Out of the Woods

He, She, They

Many especially younger persons insist that we not refer to them as he or she but as "they.” Never mind the grammatical oddity of using a plural pronoun to refer to a single person, calling a person "they" is an important way of opposing the dominant idea that there are two genders only and that every human being belongs to one or the other.

          This seems to be a very odd and eccentric conflict but it is not. At issue is the dogma that many, especially evangelical Christian Americans cling to that every human being is either a man or a woman. One significance of that insistence comes to the fore when we face the inevitable follow – up question: what kind of man are you and what sort of woman are you? It is not enough that I am classified as an unambiguous man but that classification places me under pressure to be a particular kind of man because all the alternative versions of manhood are considered unmanly or “not a real man.” Am I the one who makes decisions in my family, does my word stand and is not to be questioned? Am I the one who deals with mechanical things and mows the lawn where as the females in the family not only have to do the housework but also are in charge of emotions. They have to bring a casserole to the neighbor when their parent dies or their child is injured. They have to maintain social relationships. I don't do either of those things; it is not manly to do them. (Obviously, this is an extreme version of the patriarchal family.)

           To put this bluntly: the insistence that every human being belongs to one of two genders is an unvarnished defense of male supremacy, of the role of man as more powerful, as in charge, as the person who wears the pants in the family.

There have always been gay people. In classical antiquity they were openly acknowledged and, at least, men loving men was ordinary and accepted. Then for a long time homosexuality had to go underground persecuted by Christian churches whose Christianity happily persecuted different groups, homosexuals among them.

In recent years homosexuality has come into the open once again and with it the conflict about its legitimacy has reignited. It is not difficult to see how homosexuality is a threat to the patriarchy.

           If my wife, who plays second fiddle to me in the family and whose sexual needs and desires are not as important in our marriage as are mine, can find sexual satisfaction in a relationship to another woman, it turns out that I am unnecessary and my claims to dominance are empty, even slightly ridiculous. If women can have marriages and can raise happy and promising children, I am not needed at all. Patriarchy crumbles.

          If my son can live lovingly and become a generous father in relationship to another man, all the lessons I tried to teach him about being a real man turn out to be irrelevant. The ideology which I followed and wanted him to follow of true manhood and male domination suddenly has become pointless. No wonder that ‘real men’ are extremely hostile to homosexuality in whatever form it may manifest itself.

          Being man or woman takes many different forms and young persons as they grow up must find the kind of man or woman they are suited to be or they may be the kind of person whose gender is variable and expresses itself in different forms in different situations, and different company, at different stages of their life.

           Every person should be as fully as able to be the person that it suits them to be. Every person should be accepting of the choices about their gender identity and their sexuality made by other persons and the reasons they might give us for those choices.

          The author of Genesis who decreed that the first two members of the human race where one man and one woman got it quite wrong.

           (That author also got the gender of God quite wrong. Gender identity is always a limitation. If God were a male would he not be limited in his sexual expression?)

It is high time that we stop to tyrannize ourselves and others by demanding prescribed forms of sexual expression. What matters is that we avoid harming others and defending patriarchy by, for instance, voting in laws that define marriage as a union of one man and one woman. Without any doubt that does serious harm. End sexual oppression by trying to legislate gender and sexual identity!