I think gender and sexuality are hard to discuss. The first because it is everywhere. It is the expectations given to you at your birth. The second is a mystery to be unfolded later based on the understanding of the first. You are told and shown implicitly what to do with gender.
Sexuality is discovered through exposure. But gender? Ah gender, gender is clothing. Gender is armor. Gender is presentation, and culture. Gender is what you wear and how you act. It is how you navigate and understand the world through a lens of assumptions. And yet it is fig leaves, it is a sign of brokenness and a fallen world. To uncover gender is to be exposed in a different way.
It is awkward to talk about. Because gender roles can be a performance and talking about it feels as clunky as reading stage directions for your character motivations, and then discover you are working with different versions of scripts with your fellow actors. These are people with whom you've had relationships for years, and it is foreign and awkward to realize you may not be on the same page. And you can get notes in real time by people whose opinions you respect. You think the areas in which you didn't practice will be cast and filled by others who trained to play opposite you. To be complimented and augmented where you did not focus your preparation.
My understanding of gender can inform the choices I make. It can be comforting to have a binary not only in character traits, such as, I hold to this and therefore I reject this as my character. Identity is defined by limitations, being Romeo means not being Juilet. But society is flipping the script to Twelfth Night, and people are not sure how to feel about it when they had prepped for Romeo & Juilet being tragic and true. But R&J and 12th Night are both predicated on misinformation that the audience witnesses and that omnipotence could smooth out the difficulties of the plots.
I think gender is awkward to discuss because it is talking about what can be understood without discussion. And it is embarrassing to get "wrong", like you have been training for this role your whole life and yet others may disagree with the set of rules you have as ones they are not using?
It is inviting a HGTV show into your bedroom to critique how you function. And yeah, some aspects of your personality have been treated like it is a load bearing gender wall to everyone who shared your sex characteristic, it might be inconvenient to navigate, but hey, it is there for a reason? Otherwise the house might fall down around me. And it can be upsetting to be told by a professional: "Um no, that could have been taken out long ago. You could have been living in an open concept." But you have grown accustomed to the familiar boundary of that wall being there, and all that open space is terrifying to consider. Like. Where are the limits then? Where are the key foundational points to being me?
My awareness of how I view my experience of gender has led me to weigh what motivating factors I have to other areas of my identity. Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie's early collaborative graphic novel project "Rue Britainica" explored this question of rooted identity through the lens of British Indie Pop scene being a key element of a magical realism underworld. I liked this creative team and had wanted to explore their early work, but it took me reading it three times to really internalize some of that theme of identity and not letting things go, because the past version of you at a stage can anchor who you are, but also be a drag to growing over time and maturing alongside others.
When someone makes a major lifestyle shift, it is kinda like that scene in "Inside Out" where the pillar of an interest in hockey begins to crumble and the personified emotions freak out within their control center that things are falling apart. And it can feel like when people do a heavy renovation on their exterior of their house, repainting or reshaping it into a much different direction or facade. And that is what you will now have to adjust to witnessing in your day to day life. It affects your experience in navigating your familiar neighborhoods. It affects how you see the person. But if you had the trust built with that person to tour the inside of their house, their interior life might reveal more as to why they would make such a choice which would appear radical without some greater context or details. Renovations can become expensive, costly, and time consuming. People test pilot in miniature before making major decisions. And yet miniature versions do not catch the eye as much, and you have to be paying attention and be engaged in that person's life to see how certain designs have grace on a small scale that are exposed on a larger stage or project. And on that scale, a lot more eyes are on it to check if there are any imperfections for how it can be incorporated into the status quo surrounding that reenvisioning.
Sometimes people even put flags out to attract their people to have solidarity with an aspect of their life that they find important as a rallying point. Whether crosses or rainbows, significant dates in history or stars & stripes with lines colored in. And often those signals get intercepted by an audience who has a problem with how you present because their history with that symbol has triggered fight or flight. It might have nothing to do directly with you, but you are the lightning rod and they are seeking to be grounded in a foundational concept of identity.
But I also refer to 1 Corinthians 3 and 2 Corinthians 4-6. Additionally, I am pondering Matthew 15:1-28 on the difference between traditions and what God calls of me in my life to speak rightly and justly rather than evil and damnation. And the desperation and humility of those who hunger for redemption and healing even when they recognize that it is not naturally given to them as an inheritance. And Matthew 19 for how to address the tendency that the vulnerable are abandoned for the opportunity of the rich and educated to be leveraged for the Kingdom's purposes. Jesus challenges that through his care for the vulnerable and overlooked. Even in John 4 with the Woman at the well who was disgraced and alone, lacking community, support, acknowledgement as someone to be valued. Ephesians 5-6 calls us to conduct and to love as Christ does and that we are not to lose sight of our wrestling with things beyond this realm of flesh and blood.
