Growing up in a liberal democracy in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s had its good and bad points. I suppose it’s never very easy to grow up, to figure out who or what you are supposed to be, but that was my time to do it. Even a liberal democracy can’t help you there. Your time is your time. There’s no choice about when it starts, and, usually, about when it ends either. For better or worse, we all have to muddle along after birth.
Growing up as a boy, and with three older brothers and no sisters, I gave a considerable amount of thought to my prospects of becoming a man. What was that going to be like? How was I going to manage that? Well, at least I had some reference points just starting with my own immediate family. I could pay attention to my brothers and watch how they were developing. There ought to have been some obvious clues presenting themselves by observing their behavior. There were. Not always enlightening but usually entertaining. My dad too seemed to be a good model of a man, one already fully formed. Quiet to the point of shy, but very strong. He always seemed to know his own mind even if he kept his thinking to himself—mostly.
I can’t say that I never pondered what it would be like to be a girl or to face growing up to be a woman. I am pretty sure that, as a boy, I must have thought about it at least once or twice. I have an ancient recollection of examining my mother’s jewelry drawer and make up stuff on her vanity. I was three or four years old at the time. It’s hard to remember precisely when you go that far back. But I can still remember thinking that’s not for me. It is truly amazing how early the messages from religion and society become absorbed. Even then I knew that those particular items of personal property were assigned to a sex other than mine. And I was okay with that. Very curious items be that as it may, I believed then, as I do to this day, that I could live just fine and dandy without ever having to put them to my own personal use. In fact, I pretty much eschew them. The closest thing I do to wearing jewelry is sporting a t-shirt with a design or message on the chest. But a lot of guys do that. That’s acceptable as long as you stay away from flowery images or words like “hello kitty.”
I guess, as a boy, I was what we used to call normal. My aspirations for adulthood, at least with regard to my sex, remained entirely within bounds. Afterall, even what appeared to be within bounds could be darn confusing at times what with the burgeoning sexual revolution in those days. I had enough to cope with navigating puberty and whatnot. Consequently, if I ever did think about what it must be like for girls my age, those thoughts were probably very fleeting. I’m sorry but I can’t recall any of them at the moment.
Still, even in those days, America was a big country with millions of people in it. The land of the free and the home of the brave had over two hundred million human beings living in it by 1970. Roughly half of them must have been girls and women…the other half.
Except that’s not exactly right, is it? Back then hardly anybody (I can’t honestly say nobody) talked about people in the middle. What do you mean by people in the middle? That’s what my friends would have asked. It’s what I myself would have asked if the subject had ever come up in those days. And if it had, the subject would have got changed awful quick too. But I can’t recall it ever coming up except by way of derisive inuendo, one requiring a fierce reaction. Who are you calling a sissy wartface?
Those were the days. We should think twice about bringing them back. I mean let’s be sensible. In a liberal democracy, in which freedom and bravery govern our daily lives, shouldn’t there be room for a little variation? If we consider the Darwinian attitude of the capitalist ecosystem where freedom and bravery theoretically thrive, variation is not only foreseeable but also inevitable. It comes with the territory. It is essential to our very survival and development. And if we are truly free and truly brave, shouldn’t we have the stamina to tolerate a little variation even if we presently lack the wisdom to figure out the best way to adjust to it? Couldn’t we learn to adapt to it and not to stomp it out?
Given the hundreds of millions of human beings in America alone, not to mention the billions of them all over the world, there are bound to be some of us who by nature and no fault or favor of our own are born into the middle. Having arrived still on our feet [of clay] well into the twenty-first century, we can see today that there are quite a few of these human beings. They are now petitioning the rest of us to accept them as human beings. They are demanding that, if we cannot accept them the way they are, that we at least respect their right to be who they think they are, to discover who they are, and otherwise leave them be. They are not out to change anything in the rest of us except our attitude about them.
If you can think back to your own childhood, perhaps you may recall that the process of becoming an adult isn’t a piece of cake. If you managed to become an adult, perhaps you have learned something of modesty and honesty so that you know you will never know everything or even all that much.
Them are also us.