And You Don't Have to Change a Thing

The world could change its heart...

In 2019 on a beautiful October Saturday morning, I pulled up to a local volunteer fire department. All the trucks were out of the bays, firefighters were showing kids how the equipment worked, and other kids with big grins on their faces sat behind the steering wheels of the fire engines, high off the ground. Behind the doors of the open bays, tables had been set up, and firefighters and their significant others were serving up pancakes, eggs, sausage, juice, coffee, and milk to a line of patiently waiting community members. Behind the tables and at the back of one of the bays, the local Kiwanis group was cooking.  At one end of the tables was a spiffy clean fireman’s boot, and we all slipped donations into it as we passed.

Most small-town fire departments are volunteer, with insufficient funding, so they hold yearly fundraisers to buy equipment. The fundraisers also give the community a chance to tell the firefighters thanks for all they do to help keep us safe.

I dropped some cash into the boot, grabbed my plate of food and a cup of coffee, and sat down with some friends.

I spotted a pretty young woman at the next table. Maybe in her late 20’s or early 30’s. She had a perfect smile, beautiful long black hair, and alabaster skin. Her laugh was a delight. She was eating, and as she moved a forkful of pancakes to her mouth, I noticed the dark hair on her arms. 

“Bet that girl wishes she didn’t have that dark hair on her arms,” I thought to myself, instantly regretting it, almost slapping myself on the forehead. “You are a terrible person, Bob,” I thought. How could I possibly be so judgmental? 

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After breakfast, I got into my old truck and had time to think about it on the hour-long drive to West Des Moines. I was a band parent at the time, and the band and we music boosters were on our way to the annual Valleyfest marching band competition. I followed the school bus hauling kids from Knoxville High through Pleasantville, Carlisle and we looped around on Highway 5 to the remarkable Valley High facility.

The country mice had come to town.

On the drive, I guiltily pondered why I had so quickly made a judgment about the young woman’s looks. It didn’t take me long to realize that I made that judgment because I had been taught to do so, to see human biology as binary and that our culture tells us we need to sort people into one or the other group, male or female.

We wear binary “goggles” to see the world. Anything that doesn’t neatly fit in is, by definition, some kind of an aberration.

We are taught that men have “hairy arms” and women don’t because, for the most part, it’s an accurate generalization. But that’s just it--a generalization--as relative “hairiness,” and other biological characteristics actually fall along a continuum. While there are biological secondary sexual characteristics that we generally attribute to males and females, what is determined to be “biological” also has its cultural components.

We know people are born with ambiguous genitalia. We have known for millennia. I see estimates of between one in 1,000 to 4,500 births and 1-2 people in 100 births. 

“Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD.”

Hormones, genetics, and brain chemistry also play a role in the development of sexual differentiation, gender identity, and human sexuality. The idea of two sexes is too simplistic. None of this is binary; it’s all a continuum.

We have friends with an intersex child who is about five years old, and that child is loved and honored as much as any other child in the community. She identifies as “she,” and those who don’t know the family wouldn’t know that it’s more complex.

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There were hundreds of parents and family members at the stadium, along with the kids. One spends a lot of time waiting if you are a band parent, and so I decided to try an experiment. I wondered if it were possible to make my brain not “see” in a binary fashion as I had at the pancake breakfast and to take the binary goggles off.

Suspend your disbelief. I tried it, and my world turned upside down. I’ll never see humanity the same way again. I saw the continuum that our culture tries to deny. It was like magic and nearly instantaneous once I told my brain to work in a different way. Sure, there were classically beautiful women and stunningly handsome men who were works of art. But it was all a continuum between those extremes when I took the binary goggles off. I know you doubt me. Try it. Use your own experience to understand. I suggest you don’t try it with a small group of people. Go to the mall or a big box store and try it.

Without the binary goggles, traditional standards of attractiveness along gendered lines become irrelevant. Where it actually led me to was amazing. Believe it or not, I saw beauty in everyone without the binary goggles on. I saw and appreciated the different shapes and sizes, all as beautiful as the multi-colored and differently shaped cobbles in a clear mountain stream. I didn’t assign “value” to tall and short anymore or fat and thin. Or any other dimension of humanity. There was no judgment because I had cast aside our norms. And because I abandoned that cruel standard of measurement, everyone was beautiful. 

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks how tragic of a world the binary goggles create. Small, gracile “men” are seen as effeminate and judged negatively. Tall, large-featured “women” are seen as manly and unattractive. Some of us live our whole lives being seen as inadequate and unattractive given binary standards. Because of this, many of us, and many readers of this piece, have been judged, teased, bullied, and even condemned for where we are on the binary continuum. The mental health consequences are enormous. And this has been going on for millennia and has NOTHING to do with who we really are. This may be the greatest tragedy of all human existence.

Cast off the goggles. See the beauty. Part of the beauty is letting people determine who they are. Honor them by honoring their pronouns.

