On Confusion

 I just don't really get it.

Apparently, (though it's far from apparent to me), quantum particles can exist in 'superposition'; prior to any external interaction with them, tiny particles like electrons can flip between two separate locations in space, without ever really forming solidly in either. They could be said to exist in two places simultaneously, while never truly existing in either place at all. It appears, or at least it did to 20th century quantum physicists, that stuff only exists in a solid, binary sense when it comes into contact with other stuff.

Apparently, I’m more than one gender. I’m a man, and have always been a man, and I’m also a woman (surprise!) - and, perhaps most confusingly, I’m neither. There’s my superposition - call me the Jon/Lauren particle (for, in case you didn’t know yet, Lauren is the name I’m taking to embark upon my voyage through the world as a woman). Watch me relate to the world around me. Observe me, flitting between states of being - and through your interactions with me, help to determine my properties.

Do not worry that you do not ‘get’ me. Nobody ‘gets’ quantum physics, and arguably gender is just as expansive. What I want is not fear, but wonder.

We contemplate the cosmos contained in a cloud: trillions of stars the size of ours, orbited by trillions more planets, some spewing volcanic froth, others placid and mute, others still stormy, and gaseous. We bludgeon our big brains with bigger numbers, steaming, stretching, to comprehend the great cornucopia of existence. We find we can't do it. Not now.

We could react to this with fear: cosmic nihilism could convince us that relative smallness means relative insignificance. We could label our awe 'sublime', and convince ourselves to be content in never knowing what's 'up there'.

But all our satellites, telescopes and rocket ships, all those expensive, wonderful, delicate pieces of engineering beyond our atmosphere that let us see deep into our universe's past, and glimpse its rules and machinations, are solid testaments to the possibility of an alternative reaction: excitement. Wonder. 

When I invoke your wonder, I am not asking for you to wonder at me, like I am the object of interest here. To be mainly curious about an individual gender-fluid person, rather than the confusing Big-Bang of gender possibilities they represent, is to stare slack-jawed at an astronomer and miss the Milky Way. Please, do some stargazing of your own. Wonder not at me, but with me, at the new constellations of gender presentation emerging from behind the clouds.

Perhaps we mostly still believe that the sun rotates around the Earth, that we ourselves are the centre of all creation. It certainly looks like it from here, regardless of what Galileo might have said.

We mostly still believe a gender is something inseparably fused to a body, something soldered to us at birth - despite our presumable ambivalence towards all the motifs that tag carries with it (blue for breadwinners, pink for skirt-wearers, toy soldiers for boy soldiers and pink dresses for princesses).

We are bound by this binary, because we dare not look existence in the eye. Biology itself, hailed so widely as the last bastion of the binary, in fact bears the rainbow flag at its front gate. The human species contains spectrums of hormones, chromosomal contortions, hair lengths, chest sizes, voice pitches, shoulder widths - and, yes, if you really must pry, Mr Perv, sometimes there’s room for confusion downstairs too.

Culture outdoes sex here - our society gives us dresses, and joggers, and leggings, and tank tops and tanks and shoe shops and shooting ranges and shaving habits and pink crocs and frilly frocks and Lippy for Her and Lynx for Him - all so we pass our lives along preset parallel lines, never crossing the gap to meet each other and mingle in the middle.

The fun comes when you play around with the relations between these two old lovers - biological sex and sociological gender. To wear Gene’s jeans with Jean’s genes. Nail varnish on hairy hands. Eyeliner and a moustache.

I do not for a second claim to be ‘representative’. Most gender-fluid people aren’t like me. I am a mere particle, flickering in the quantum ether, bumping into the world and discovering, each time, who I have become. The common transgender narrative of knowing oneself to be ‘born in the wrong body’, while valid and beautifully human, is not my story. I haven’t always felt like this. Right up until a few months ago, barring some experiments with nail varnish, I’ve always been content simply identifying as a man.

My ‘transition story’ went like this: I read some books about trans people, thought ‘oh, that’s interesting!’ and haven’t lost that initial spark of curiosity. For some of you reading this, despite the deliberate queerness of the whole essay’s prose, that last sentence might have been the hardest to comprehend. 

But that’s exactly the point.

You do not understand me. You are not capable of understanding me.

How do I know?

Because I do not understand me, and I aspire never to be able to. Can you imagine how boring it’d be to fully know yourself?

All we can aspire to do, in a universe of un-absorbable infinity, is try. Reach out, with a delicate hand and a curious eye, and play among the stars.

Thank you for wondering with me. I hope you’re as confused as I am.

Jon + Lauren