We are seeing an uprising here in America and the effects of a social this or that are coming to a head. The fact is, we live in a two-party political system where most people find themselves near the middle toeing the line of ideals different from each party’s original goals –and look, original is not accurate because political scientists would argue that it took a good century, but our parties have switched sides from their original stances. This isn’t a political history lesson, though it’s worth revisiting one day.
Much of our nation also lives in a world of two sexes. Males and females. Some of these people co-mingle together, have babies, and live their family lives never peeking into the lives of people not like them or their peers – people outside of the two-sex system.
As much as some Americans believe in two parties and two sexes, these same people – and please forgive the broad generalization to prove a point – also tend to believe in the simplicity of black and white. Sure, they know there are a few other cultures here in the US but might not see these people as shades of brown but rather as geo-locations. Proving ideations of good race relations, some boast about their black friend or their ability to not see color, which is an issue itself because color is culture, beauty, soul, passion, and so much more. Don’t miss the color of people because you may miss everything they are. But this is also not a race relations lecture, though that should also be done soon.
For many Americans, life is not two-system simple. It’s complex. It’s biracial. It’s multi-racial. It’s another nationality mixed with American. It’s intersex, gender fluid, in the middle politically, and many more areas differing from this or that.
This two-system in America runs deep. Right hand. Left hand. This or that. Black or white. Religious or non-religious. Cheer for sports or play sports. Breast or bottle. Coddle or cry it out. Home school or public. We could break a stereotypical American life into groups of a two-system for just about every aspect of daily life and lifestyle. Sadly, the idea of this or that tears us apart, even within individual communities. Mixed messages coming from seemingly one community get lost in one way or the other.
People are people.
We are one. People.
But we break into more segments than a two-system.
We have blue eyes, brown eyes, hazel eyes, green eyes, and even those colors vary from one another. Brown is not just brown. Some brown eyes are light brown, others dark. Blues can be deep or light. Some humans have two eyes, each a different color. All shades of hair, lengths, and styles included. When our physical traits others can outwardly see differ, we either celebrate individuality or cry to fit in.
Like Sneetches, some have stars, others do not. While middle America sits in this two-system dynamic, the individual characteristics that make people unique sit outside of the two-system. In middle America, they are lost or forgotten, swept under the rug woven with the hearts and minds of people just like them from generations passed.
These are America’s outliers. The people who do not fit into a two-system dynamic. As each year passes, they grow larger in numbers, louder in voices, and more visible to more of America. Included in this group of outliers are our transgender communities, our intersex friends and neighbors, our non-conforming gender fluid children and parents who refuse to box their families into preset molds from generations ago failing yesterday’s ideals of pink and blue, dolls or cars, or the idea that they need to work harder to prove their worth because of a portion of their body they are taught belongs to only them for their entire lives should be protected and kept private unless…
Unless it behooves middle America to assume what might be hiding under a dress behind the stall in a public bathroom. Unless our lawmakers decide they need to know what’s hidden beneath a pair of pants and if it matches the confines of a binder or lacey bra. Unless our peacekeepers want to grope the breasts of women to see how firm they are and take bets of real or fake. Unless someone with enough power to change lives places these private parts metaphorically on public display for all to see as they decide if people are worthy of holding jobs, having healthcare, parenting children who see not gender, but love, serving in the military protecting the very core values that put their genitals on display, or living in a home they can afford in a place they feel safe.
As long as we continue to place these sacred private areas we teach our children to protect on display for others to judge what they are and how they should be, we will continue to live in a two-system America. We will continue to be black and white, male or female, Republican or Democrat.
People do not belong in a two-system.
LGBTQIA PRIDE MONTH
In 2016, on June 12, in the midst of Pride Month, our country faced yet another massacre, this one at a popular Orlando gay nightclub. America lost the lives of forty-nine people while fifty-three others were left injured.
On June 12, 2020, the Trump administration quietly reversed language the Obama administration attempted to put into place to protect Americans who live outside of the two-system.
Section 1557 – Final Rule
The revocation of language that protected anyone who does not identify as the one sex that matched the genitalia with which they were born affects many Americans.
This action is aimed at government funded medical facilities and care while at the same time, this administration has targeted these same people not living in the two-system allowing religious facilities to deny medical treatment based on religious beliefs.
Think about it long and hard, please. Think beyond hormones and gender assignment surgeries.
Transgender people require medical care. Period. End of story. Their entire lives, they require medical care, just as all humans require care. The ability to deny them care for religious reasons in the private sector and for not conforming to two-sex terminology in the public sector leaves little room for human kindness and care.
- Trans and have cancer? It’ll be not just okay but legal to refuse to treat. It’s legal to refuse to treat. Legal.
- COVID19 patient walks into state hospital ER and looks like a woman but once underdressed, it’s discovered she has a penis – too bad, they don’t have to treat.
- Got diabetes and on Marketplace healthcare – taxpayers do not have to supply insulin to — or a doctor.
- How about a human whose hormones allow the growth of facial hair who needs an emergency hysterectomy? It happens. In the gray. Beyond the two-system. It happens. This person in dire need of medical care could be denied care with the law behind providers.
This rule is an implicit invitation to deny coverage to underprivileged humans our government refuses to see because they do not live in the two-sex system.
Transgender America & Black Lives Matter
Ready for another challenge of the heart?
Take this in for a moment.
Of US trans murders, 73% of them are black.
What does this final rule do to the community of Americans fighting for human rights currently?
This is absolutely bigger than trans people.
This rule singles out a small group of people relatively speaking and tells them they are not worthy of the care other Americans receive.
