Sorting Gender / Relations


© Li Sam Writing. All rights reserved.

Throughout our youth we search for companionship, and a bit later in life many of us search for a partner. That companionship, the person we want to bond with: who is that? What makes us meet?

To get some perspective on the rather confusing illustration above that signals sexual orientation right from where we started sorting labels, why not try to close the circle here, so to speak. And to get this right, please note that I have added a heterosexual label at the top. Because, when you think of it, to understand labels you have to have something to compare them to: someone or another label pointing out differences (in order to segregate them). In that respect we can’t exclude the very reference, the hetero norm.

However—regardless of labels—instead of sorting us apart I would rather focus on our commonalities, and they are surprisingly many. It’s strange that just like when we think of gender, when we think of relationships we never focus on the positive sides of us that bring us together. Instead, we have a habit of noting (sometimes even searching for) small, insignificant differences and making a big fuss about them. (For what purpose, one might wonder … but not here: that’s a seminar I don’t want to get involved in.)

So, what makes us meet regardless of labels? Well, it’s all about enjoying people, individual people. I don’t mean a partner, a relative, or a close friend. I mean all people, people you meet in daily life, like people passing by on the street.

You might be thinking, “Okay? What about it?”

Well, if you have ever felt uncomfortable about a person—and we have discussed that regarding gender, but here we extend that understanding quite a bit—you reject and try to avoid that person, or rather the situationand places>where you might meet.

This kind of relationship has two sides that we can see easily in the context of bullying. The bullied person doesn’t enjoy the situation, but the bully does. A bully aware of his or her actions most likely seeks and enjoys the situation.

Also consider unintended harm: you can have the best intentions in the world and still cause pain to others by accident.

So, even if you seek the company of people you enjoy, this feeling might not be mutual, and you might be avoided or remotely received, regardless of how kind you try to be. This could even happen in your profession, and it’s because there’s no real contact.

It’s this contact that’s interesting: it’s like there’s only good contact or no contact at all. I don’t think there’s such a thing as bad contact; you don’t seek bad contact that truly causes you displeasure, not even if you like to hurt people.

This type of contact I’m thinking of is mutual, and it has to do with a mutual feeling of being welcome. We can accept people—that’s something quite different—but never really welcome them.

To describe this welcome feeling more specifically, I will tell you about two real-life events.

The first is about a five-year-old boy pretending to be a superhero fighting all the monsters there are to save mankind. During this period of play he had become aware of nail polish, specifically his mother’s bright green party polish, and he wanted it. Of course, his mother helped him to apply it, and now as a superhero he could shoot green lightning from his fingers, killing monsters with it. He was a tough, smart, and proud kid showing his lightning nails to everyone.

A close relative responded, “Nail polish? You don’t want to be a girl, do you?” The little boy felt something odd. The play stopped. He didn’t understand why the polish was bad (how could he), but still he went to his mother to have it removed.

The other event involves the same five-year-old boy—and me. He knew about his grandmother (my former wife), that she had been dead a long time. However, he didn’t know about his grandfather (me); he knew only about me as a nice lady called Li who sometimes came visiting, taking him to town to do fun stuff. When the boy finally was told by his mother who his grandfather was (me), all he needed to accept the situation was being told that I had been a boy before and that I was still his grandfather now; nothing more was needed. No explaining, no nothing, and the boy was satisfied.

The next time I visited to pick him up to go to town, we left his apartment hand in hand as usual.

“Have you been a boy?” he suddenly asked, looking up at me.

“Yes, I have,” I responded. “I didn’t feel that well being a boy.”

Nothing more was needed.

My grandson felt something profound, and he squeezed my hand. I felt his extension of “welcome,” and for the first time I was able to respond with a proper “welcome back” to him. Even though we had a connection from before, this was quite different. He didn’t understand about gender complications (and again, how could he?), but that vital piece of information, who I was, deepened our relationship, which prompted us to want to meet and enjoy each other more.

If we compare these two situations involving remote versus welcome feelings, they are immensely different—worlds apart. And you can’t lie or pretend about these feelings. Those positive feelings, what we often take for granted, make us happy; they bring us closer together. They contrast strongly with those negative, remote feelings we react to that make us confused and sad, distant and apart.

And digging really deeply into this, we need to understand that we unconsciously can distance ourselves from our children, no matter how kind and well meaning we are, which is part of why we don’t connect. Similarly, we don’t connect regarding labels either, assuming what and who we are. Labels can‘t even make us accept each other. It’s quite the contrary: our ignoring and denial of people makes sure of that. Labels are merely like road signs, pointing out venues for people where they can choose to go.

So where do you want to go? Who would you like to meet … what people would you like to mingle with?

If I say you go in a direction seeking contact with people to experience the feeling of being welcome and to welcome people, do we have an understanding?

If I say that this feeling of contact depends on emotions emitted and received, are you with me?

If I say we have many more emotions we need to exchange than what just a single contact represents and can manage, does that ring a bell? Like family, friends, workmates… and such?

If I say we need to satisfy all our emotions, wouldn’t that mean we need to experience contactwith many more people than just one single person?

Would you find all those people within just one of the labels presented above? What about family, friends, and workmates … do they all fall under one label? Can you even know? Could one person be just one label? Are you one label?

Ponder a child choosing to be with friends with people with a label his or her parents don’t approve of. Would (or should) that prevent contactwith the child?

If I say, by rejecting contact—suppressing emotions—we don’t live … Does that make sense?

Try to ponder a child who is refused contact with his or her parents.

For us to meet, our true selves are crucial. No one should reject our own self-perception and personality, or the emotions we emit. It’s like going down the wrong path, meeting no one. The same thing happens if we are not true to ourselves.

Unconsciously, because of my handicap, the way I was born looking like a boy, I have walked that wrong path for almost a lifetime, unable to connect with people properly, even family and people I cared for. Being my true self today, I’m able to connect, and I like to meet people. I really don’t care about labels anymore; it’s people and personalities I enjoy.

You could say that a child holding my hand, connecting, made me belong somewhere and showed me the way toward that contact. Regardless of green nail polish or whatever, I will never forget or reject that feeling of him wanting and coming near, that my grandchild and I connect. And essentially, that’s what made us meet.

We can’t quite enjoy whatever it is about a person that attracts us without seeking what first made us meet.

You don’t really want us all to be one label, the same as you? The world wouldn’t function; none of us would survive.

Life isn’t monochrome or just black and white, and the labels we assign others and ourselves are like a coating, a plastic bag, a closet—hiding and covering the colors we emit.

Labels understood wrongly segregate and prevent us from meeting; they prohibit us from experiencing the colors of life. Understanding labels for what they are opens you up and makes you come out, revealing what’s behind and beyond the coating.

The venue we choose for meeting is a place of opportunity to enrich your life, and I can assure you, there are golden moments in every one of them, not just one.