years ago), the message (my thesis statement) was that gender distinctions and roles in society are never what they seem. Individuals are always out in front of the basic binary stereotypes social systems pretend to require of its members. I’m convinced now more than ever that we are missing the boat in general to having a more open and thoughtful discussion about gender differentiation, roles, identity, etc. specifically because we’re so tangled up in the particular idea cluster of gender transitioning. There’s so much more beauty in self-definition and the empowered and creative aspect of defining who we are as individuals in this world.

I don’t say this in my thesis or even imply it (because what 22-year-old is actually that competent?), but it seems to me now, decades later, that every society’s enforced stereotypes related to gender are fundamental protective mechanisms against individual creativity and empowerment. And yet, such protective mechanisms are the provence of no one. The actual protection system of rules is based on the need to maintain the charade that there are in fact immutable standards that everyone is required to follow…

… which will always be a problem in the United States of America. Right?

Anytime people attempt to redefine basic aspects of life by offering new ways of talking about those aspects, it’s a clear sign there’s a serious problem people are having with what is expected of them in their culture. Terms like “the gender binary” and “cis gender” and “gender fluid” get thrown around in all sorts of ways that show how important this issue is to young people these days. But we’ve all been a part of the fundamental miscommunication about gender for far too long. My Inquirer essay tried to stay away from most of the explicit jargon and predictable moralizing popular in media and politics today. I wanted to give readers the opportunity to think for themselves in an unloaded way.

We have an opening right now with young men in America to help them embrace being more vulnerable and connected to their emotions. We also have an opening for young women to be more assertive and defining of what they want out of their public lives in open and positive ways. The so-called “gender binary” has always been a fiction and it has sadly limited people in their attempts to define who they are to the world. It’s also made it exceedingly hard for people to talk about gender identity on all sorts of levels and to work out who they are going to be every day. I’d like to see more creative and thoughtful discussions happening in schools and churches and workplaces everywhere not about bathrooms and pronouns, but about how boys and men can be more open about themselves and how girls and women can understand how important their opinions are about the world.

It would also be incredibly helpful for all of us to stop worrying so much about how we think other people see us. That’s easy for a 65-year-old novelist to say who happens to be 40 pounds overweight, losing his hair, and struggling with arthritis and stenosis every morning. But it sure would be a better world if people didn’t have to wait until they’re on the downhill side of life to grapple with reality.

Be who you are and help others feel that way about themselves as well.

Read my commentary in The Philadelphia Inquirer here : https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/book-bans-lgbtq-gender-identity-trans-20230822.html [a modified version is posted here on this website as well]