Because they do not fall into the two-system.
Friday’s news shines a light on our transgender friends and family within the LGBTQIA community. Many arguing against these protections originally proposed, stand on the argument of tax-payer gender reassignment surgery. This final rule is so much bigger than government funded facilities and gender reassignment surgery medical care as many outside of the LGBTQ community spread far and wide across media platforms.
The mere idea that people are willing to acknowledge our transgender community shows hope beyond the two-system ruining America. And personally, beyond this acknowledgment, I don’t see support for our transgender population but rather a sweeping of them under the rug. I see a cisgender community acknowledging them as the black sheep of the nation without an invitation to sit with the rest of us for family dinner.
So, let’s step outside the two-sex system with a third known and acknowledged sex.
Sounds like politics, doesn’t it? Two-party system, but we know other parties try to exist; we just don’t recognize them.
The Three In Our Two-System
Now that the two-system Americans are willing to admit we do have a community of humans living in our country who do not fit their two-sex system, it’s time to accept them as citizens deserving rights as all other Americans deserve and dive deeper into the lives of Americans not living in the two-system world.
According to Intersex Campaign For Equality, the percentage of Intersex humans in the United States was 1.7% in 2015, about as many people who have red hair in the US (Hida, 2015).
Born with some semblance of both sexes, either internal, external, or both, these humans are a far cry from a two-sex system from Mother Nature. Intersex or Ambiguous genitalia babies are born about 1 in every 1300.
What happens when these babies are born? Parents are forced to choose a sex for them so the state can fill out a piece of paper that certifies their live birth. Boy. Girl. Those are their options.
It matters not their internal DNA, their chromosomes. It matters not how they feel internally as they grow in mind, body, and spirit. They are assigned a sex at birth based on possibly which external organ is most prominent or what their parents would like to turn them into as they decide on surgeries for the years to come.
Do they not deserve healthcare at the same level we all deserve, those of us born with one external sex organ?
Are people born with internal parts that don’t match their external parts
Yes.
They are not male nor female. These Americans, these humans, do not fall into the two-sex system Trump’s administration and Trump himself have declared are the only two possible sexes for humans in our country.
These humans do not fall under the two-sex system. With the revocation of this language that protected equality on the basis of sex, these humans could be legally discriminated against when they need healthcare.
However, there is a new revolution in America in terms of the third gender. New York issued its first Intersex birth certificate in 2017, and that same year, California introduced a bill calling for non-binary to be included on their birth certificates.
Side note: as we all come together to recognize social injustice, birth certificates with only Father and Mother as parental options do not allow for LGBT families to have parental rights from birth. We have a lot to learn as a country, don’t we?
On December 31, 2016, one day before Section 1557 was to go into effect, Judge O’Connor of Texas placed a nationwide injunction on the language that would have protected humans from discrimination. It’s also true this was done to protect religious freedoms, to choose not to treat a patient which goes beyond any oath medical staff take to treat humans regardless of beliefs. And Trump has held this for four years in review. Then, immaculately planned to invoke more harm to the LGBTQIA community, the announcement of the reversal of the language was made quietly to the public on the anniversary of the deaths of 49 people in a gay nightclub massacre in the middle of Pride Month.
This Is Exhausting
This isn’t even my personal battle. This isn’t my life. I have healthcare. For the moment, at least. But it doesn’t go unnoticed to me that at any moment, that could be taken from me because I love a woman. In fact, gay marriage is back on the chopping block. On Friday, June 12th, just before the final rule of Section 1557, the RNC announced its plan to remain on the 2016 platform with goals to reverse gay marriage and continue with the outdated Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy for the military, especially for transgender people – unless this administration can keep them from serving altogether which is their ultimate goal as they continue to strip away the existence of people.
I’m exhausted.
This isn’t my battle.
I haven’t fought this for generations. For lifetimes.
I haven’t listened to the songs of my ancestors singing for uplifting and strength to overcome.
I’ve argued with my own family about my life. I’ve marched in Pride since the early 90s and have stood with my community since the late 80s. It’s tiring.
I can’t imagine how those who’ve fought long and hard for lifetimes feel today.
Allies Make A Difference
When an issue does not affect personal lives in all worlds, it’s not an invitation to walk away and say it doesn’t matter. It’s an invitation to step up and listen to why it matters to those it affects. We don’t have to agree, but to disagree just because it isn’t ‘your’ world, will never be a viable argument.
Listen. Actively with love. Listen.
Try to understand, and if you can’t, listen more. It’s okay to still disagree.
There are many foundations to not agree with a lifestyle.
There are zero foundations that will support outright hate and the lack of willingness to hear people speak.
Our country is in civil unrest. I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say it. With all due respect, unless you’re in this fight within this community, you’re either with us or against us.
The same goes for civil rights and common decency for Black America. Be kind. Listen. If it isn’t your fight, you can bet those deep in it need allies.
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NOTE: Today, as I edited this article I wrote over the weekend, the US Supreme Court announced via Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first appointee to the court, their ruling that 1964’s Civil Rights Title VII does, in fact, protect the LGBT community in employment rights.
Trump had proposed to reverse or has reversed language in nine spaces since 2016 to strip away rights of LGBTQIA people including in education, parenting, healthcare, employment, military service, and more. Today’s ruling is a huge leap forward to rights for humans, and it was much needed after Friday’s final rule on Section 1557.
Be well.
~Stella
Source:
Hida. (2015). How Common is Intersex? An Explanation of the Stats. Retrieved from https://www.intersexequality.com/how-common-is-intersex-in-humans/
Resources for Intersex Humans