i've always been "tolerant and accepting" of lgbtqia+ people simply because i think it's idiotic to get upset about how other people live their lives when it really doesn't affect me in any way.
but i can't say i've always had much insight into it. growing up in the bible belt, i only knew one gay person (a teacher), and it wasn't even until senior year that i realized it when i met his significant other at a party.
in college, and since, i've had many gay friends, so i understand that much better, though i still thought of it through a binary lens (though i was dimly aware of a few intersex categories).
then, about a year and a half ago, mini-unblock informed us that the physical clues were misleading and that she was actually a girl. since then i've learned quite a lot more about gender, especially in her case, because she's not a very "girly-girl". her favorite color has always been pink, but she has zero interest in her appearance (she loves her bath, but she can be in there for an hour and never wash her hair :smh: and has no interest in makeup) and her speaking style is very stereotypically masculine (she interrupts, rarely yields when others try to chime in, doesn't use inappropriate question intonation, etc.)
so she's taught us that someone can think of themselves as a girl and still have plenty of "boyish" interests and behaviors.
funny thing is, even people who think in rigidly binary terms actually know this. we all know there are "alpha males" and then other men who are "effeminate" or who "aren't as manly", and there are women who aren't into makeup or who are more "manly". yet somehow there's a block in recognizing it as something more complicated than just a binary switch....
anyway, it's been a wild journey and we're still learning and discovering. but she's the same wonderful kid we've always known and so far it's all good. so great to live in the northeast where the schools are supportive and she has plenty of friends who accept her for who she is. we love texas, where we used to live, but this would have been more problematic for her there....
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