the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

I keep running across intense discussions regarding Caitlyn Jenner's "courage." Many people seem convinced that "courage" is carrying a wounded comrade out of battle, not standing up in a predominantly anti-LGBT culture and announcing that you are not a man but a woman. Most of the arguments against Jenner's courage are from men who refuse to acknowledge that she's a woman. I had a discussion last night with an...ahem...gentleman who wouldn't just refer to her as "him," but as "HIM" in every post. 

It left me wondering what about Caitlyn's announcement so threatened him. 

I can't seem to find another reason for people being so powerfully adverse to her. Something about her announcement, about the reality of such a hyper-masculine manly man Olympic superstar announcing that he really is a woman threatens them in some undefinable visceral way. How can Caitlyn Jenner's gender identity possibly threaten you? Why do you care whether she identifies as a man or a woman? What does it have to do with you?! 

Exactly how does it threaten your world and your manhood? 

Many, I understand, simply don't understand the difference between "sex" and "gender." That's fair. It's a simple matter of education (although explaining it isn't so simple, although I'll try). "Sex" is the genitalia you're born with. Simple as that. The confusion comes in when people assume that gender must follow sex. It does not. 

Gender is a more complicated thing. Most people default to match their gender to their sex, and our culture encourages this. Actually, it goes further: it discourages any gender identity that clashes with sex according to cultural norms. That is, we have a notion of how boys and girls should behave and what they should like, all of which is culturally driven, and we discourage any behavior that does not mesh with that notion (exceptions do exist). Boys play with trains and climb trees; girls play with dolls and play mom. Boys want to become firemen; girls want to become (egads) princesses. That sort of thing. 

But gender? Are you male or female or somewhere in between? 

Me? I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I've never questioned that I was female, but I have--more times than I can count--been mistaken for a man. Weirdly, it was when I was sitting in my truck or online--not when I actually walked up to someone.* Even after years of discussion online under the username "diana," someone told me that he had always assumed I was a man masquerading as a woman online--simply because of how I present my ideas.

* I walk and stand exactly like my father. I didn't plan it this way or ever try to change how I walk, much to my mother's chagrin; I just...walk how I walk. I realized this one day in Virginia as I was strolling through a CVS Pharmacy. They have those convex mirrors above the aisles, and I caught sight of legs walking my way. I couldn't see the torso. My first thought--as far out as it may seem--was "How is it that my father is here?!" I kept walking, of course, and realized it was me. We have the same slightly bowed legs and the same self-confident swagger, if I may call it that. I stand like him, too. I catch myself in positions that are Daddy. :D (I'm not ashamed. Daddy has style.) 

I've pointed out my walk and postures to friends who have assured me that I don't have a particularly masculine walk and posture,* so there's that. But then there are all those tests--as reliable as they aren't--designed to predict whether you're a woman or a man, based on how you think. I come out as a man every single time. I find this merely interesting, and right now, a point worthy of inclusion in my "gender" thoughts. 

* My mother may disagree. She tried to teach me to walk "like a lady," which I think means to take small, inefficient steps while balancing fine china on my head, and she told me one day in disgust that I "walk like a boxer!" I never asked if she meant the athlete or the dog. 

I've never thought of myself as a man nor identified as a man nor wanted to be a man, so I'm quite secure in my gender identity. Even as a lesbian, I have no desire to be a man or have any sort of male identity. 

Sex, gender, and sexuality are all different animals, and they come in all combinations. This is nothing to fear, even if you don't understand it. Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it bad or frightening. It's just different. The world is different. Embrace it instead of running from it. 

Back to Caitlyn Jenner. Media whore? Maybe. I don't follow popular media, so I only have a vague idea of her connection to the Kardasians. But frankly, my dear? Yeah. 

The fact is that Bruce Jenner cum Caitlyn Jenner was and is an American hero. I don't know what her connection is to the Kardasians, and I don't care. She is and was the epitome of the ultimate man. But now she has come out as identifying as a woman. And this is somehow a threat to (apparently) millions of men now. I do not understand why. I don't understand why they take it so personally, but they do. 

As far as I know, Caitlyn Jenner hasn't had gender reassignment surgery, but that's doesn't change the fact that her gender is female (to be distinguished from simple plumbing: sex). I don't understand how this works or how this feels, myself. However, I do know what it is like to not be understood and ridiculed and exiled (in some senses) because I am female and I am attracted to women; I can only begin to imagine what she is going through. My being attracted to women threatens no one, incidentally, but weirdly, people are still threatened by it. And people are even more threatened by transgenders and transexuals (which are different things, by the way--please look it up). Why, I do not understand. 

How courageous is Caitlyn Jenner? Very, in my opinion. She's been compared to soldiers hauling in a wounded buddy on the battlefield and such, with the caption "This is courage--this is not." The people who say this seem to think that courage has a single definition (that wears a uniform), and they fail to see how Caitlyn Jenner's announcement took a huge amount of courage and did a great deal of good. 

In my limited experience in the kill zone and in the many memoirs and journalistic works I've read by and about soldiers in the shit, soldiers in the kill zone do what they're trained to do. There isn't much thought that goes into it; if you fail, you die, and there is no outcome to live with. But with few exceptions, you just do what you've been trained to do and you act to save your buddies, regardless of the danger to you, because they are your family--even if you hate them (strange but true). In my limited experience and understanding, though, there's far more courage in standing before a nation that sees you as the epitome of masculinity and announcing that you are female and not male, and having to live with that announcement in that society until you die. You have more to fear, in a strange way; social approbation is a powerful deterrent. Worse, in many cases, than death. 

Finally, I just want to say that courage isn't a contest. It comes in many forms. Caitlyn's announcement was courageous, and probably will save thousands of lives--those young men and women who know they don't fit in their own skin and can't find anyone to identify with have someone now, which is why it is so important that she's a celebrity. And when soldiers go out into enemy fire to drag their buddies to safety? That's courage too. One does not negate the other. 

Quiet forms of courage are still courage. 

d