Gender Bending

This morning as I lay half awake, tangled in a knot of blankets, the phrase "gender bending" came into my head. I love that phrase. It sounds like the mutter of thunder.

Gender bending. Picture a hot summer afternoon, still to the point of deadliness. Suddenly you hear thunder and glance reflexively toward the mountains. Tall piles of cloud have appeared. All at once a soft, cool breeze blows through.

I have always been a bit on the edge when it comes to gender identity. I remember a long talk I had with myself when I was in sixth grade. I had taken myself out to the edge of town where I could have some solitude. My inner turmoil was the result of the fact I had come to the realization that something a bit different was being demanded of me in the world of my peers. They were all starting to sort themselves according to sex, responding to the instinctual call of pubescence. This was confusing to me, as I couldn't really make up my mind whether I was essentially a boy or a girl. After much pondering I decided to choose neither.

In my twenties I enjoyed sometimes dressing in a very masculine way. It suited my inner guy. I found, as perhaps many of you have also, that breasts tend to get in the way of this portrayal. And I love my breasts.

The inner guy; the inner woman -- there is something very creative that goes along with fluidity. In Lander, Wyoming, I am ashamed to say, there is an incredibly racist and misogynous event held each year called the One Shot Antelope Hunt. It is awful. No women are allowed to enter, and losers have to dress as "squaws". Well, they may have changed that last bit, but the sentiment remains. My friend Dee wants one day to enter and wear, on the day of the hunt, an evening gown in camouflage orange. The only thing that stops him, he says, is all the men with guns. But his protest might work, where more "serious" efforts to stop the hunt or at least change its more terrible aspects have failed.

I am convinced that God loves gender bending. God loves anything that opens the cracks in stereotypical thinking. God really enjoys a good drag show, loves the sudden surprises, the pushing of portrayals to their most flamboyant extremes. God loves the delight of expression, of self-realization, of making manifest everything one is.

Gender bending. Thunder and the sudden arrival of gentle wind. The spirit moves -- Ruach.