The world is a complicated place,
Where emotional messiness is more a rule than an exception,
And painting in black and white becomes reckless to the point of absurdism.
As an example,
The pain of feeling like you are a woman,
While living most of your life as a biological man,
Would be tremendous beyond belief.
The lack of belonging,
The pain of hating yourself and your body
And the “God” that put you into it
Would seem to be
Nearly immeasurable.
Even the languaging used above
Can be seen
As seething words of ignorant violence
When everything about your identity
has been deemed “Wrong”
by those around you… your whole life.
When no language fits
The immense complexity
Of who you deep down
Feel yourself to be.
But back to this human.
And what if this human wants to play sports?
What if sports are one of the deepest joys of their lives?
And they still want to play,
Once they swap from man to woman?
What right is it of mine,
To say they cannot?
But now,
We get to feel the pain of someone else
A woman, who, for years, dedicated her whole life to athletics
Who put in thousands of hours perfecting her craft,
In the only thing that ever gave her the feeling of truly being alive?
A woman who has fought for women’s rights her whole life
And has a fervent goal to help the oppressed feel cared for, and included in society?
What does this woman do,
When,
Presented with a person who has felt oppressed their whole life,
And just wants to play sports…
To feel active in the body they’ve wanted their whole life,
And compete with the people
They feel a more direct kinship?
But now this human who has been a biological man most of their life,
Is wanting to compete with a woman,
Who has spent her whole life sharpening her abilities -
Only to have her trophy taken -
By someone who has spent most of their life reaping the benefits of testosterone?
On one level,
We are allowing the excluded to feel included,
Allowing someone to feel ok in their body,
And to allow for their life’s fullest expression…
We are creating an equitable world for those whose voice has been silenced,
And allowing every human a home in this world
Which can at times seem so cold and unforgiving…
And the beauty cannot be described easily.
On another level,
Women have fought so hard for equal rights for centuries,
And now,
Their trophies are being co-opted by men again.
And by supporting of the suppressed,
They end up becoming the suppressed,
With no space to call their own.
And the pain of this,
For the woman who has spent their whole life toward the pursuit of physical excellence,
Cannot be measured.
Anyways,
It’s a complex topic,
And there are immense pains on both sides of the coin.
Let’s stop pretending that these things are black and white
And forget about all of the heart pain
That demands a grey area
To be truly seen and heard.
Nobody’s pain
Has ever been as simple
As I believe it to be
And treating it, as though it is,
Does an immense disservice
To those who I claim to be considering.
Even this writing
Will leave some feeling hurt,
And for that,
I apologize.
For I have still oversimplified
The vast enormity
Of shades of grey
That I need
To fully understand you and your pain.
But hopefully the admission
That I couldn’t possibly understand your heart
Through conception, category, and words…
Is a step in the right direction.