Neither Pride Nor Shame Shall Stay This Courier from the Completion of Her Appointed Mission

Gender diversity is not a condition that needs to be medicated—nor celebrated

Photo by Jiroe (Matia Rengel) on Unsplash

Yesterday, I sent out an op-ed with a message that I think is integral to both a ceasefire in the gender culture war and to reforming what we teach about and how we treat gender: This is not a left/right issue. It’s about healthcare. It’s about science. It’s about truth. It shouldn’t be about politics.

Then I woke up this morning and realized: It’ll never get through during pride month.

But why shouldn’t it? Part of my general argument is that gender diversity—that is, males and females with both traditionally or stereotypically masculine and feminine traits—is natural and seems to appear in almost every culture. The question is how those cultures make sense of it. Do they shame it, and force gender-diverse people into the shadows? Do they celebrate it, separate it, divide it into a marketing demographic that corporations cater to?

Or do they name it, accept it, and move on?

From researching the science, psychology and history of gender nonconforming girls for my last book, I learned that “psychological androgyny” was related to creativity (hello, Annie Lennox, David Bowie and Boy George!). I learned that “tomboys” tended to do better in school and in the job market. There were a lot of advantages to melding personality traits we’ve marked in this culture as masculine and feminine, to not cutting yourself off to activities or items or people or ways of being in the world because of your sex.

I also learned that gender dysphoria is largely a western condition.

What if we found gender diversity unremarkable? What if we accepted the reality of biological sex and allowed the categories of male and female to include feminine and masculine people, respectively? What if we didn’t feel so much shame about gender and sexuality that we needed to counteract it with pride?

This morning, I found myself googling “Why is pride a sin?” “Pride is self-devotion, self-justification, and self-glorying in contempt of God,” the internet told me. I understand why people once forced to hide themselves, who felt soaked in shame, would relish the opportunity to march into the light with pride. But I want to get to a place where neither pride nor shame is attached to gender or sexuality, where neither self-justification nor self-glorying are necessary. My ultimate goal in talking about all this stuff is to get to a place where we don’t have to talk much about it.

I see the reckoning going on in Europe. I see a few Democrats crossing the aisle. I see the slow awakening—too slow, too sloth-like, I’m impatient—to the realization that maybe kids struggling with gender issues don’t all benefit from radical psychological and medical interventions. Perhaps some of them need to know that struggling is deeply human, and that it’s okay to be in pain, to be confused, to be different, to feel uncomfortable—in your body, in the world. That, too, is natural.

Perhaps they need to learn to identify when they’re struggling, to say, “This is a moment of suffering,” and surrender the need to fix it. To sit with it for a while and wonder at it, worry it between their fingers until it takes a clearer shape. Who knows what shape that suffering will take, what revelations it will lead to? Hopefully, if we have enough cultural acceptance, and self-acceptance, we can move away from pride and shame, and think more about making a better, fairer world.