What’s Your Paint Color?

Many years ago, I delivered a sermon likening humans to pixels on a screen. I explained that we all need to do our own thing independent of those around us or the picture doesn’t look right, and if we’re all the same color, it’s nothing worth looking at. It’s also very obvious when one of us stops shining their light—that single black pixel gets your attention all. the. time.

But my kiddo’s journey to find and express their gender and sexuality took me a step further into my color analogy. When my kiddo first began talking to us about it, they describes themself as a demi-girl and explained that while part of them felt female, part of them felt non-gendered. At that time, they indicated that she/her or they/them pronouns were acceptable. Over time, their understanding about themselves developed, and they advised that they/them were their correct pronouns.

In the process of being educated about all the different types of gender expression and learning to identify some of the various flags, I found myself getting really loud inside my head. Why are folks slicing these distinctions so thin? Why are there so many different terms? My first thought after having these questions was: dang. I’m a shitty ally. My next thought was: way to make it about you. After taking some deep breaths and granting myself some grace, I asked myself why this bothered me. What followed was a beautiful moment of clarity in which, instead of receiving an answer, I received a new way to look at things. And it’s been such a helpful tool both for me and others I’ve shared it with, I want to share it with you.

Have you ever painted a room? Or picked out a color for your wedding? Or for a dress? Have you and your friends ever fought over the correct description of a color? I love the huge boxes of crayons and could wax poetic on the variations between periwinkle and cornflower. I remember my bridesmaid dresses were Royple—a royal blue/purple mix. There are a quadrillion different colors, each with barely perceptible differences. This one a bit more white, that one more grey, this one a shade pinker, that one more green.

One of my high school friends and I were obsessed with the color mint green (making a comeback these days. Woot!) We would wander through the store and discuss whether any given shirt was too blue or too green to be “officially” mint green. We knew what the color we loved was, and we knew when what we saw wasn’t it.

And no one I know has ever begrudged a person who is looking at paint chips but just hasn’t found that exact shade of whatever that their room needs. It might be frustrating because we don’t see the difference they see, but I don’t know anyone who has ever said that the difference isn’t there, or that someone should just settle settle for “close enough.” Colors are powerful and painting our rooms and homes in specific ways matters. We can all identify with that.

Here’s the thing: gender identity is a spectrum, just like color. Folks are making fine slices and creating new names and categories because they are looking for their “color” descriptor. And if I’m not going to begrudge someone trying to find the right color for their home or clothes or car or painting, I’m sure as heck not going to stop them from finding the right “shade” to describe who they know themselves to be.

Once I realized this, it became so easy to support not just my kiddo but everyone as they figure out who they are and how they want to be identified. And not just in terms of gender expression or sexuality. The truth is, we choose how we define ourselves in so many different ways everyday. Maybe it’s your given name, a nickname, or your middle name. Maybe you request a name change altogether. How about your profession? Do you like lawyer or attorney? Is “professor” good enough or does it need to be “doctor”? Dishwasher or underwater ceramics specialist? How about all the different names for grandparents? Are you Grandma? Nana? Gigi? You’re in a relationship. Are you a spouse? Partner? Boy/girlfriend? Date? Hookup?

Words matter. How we see ourselves, how we define ourselves, how we label ourselves matters. And having others acknowledge and accept those chosen definitions matters.

So pick your color and live it. Now, maybe you’re just blue. Any blue is fine. That’s awesome. I will honor your blue-ness. I just ask that you honor that I am not merely green, but mint green. And maybe we don’t agree on what mint green is, exactly. That’s okay. I don’t need you to be able to recognize mint green, or even see the difference between mint green and light green; just acknowledge that I do. That’s all anyone wants. Not perfection, but to be seen, recognized, and loved for who they are and how they see themselves. In this great big glorious world, I can think of nothing more beautiful I want to see.

In Response to JK Rowling

JK Rowling has taken a stance for quite some time that trans women are not real women. I have always disagreed with her on this point, and continue to do so. To say they are not women is to erase them them, and that is completely unacceptable. Trans women are women. Full stop. In addition, when called out and accurately labeled a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), Rowling doubled down and proclaimed that “it isn’t hate to speak the truth.” With all due respect to Rowling’s talent in other areas and her entitlement to her own opinion, what she stated isn’t fact—it’s opinion. Just as generations of people have spewed hate as fact (blacks are dumber, gays can’t parent, men are stronger and smarter), she too now seeks to weaponize her opinion by claiming it as truth and then hiding behind that label as a shield. And her claim that this is not hate is not only wrong, but seeks to minimize and, indeed, erase the entire issue; preventing any discussion at all. It is the equivalent of saying “can’t we all get along” or “all lives matter.” This is disingenuous and dangerous.

That said, after reading three of her recent tweets, I found myself struggling because I agreed with one of her smaller tenets: how can we say sex doesn’t exist when we talk about sex discrimination and same-sex marriage and the like? Through discussion, I have found an understanding that I believe addresses her concerns within the context of our current understanding of gender (and similarly race and sexuality).

Historically, we have viewed the world as a series of binaries.: male/female; black/white; gay/straight. These binaries were intended to create a hierarchy for society and define preferential traits, which allowed for significant violence and discrimination to occur by men against women, whites against blacks, and straights against gays. The problem is that these binaries do not accurately describe our world. Gender, race/color, and sexual identity are more fluid and a continuum. Thus, bi-racial people, bi-sexual people, and trans-people have always experienced violence and abuse at the hands of both ends of the “binary” for failing to “pick a side”: But are you black? You’re either gay or straight. Are you a woman who like to dress like a man, or do you think you’re a man?

Our new understanding of the fluidity/continuum of gender, race, and sexual identity prevents classifying people into 1 of 2 (or any other number of) clearly defined categories. But it does not erase the historical facts of violence, abuse, and discrimination caused by our previous use of binary systems, nor does it erase the current repercussions of those systems.

To Rowling’s point that sex must exist or her lived experiences are erased, the lived experiences of women, gays, and blacks are not erased by recognizing that the binary system we ascribed to was wrong. That understanding created issues that are still causing ripples today. So we can talk about the harms and discrimination caused by the previous understanding of sex, race, and gender identity as binary without there actually being something finite and discrete as “male” or “female”, “black or white” or “gay” or “straight” into which everyone must be placed.

As a final thought, I want to address her statement that there can be no “same-sex marriage.” I tend to agree, but only because there has never historically really been only “opposite sex marriage.” Our binary system was built on the illusion that there were only two biological sexes, expressed as XX and XY, when, in fact, we have known for a long time that XXY, XYY, and various other inter-sex genetic combinations exist. We maintained the illusion of opposite-sex marriage, but in truth a trans woman (genetically XY) could legally marry a cis-gendered woman (genetically XX) because they had differing genetic codes And yet, to anyone on the street, they might well have appeared to be a legally married lesbian couple. Thus, even our previous binary system never fully prevented “same-sex” marriage. Fortunately, when we finally opened up marriage to everyone, we removed all gender classifications. Thus, the result was not the creation of two kinds of marriage: opposite-sex and same-sex. Rather, we simply opened up the legal institution of marriage to everyone, and no longer have to consider the parties’ genetic code or genitalia before issuing them a marriage license.