Our national conversation about gender identity is one big miscommunication

I had a friend in junior high whose father and uncle decided they’d had enough of his long hair (beautiful, silken, golden wheat-colored, cascading well below his shoulders). They trapped him in the bathroom one Sunday night, held him against a wall, and shaved his head down to the skull. He showed up on our school bus the next morning ashen-faced and despondent — altered from an astoundingly beautiful young prince of the world into someone who looked and probably felt like an escaped convict.

This was in 1972. I grew up in the Midwest, where it was common for strangers to menacingly say: “Boy, you better cut your hair. You look like a girl.”

We talk a great deal about America as an experiment in democracy. An equally important metaphor about this “land of the free”is our nonstop, somewhat confused conversation about identity, especially with teenagers. No matter what adults believe, the major lesson virtually all young people come to terms with eventually is that there is no such thing as one answer to questions about who they are.

Politicians gain power by pointing fingers of condemnation. But if you stand back and ponder how things have always been, people’s identities change numerous times in life (sometimes in the same day). The whole idea of living in this country is wrapped up in questions of self definition and personal liberty. And so, the crux in all of this crazy life we’re all leading has to be communication, understanding, and acceptance of one another. It’s what’s called getting along. At the risk of over-simplification, that’s basically the idea behind the Constitution of the United States of America. We’re doing a shit job right now, folks!

And unfortunately, our national conversation about gender identity has been an ongoing miscommunication for decades. We make some progress and then we get stupid and set ourselves back through all sorts of reactionary tactics–on all sides, I’m afraid.

Arguably the first set of human dualities each person learns as they’re growing up has to do with “appropriate” male and female behavior. Some of what people learn is pragmatic and functional; some is questionable and fundamentally counterproductive to becoming the human being people want to be.

Fundamental as it is, though, the discussion we have about gender in America may always be fraught because no one can answer the question: Who owns gender definitions?

Sadly, politics tends to render real communication nearly impossible. Passing laws to control people’s right to determine their own identities and banning books addressing the complexity of figuring out who we are? None of that helps with dialogue and understanding.

Sadly, politics tends to render real communication nearly impossible.

As a writer, and as someone connected to a number of families with members working to understand their gender identity, I am especially troubled by political attempts to control access to novels and stories about questioning gender assumptions. So many of our fellow citizens — even those in the media — forget or outright ignore that when someone is questioning their gender identity, it doesn’t just impact that individual as an island. Friends, family, neighbors, peers, coaches, teachers, coworkers, and teammates are also connected.

Those laws, then? That discrimination and hostility? Scores of people are impacted because others refuse to acknowledge or understand how complicated questions of personal identity are for all of us.

Whatever the intent of politicians, issues surrounding personal identity are never going to disappear. Both fiction and nonfiction stories offer perspectives that can help people think through the complexities of life, so banning them is counterproductive.

I think back to my friend who had his head shaved by his father and uncle. The 1970s may seem tame compared with now, but they were extremely volatile for all of us back then. Whether our father figures shaved our heads or maybe called their daughters derogatory names when they wore short skirts, there were all sorts of ways to disapprove of us. That disapproval didn’t achieve a thing except to push us further apart. And there weren’t nearly enough books to help us deal with that tension.

All of which returns me to that fraught question: Who owns gender definitions? There’s really only one correct answer: each one of us.

Originally published in The Philadelphia Inquirer (8–22–2023), this version has been modified and expanded slightly. For more, go to the previous post for more commentary.