Often, their understanding of what's going on in our world couldn't be shallower. They may even refer to my child as transgender because they haven't grasped the difference between that and non-binary. To put it all too briefly: a transgender person has a specific gender identity different from the sex assigned them at birth; a non-binary person doesn't identify exclusively as male or female, but as both, neither, or some combination of the two. Acquaintances who do know the difference have said to me that it's still not clear to them what category my beloved drag queen fits into. (In fact, drag queens come with all kinds of gender identities.)
Since many people of good will remain uncertain and confused on issues like these, they don't raise their voices to protest such discrimination. To my mind, that hesitation holds the key to understanding the problem in a basic way " and also to reducing discrimination and violence, and so moving this society in a more just direction.
Reinforcing the Wall of Gender Separation
Why are many thoughtful, well-educated people so ready to lump drag queens, non-binary, and transgender people in a single rejectable category? I suspect it's much the same reason that leads to attacks on all three from the bigoted right and the same reason media stories often lump all three together: they all challenge the traditional division of humanity into two simple categories, male and female. They seem to blur that line or even dissolve it. Think of them, then, as gender-blenders. And because of that, they threaten our sense of social order, which, as King pointed out, may be more important than justice, even to many well-meaning people.
In my professional field as an academic, the study of religion, we have often explored how people create order in their lives by translating the world into sets of binary opposites with firm values attached: up is better than down; God is better than the devil; our God is better than their devil; we are better than them. Religion is often remarkably devoted to shoring up the boundary lines that keep those opposites apart.
These days, scholars are more likely to stress the ways that religion can actually help people blur and cross boundaries, because most of us grasp the danger of maintaining a separation between categories that naturally blur in the real world. Doing so is a first step down the slippery slope to creating ever more extreme hierarchies, which all too often end in injustice, oppression, and violence. The quest for order, in other words, has a way of transforming itself into a license to suppress or even ultimately eliminate "those people" on the other side of the line.
One recent analyst of the right-wing's hatred of gender-blenders, Nathan Robinson, explains that it comes from "a visceral distaste for that which is different." And behind that distaste lies "a devotion to traditional hierarchies." Trumpublicans hope, writes Amanda Marcotte, "that they can return men to some imaginary glory days when the line between the genders was thick and inflexible, and women's role was unquestionably that of subservience to men" If people start questioning what gender even means, then the whole right-wing system of power allocation begins to crumble."
To paraphrase Robert Frost, something there is about a bigot that does love a wall, whether it's between Mexico and the U.S. or men and women. How appropriate, then, that the legendary beginning of the gay rights movement in this country was a 1969 police raid on a gay bar named the Stonewall Inn. Consider it an irony, then, that there is now a growing acceptance of gays and lesbians, in part because they are seen as maintaining (or even reinforcing) the clear difference between male and female.
Despite the bill Florida Governor DeSantis passed " dubbed by its opponents the "Don't Say Gay" bill " the reactionary right-wing has largely lost the battle against gay and lesbian rights and is now turning to a more popular target: those who blur, or even dissolve, that gender boundary. And the bigots fight all the more fiercely because they're not just defending a particular boundary, but the very existence of social demarcation itself.
Today, the appropriate metaphor for it may not be a wall at all, but a dam. Martin Luther King put it aptly so long ago, indicting those "more devoted to 'order' than to justice" because order without justice is a "dangerously structured dam that blocks the flow of social progress." And a New York City politician proved King's point all too well recently. Condemning schools and libraries that bring in drag queens to read books to children, that Republican (after mouthing the usual, totally unfounded charge of "sexual grooming") revealed her deepest source of anger " that it's "a program teaching little children about their gender fluidity."
Fluids, of course, may dissolve whatever they touch, whatever kinds of boundaries we create to give us a sense of social order. If so, the satisfaction we get from believing those lines to be immutable will begin to dissolve, too. Hence, the fierce desire to attack "gender fluidity."
There surely is a big difference between the right-wingers who actively hate gender-blenders and the moderates or liberals who offer lukewarm acceptance and shallow understanding. The latter earn the title "people of good will" because they're not seized by the urge to maintain boundaries or strengthen hierarchies that give them power and control over others. They won't, in other words, actively demand unjust laws and policies.
But neither will they take a strong stand for justice, because those binary categories and boundaries still offer them a sense of order in their own lives. Somewhere, somehow, they want our fast-changing world to remain stable, simple, and familiar. As a result, they do share with the bigots, though obviously to a lesser degree, discomfort at seeing that classic boundary between male and female, which used to feel so immutable, disappear before their very eyes.
If we look in the mirror honestly enough, we're likely to recognize that all of us have some boundary lines that are truly important to us, even if it's only "us well-meaning liberals against those nasty Trumpsters." Each of us has our own bottom line, the place where the blurring of lines does indeed become disturbing or even intolerable.
For a lot of people, however unconsciously, the distinction between male and female may be the hardest one of all to surrender. No wonder, then, that even people of good will regularly offer only lukewarm acceptance and shallow understanding to their fellow Americans who are gender-blenders.
Tear Down the Dam, It's Good for Us All
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