30 Days of Truth's Surprising Day 18

I haven't gotten into the 30 Days of Truth Challenge, but when they started popping up, I had to check them out. I looked up the complete list, saw Day 18, and got nervous. "What are your thoughts on gay marriage?" Goodness, what will be unleashed on the blogosphere with that question? Let me explain why this is not totally paranoid:

1) I also blog for Tikkun Daily, where an out, married-to-a-lady lesbian recently wrote something related to gay marriage and her religion (as in, her religion supports it). A commenter asked, totally serious, why she wasn't seriously considering whether or not this perversion was wrong.

2) At San Francisco Pride this year, protesters came with signs encouraging us to repent. On the plus side, there is a hilarious picture of my friend Hunter giving a extremely lecherous grin and thumbs-up below a sign saying, "Jesus is Lord, SERVE HIM!" (I must add that Hunter is a very sincere, ethical, religion major, somebody who genuinely does love Jesus. Which just makes the leer all the weirder)

3) A really awesome friend of mine, someone is smart and cool and creative and sweet and strong, happens to be a transwoman. (For the unfamiliar, she was assigned "male" at birth but identifies and lives as a woman). Just this week--at a queer event no less--a total stranger came up to her and started asking about her gender. Total. Stranger. I doubt the person meant harm, but here's the thing: she's an interesting, complex person, and there are a billion questions worth asking her, but over and over, people look at her and just want to know about her gender, about the trans thing, like that's all there is to her. She gets exhausted by how frequently this happens. It's heartbreakingly frustrating to see someone that anyone would be lucky to know reduced to exactly one part of her identity.

Tangent: Okay, maybe you do this because you aren't familiar with trans people, and you're curious, but seriously, stop. Here's a guide when you're freaking out because you can't in fit someone into the gender categories you have in your mind's eye. 1) Treat this person as a person. A person. Not a gender, not your confusion about that gender. Stop trying to assign a category for a minute and remember this is a human being. Act accordingly. 2) Check up why you feel the need to figure out the category so badly. Why does it matter to you what gender somebody is or what gender they were assigned at birth? 3) If you're not sure and for some reason really need to figure out what pronoun they use--because you're talking to them, not because you're on a bus and feeling curious--say POLITELY, "Excuse me, but what pronoun do you use?" Don't ask anything else. If they want to talk about gender, listen and have a conversation. Otherwise, leave it. You do not need ask somebody you don't know if they're transgender or anything else about their gender, just like you don't need to go up to a person in a wheelchair and ask their medical history (something that has happened to another woman I know) or walk up to a stranger and ask about their racial or ethnic identity (something that has happened to me, and to about half of my family, a gazallion times). IT'S INVASIVE TO DEMAND STRANGERS EXPLAIN THEIR IDENTITIES TO YOU. It's nice to say hello and treat people as people.

Tangent now resolved, perhaps it makes sense why I get nervous about gender issues. I mean, if this stuff happens in real life and the internet is full of stuff people wouldn't dare say to someone's face, well, maybe I'm too tender-hearted to read Day 18.

But I'm a stubborn one, so I looked it up. I noticed no one here has done Day 18 yet (and somebody skipped it!), but a quick search yielded some off-site results. All of them were mild and in the vein of, "Yes, of course I support gay marriage." Nary an offensive comment in sight. Hell, nary an objection in sight.

I'm encouraged, but cautious. Have we evolved to the point that we all genuinely believe that love and commitment are more important than gender? Or is it just the acceptable thing to say in public? Are people saying these nice things but looking at a transwoman and seeing nothing but a giant question mark? Are we still criticizing celebs (and ordinary mothers of little kids) who don't dress their children in fluffy pink skirts or overalls covered in tiny footballs, because it makes it hard to tell if the kid's a boy or a girl? (Remember that wackness about Angelina Jolie dressing her toddler "like a boy" because the little girl had a pixie cut and pants?) If gender isn't determining who gets to marry whom, why does conforming to it determine whether or not somebody gets treated like a human being?

If we're willing to acknowledge that falling in love could happen all over gender lines, then why can't we acknowledge that life happens all over gender lines too? It's hard to figure out who you are, and most of the time that doesn't fit perfectly into who we were raised to be, so why not show some respect for people who are figuring that out?