A Few Questions

"Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men." Assuming for a moment that "men" is nowadays a gender-neutral generic (genderic?) term, is that sentiment attainable? What if they let all us in-between folks, us tainted ones ("'tain't a man, `tain't a woman") just BE? What if human rights came to be the overriding concern of governments and especially individuals? What would happen? Immediately, not much I think. We all (and I mean "we" in its biggest sense: humanity) still carry around too much societal and personal guilt to make much difference. Sure, you'd probably see more of folks like us out and about, but not much would happen. Look how much progress we haven't made since the notion of racial and sexual equality came to the fore. ("We haven't come far enough, and we're not babies!" "Black may be beautiful, but it's still poor.")

One of my initial thoughts on this was that it wouldn't happen because of public toilets. I was thinking of the expense of building a third facility (for "Other") everywhere, but then I hit upon a much cheaper solution: just replace the "Men" and "Women" signs with one sign that read "Human" or "Folks" or something equally inclusive. That would also help to reinforce the notion that we're all the same under the skin. But I really don't think it would make a lot of difference. There are unisex toilets all over the world already and that fact hasn't advanced our cause particularly.

So, is the root of the problem then in divorcing gender from body and putting it back in the mind where it belongs? Taking it from between our legs and putting it between our ears? I think that may be closer to an answer than single-sex potties. What if we didn't tell our kids that they were masculine or feminine? They are going to notice their genitals VERY early and know if they're a boy or a girl, but what if we just let them decide their gender when they got old enough to do so? Which would probably occur before the age of 6. When asked, "What am I?", one possible answer might be "A human child." If we didn't make such a big deal about it, it's highly likely that our children wouldn't either.

There are societies, past and present, that seem to have no problems with transgendered individuals, but that hasn't advanced our cause particularly. Have you noticed that even in the "Star Trek" series, set in a future where poverty and hunger have been eliminated from the Earth, there are still no transgendered people? OK, they had one race of genderless aliens, but that's not the same thing. I'm not genderless - I definitely have a gender. It just doesn't happen to agree with some of my body's physical characteristics.

Will this ever happen? Will we ever all accept every other person as equally deserving of respect and love and consideration? The cynic in me yells out, "No way! Human beings have too many hang-ups to ever totally accept someone as different as you." But the romantic in me remembers a little girl. Several months ago, I was out skating during my lunch break. In addition to my inline skates and wrist guards, I had on shorts, a t-shirt, sunglasses and a cap. I was hot and sweaty and waiting in line at a water fountain in the park with a group of 8 or 9 year olds. There was a young girl that age in front of me, and she kept sneaking glances at me while we waited. After getting her drink of water, before I could roll up to the water fountain after her, she stopped and looked me square in the eyes and asked forthrightly, "Are you a boy or a girl?" I looked right back at her, smiled and said, "Yes." She took about half a second to let that sink in and then smiled real big in return and said, "Cool!" before she ran off to join her friends. There may be hope for us all yet.