A matter of PRIDE
I am fortunate to have a name that the majority of my colleagues and neighbors can pronounce. Chris or Christine. Still, as a tag to my identity, it can be abused. I have sometimes received mail addressed to Mr. Chris Brazelton. Perhaps in an attempt to be polite or formal, someone felt it necessary to put me into a category by gender and got it wrong. Obviously, they don’t really know me. I laugh, but when it happens, I don’t feel seen or understood.
Names are personal, intimate even. They are one of the first labels we accept to identify us. Sometimes we don’t like or feel an attachment to the name and change it, shorten it, take on a new nickname, or even legally change our names to announce our new label to the world. We feel much better about ourselves and our relationship with others when they know us as we want to be known.
Who gets to decide our name, or any other of our labels for that matter? Our parents are required to give us a name, to establish us legally as a person in the world. Sometimes our parents are asked to determine other parts of our identity. Some children are born with a rare condition in which an infant’s external genitals don’t appear to be clearly either male or female and doctors often ask the parents to decide whether surgery should be performed to remove tissue so that the child would appear to be either male or female.
When researching the cause, I found geneticists believe to be due to unusual genes which change or alter the level of various hormones that, for most of us, result in the development of the genitals conforming to either male or female. When the developing fetus produces a different mix, it can result in a mixture of results.
Researchers now understand that hormones and other results of our genetic code can result in a child born with one gender’s external genitalia who may feel like the other gender, or a combination of genders. Called Gender Dysphoria, this can cause a great deal of distress when they don’t feel connected to their assigned gender.
When many of us or born as one gender, complete with the obvious physical features and not so obvious internal cocktail of hormones as we develop, we are raised within our culture with certain roles and expectations. We know who we are in that sense. We don’t choose, and no one asks our parents or others to choose for us. It is hard for many of us to understand how it could be otherwise. We assume that if someone is experiencing other feelings it must be a choice. I have to ask myself, why would someone choose to be at odds with who they are and how they experience the world?
For those born with a different mix of hormones resulting in less clarity, do we add to their discomfort, their misery even, by shunning them, casting them out of society, asking them to hide in shame?
Some Native-American cultures called these members of their community Two-Spirit People. They often filled special roles as healers, shamans and ceremonial leaders.
How ever we understand them, they are here. They are real. They are among us. They are who they were born to be. I believe we are all as God made us. I don’t think God wants us to condemn them or take actions to make them miserable. They have a difficult journey, and my upbringing in the Christian faith tells me I must love my neighbor as I want to be loved. To treat others as I want to be treated. And in a free society, at least one that claims to hold freedom dear, what is more fundamental to freedom than to be who you are?