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Let’s advance to December 2019. A woman stood up and was handed a microphone. Her question to presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg was, “I’m a middle school gay/straight alliance advisor. What message would you like me to bring back to my kids?”

Buttigieg was in Knoxville, Iowa, with a standing-room-only crowd at the “Skate Pit,” a roller skating rink open only on Friday nights and popular with middle school and elementary-age students. In my memory, the last presidential candidate to speak there was Barack Obama, in November of 2007, before his victory in Iowa, propelling him to the presidency. 

After the woman asked the question, Buttigieg paused, and I looked to my right, where maybe eight or ten Knoxville High School students stood comfortably together. I know most of these kids well. While most have graduated now, some were in band and choir and in the high school musical. One was on the wrestling team, another was a golfer, and a third was on the bowling team. They were in mock trial, speech, debate, and more. Much, much more. They are good kids who have a budding interest in politics. One of their classmates had introduced Buttigieg. He later became a precinct captain for Buttigieg at his caucus site. 

Two of the girls were cuddling; they had been a couple for at least two years. A third was transitioning. I watched them as Buttigieg answered the woman’s question.

“Middle School is tough,” he said.” I think the biggest thing to say here is how much we need them, not just how much we are there to help them--that for sure--but, that we need you to be your whole self...people love you and care about you, and the reason it’s so important that kids know that they’re accepted is that we can’t wait to see what they have to offer…”

And the kids, all of them, gay, straight, and trans, swelled with pride in their identity, their sexuality, and with hope and affirmation that not only do we love and care about them but that we NEED them to be their whole selves.

Of course we do. We, America, and the world NEED them to be their whole selves. We can’t wait to see what they have to offer.

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Sid High is the young transgender man from Cedar Rapids featured in this Washington Post piece from December 23. He’s 18 years old. He’s a leader.

“Sid was 12 when he told his mom, Jess, he thought he might be trans. He knew some people believed God didn’t accept queer people, and already parents across the country had begun fighting to limit transgender rights in schools, but Sid felt relatively safe. Iowa had been one of the first states in the country to legalize same-sex marriage, and Sid’s parents supported it.

Still, his throat tightened and his hands went sweaty as he approached his mom one morning in the bathroom while she got ready for work. “I feel like a boy,” he said. Jess told Sid she loved him.”

Sid couldn’t find mention of trans people in the Bible. All he knew was, “God doesn’t make mistakes.” Sid’s Methodist pastor, a woman, told Sid he was going to hell. The family didn’t return to the Methodist Church because “theirs was a God steeped in love and acceptance…”

Sid embraced his identity and his faith. And now he councils others in his position. Sid has found a church home that accepts him. 

What courage! It would have been easy for Sid to quit, to retreat into himself, and disengage, perhaps at significant personal risk.

Instead, heroically, he stood up and challenged the status quo. Even as the article points out, “Iowa’s governor had even made condemning trans kids a signature part of her reelection campaign.”

Sid and his parents stood up for what is right in a hellstorm of opposition from the right side of the political spectrum. A hellstorm of lies, ignorance and hate from their position of power.

Sid’s courage provides an opportunity for Democrats. First, to learn from, and then to take action. The Democratic Party needs to identify and support leaders just like Sid and build power. Who are they? Where are they? How do we support them and their visions? And if Sid and others like him can stand up to power, why can’t we? If we love America, why don’t we act like it and say and do something?

That’s the call to action. Without the party and the rest of us identifying these leaders, and elevating them, and sharing their visions, Sid’s story is just one more story in the Washington Post when it could be part of a values-led movement where anyone can play a positive role.

And what are those values? Here are some I have shared before.

For democracy and love of country in a time of insurrection, for voting rights in a time of voter suppression, for public education and libraries when they are under attack, and for smart government being part of the solution, not the problem. For a free and honest press in a time of misinformation and lies, for historical truths in a time when they are being outlawed, for a true and deep understanding of our civil rights history, for freedom to worship how one sees fit under the rising threat of theocratic authoritarian rule. For reproductive freedom in a time when fourth-grade girls are forced to give birth, women miscarry and even die because their medical treatment is banned. Where healthcare is a right, not a privilege, where clean water, clean air, and climate solutions are possible, where taxation doesn’t favor the rich, where equal opportunity is for all, and where your chances in life aren’t determined by your ZIP code, race, gender, faith, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

We NEED Sid, and all of us, to be our whole selves.

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I was driving and listening to the radio on Thursday as I was about to finish this piece. I listened closely to “Scars to Your Beautiful” by Alessia Cara. 

Here’s a bit of the lyrics, but watching and listening are better:

But there's a hope that's waiting for you in the dark

You should know you're beautiful just the way you are

And you don't have to change a thing

The world could change its heart

No scars to your beautiful

We're stars and we're beautiful

Please watch it. And live it. Toss the goggles and see the beauty. And be an agent for change.

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