A caveat before I share this: it is not for the purpose of garnering sympathy, but of self-expression and reflection on how my life is changing and transforming. Nor is it for the purpose of combatting an opponent online. I don’t use Facebook for that; I deal with my opponents directly and I don’t call out people by name. It’s just not an appropriate forum for that. I share to express and speak my own truth, which both brings me clarity and hopefully gives clarifying insights to others. Onward. Last week for the first time in a long time I heard some pretty savage criticisms that were leveled against me. I heard that I had made “quite an impression” with someone, and anxiously awaited to hear positive feedback. This is usually the result when I hear thoughts others have about me. For the most part, it’s rare that there’s someone I don’t get along with. Perhaps this is because on my end, there is rarely rancor. I’m not quite Will Rogers who never met a man he didn’t like. But I do find that I can usually understand just about anyone. Unless someone makes active efforts to attack me or take away my freedom, I usually take pretty well to them. Even if those things happen, I’m all about keeping it positive if at all possible and rising above the attacks or persuading the other person to simply stop. I find that as I gain more power and strength in my own life, this gets easier and easier to do. It’s kind of like being a big dog: you can just ignore the small ones that snarl and yap at you with confidence they can’t really do much. Anyway, the feedback was anything but positive: I was told that someone found me 1) queeny, 2) a know-it-all, and 3) snooty. I was shocked to hear these things, but I was equally shocked that somehow I didn’t take it personally. The criticisms were so over-the-top and absurd that I realized that they really couldn’t be valid. It was a moment of clarity. We can all say the mantra that when someone attacks us, it’s not about us, but about them. But it can be hard to truly believe it. In this case, the insults could find no foothold in my mind or my heart. I really “got it” that it wasn’t about me. On the first issue, the criticism is just empty. I don’t really know how I come across in terms of my gender identity. I hear different things from different people. Let me be clear regardless that I don’t really care. I work hard in my community to advance the rights of gender nonconforming people. If I’m one of them, I wear that badge proudly. I know I certainly could come across as either stereotypically masculine or feminine if I wished to. I can camp it up to flaming flamboyance. But I stayed closeted for years with no suspicion leveled against me until I came out. I can always go back there if I want to as well. The thing is, I don’t care to do that. If you don’t like my perceived or actual gender identity, such is life. It’s not my problem. As it just so happens my own general feeling is that my actual and perceived gender identity is pretty fluid, contextual, and unpredictable. To give a very superficial example, I have days where I slam whiskey. I have others where I sip chocolate martinis. It depends on a variety of factors, including the crowd I’m with, the activity I’m doing, and the mood I’m in. I’m like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. That’s true across a number of realms, and if you have a few nights out with me you’ll get that. But it really doesn’t matter. I dig women and think they’re great. Women hold up half the sky. If you want to put me in that club, go right ahead. I’ll be proud to be a member. Of course, I like men too. They also hold up half the sky, and are also super cool. If you want to lump me in with the boys, good on ya. If either of those things are meant as an insult, that is about your misogyny, or misandry, as the case may be. You’ll be happier if you’re less prejudicial and hateful. It’s not an issue for me. As for being a know it all, I’m so used to it, and so over it. I don’t know everything of course, but I know a lot. Humility does not mean being silent when you have knowledge to contribute and it’s your time to speak. I’m sensitive to not occupying all the oxygen in the room and try not to speak when I have nothing constructive to say. But I don’t care if my intelligence bothers you. It has been and is a huge asset to me and to others, and I will not dishonor it by hiding it. And I dealt with much more brutal bullying and shaming over that issue in my youth, in a much less brainiac-friendly world than I inhabit now, than I will ever have to deal with again. That battle against me is won and any efforts to revisit it are absurd and futile. However, it is the third adjective that really showed me how insane this hatefulness was. I’m a radical egalitarian. I don’t believe myself better than anyone else. I am no more than the homeless man on the street; there but for the grace of God go I. I am no less than the President of the United States; there are men who have held that office that are no better than I am. And even smarts and work ethic and many of the other things we judge people on are for the most part unearned gifts or a product of circumstances. At the end of the day, it is only God who knows what virtues or vices people have, and both virtue and vice can lead to riches or poverty, at least in terms of external appearances: “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11. True wealth and beauty exist within. “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly, what is truly essential is invisible to the eye.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7. I have always believed these things, and I always will. We are all here to play our role, rich or poor, great or small. Every task is vital to the fulfillment of God’s plan. The people who handle the details are no less important in a cosmic sense than those who manage the larger picture. All are needed and of value. All are loved. When we really remember this in an ultimate sense, it helps shield us from the negative judgments of others. Their perceptions are so often off-base. They usually say more about their own experience and feelings than they do about any truth about us. That is not to say we should never listen to these things as an intellectual matter. It never hurts to take under advisement how others perceive us and make adjustments if upon reflection they do have a valid concern, or if we can change how we come across without being inauthentic. We can process that all in our mind. But we shouldn’t take it to heart. Tonight I am grateful to have had such a compelling example of why it is not only counterproductive, but profoundly irrational to do so.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 06:05:56 +0000