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Understanding Fixed Mindsets
One problem is that many people who refuse to allow trans people to define themselves according to their reality is that they feel that their own self-definition is destabilized. They think, oh, I’m assigned female at birth and that’s why I’m a woman and this is the way it should be. This is the natural way of the world or this is the universal way of the world. And when I say I’m a woman, I’m saying I participate in this natural category or this concrete reality that’s unchangeable. They want that sense of who they are, that sense of their gender to be immovable, to be fixed in place, and to be fixed by law or by culture or nature or God.
They don’t like the idea that it could be potentially destabilized or that it could have been a different way, that they themselves could have gone a different way, that other people are going a different way. There’s an instability in that that’s very frightening to people who want to understand their genders as fixed but also as necessary and as belonging to a kind of hierarchy. Men are one way. Women are another. The hierarchy between them is necessary. There’s a patriarchal frame in which this all makes sense. We all have our natural functions. We’re all living according to preordained rules. The idea that we can change reality, transform reality to be more open, inclusive, just is an assault on their sense of order.
Embracing Growth Mindsets
In my view, everybody has a theory of gender. And what I mean by that is that everybody has certain assumptions going about what gender is or should be. And at a certain point in life, we ask ourselves, wow, where’d that assumption come from? We never chose to have those assumptions. Those assumptions came and got me. They’re in me, they’re part of my cultural formation, and I just walk around with them thinking that’s the way life is. So there are different moments in our lives. We might meet somebody or we might be troubled by something in ourselves where we ask ourselves are my assumptions about gender right? Am I narrow-minded, or am I making assumptions about other people that are not fair? None of us really like other people to make a whole lot of assumptions about who we are. We like to be asked.
Most of us have questions about gender that we don’t ask out loud or we don’t even know can be asked. And yet if we do some reading, sometimes biographies are great or autobiographies are great, memoirs are great, documentaries can be great, even to watch some television that calls that into question. We have a chance to reflect through other people’s lives and sometimes through imaginary characters what the various possibilities of human life can be. Whether it’s a gendered existence or a sexual existence that we haven’t thought about for ourselves or that maybe is not right for us but it’s clearly right for somebody else. And that helps us have, I think, a broader way of understanding other people and prepares us to approach other people with questions. You know, the who are you rather than the assumption, oh I know who you are.
Learning Through Mistakes
Many people say to me, my child now wants to be referred to as “he” or my friend wants to be referred to as “they,” and I’m sorry, but I’ve lived with this person my whole life and they’ve always been this other pronoun and now I’m supposed to suddenly change? And there’s a sense of exasperation, especially if it’s your own child, and this child you’ve known for 14 years, for 16, 18, 25 years, comes to you and says I am now this name and this pronoun and I would ask that you refer to me by them.
Now, some parents really do object and say, well this is too hard and this is asking too much of me. And then others try, but they stumble, and they worry that they’ll never get it right. And people stumble and err with me because at a certain point I thought, well, I am a “they.” But if somebody doesn’t know that or misgenders me, I don’t yell at them. I simply tell them or I let it go depending on the person.
But I think errancy is okay, especially when we’re learning something new. Stumbling is part of learning, and making an error is part of learning. We will all err, we will all make that mistake, and we will make it for a while until we stop making it. As long as we stay on track.
One woman said to me, my daughter wants to be a “he,” but I struggled so many years for women’s rights and it really pains me to see that this kid no longer wants to be a “she,” but wants to be a “he.” I must have failed. And I said, no, it’s your feminist narrative is not the same as this kid’s narrative about his life. And you have to be able to listen if you want to stay connected with your kid.
Because if a young person comes to an older person and says I ask that you recognize me for the gender that I am, you have two choices. You could say no, or you could say yes. And if you say yes, that means you agree to go through a process that will take some time of getting used to that name, but also asking some questions so you understand why and how that person came to that conclusion. And you have a deeper sense of who that person is, and that’s especially true if that’s your child, if that’s somebody you care for and in whose life you want to remain.
So there’s a difficult process of learning and listening — errancy is part of it. But agreeing to be part of that journey, including erring along the way, is the gift that we can give to another who is asking for recognition.