I find myself thinking about the horrors being inflicted upon gay people in Chechnya. On the one hand the government there officially denies what is happening. Although in the most terrifying way. Today, the 3rd of May, Chechen President Ramzan Hadyrov is reported in the Independent saying “You cannot detain and persecute people who simply do not exist in the republic.” Do not exist.
On the other hand there are numerous reports of mass arrests, of imprisonment, and of torture.
This week an article I wrote on gender an Zen was published online at Lion’s Roar. There I talk about questions that arise out of the assumption that our human sexuality is something of a mystery. And, a mystery to be investigated, and, really, celebrated. With Chechnya we are brought back, I am brought back, to recalling sometimes we’re actually talking about base line survival.
And so facing into the issues of sexuality, yours, mine, our neighbors, all of us, and how we meet our human condition feels more pressing than ever.
It begins…
I have two dear friends who married, and then had a child, a lovely boy. They gave him my name for a middle name, so, I was particularly happy on top of the happy I’d already felt for them.
When their child was about three, out came a proclamation: “I’m a girl.”
Actually, the child had been saying things like that for a long time, but it can be hard to hear what you’re not expecting. Once their attention was turned toward what was said, they realized how long their child had been expressing this sense of identity.
In a letter they wrote to family and friends, they told us that, at first, “We took it as imaginative play, no different than pretending to be a dinosaur or a bear.” However, it continued, over and over: “I am a girl.” And, “I want to be a woman when I grow up.” Something important was going on.
The rest of this article is posted at Lion’s Roar. I hope you’ll want to go there and finish reading it.
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