This blog is about laws such as the North Carolina Bathroom law. It’s an attempt to connect people to the opposing views held by numerous stakeholders in this social dilemma. If I use a wrong term, or in anyway type something not sensitive to the transgender world, religious world, or anyone taking in today’s blog, please contact and correct my poor word choice. I’m not 100% fluent in the correct terms with a number of groups. I am however, always going to push in this space to move people together to a better understanding of each other and to connect emotionally, because emotions binds us together and allow us to experience completely different situations and find common ground.
There are so many ways we learn to separate ourselves from the collective group. We divide ourselves up by race, sexual orientation, political affiliation, gender, socioeconomic class, or region of the country. After we have retreated to our respective corners we begin to shout at each other.
“The poor just need to work harder.”
“If you were born a man, stay a man.”
“Greedy sleazy rich people,”
“We can’t let the Mexicans take over this country,”
“Stop breaking laws and you wouldn’t have problems with the cops”
“White privilege.”
“Black lives matter,”
“Ban all Muslims.”
“Stupid crazy Christians.”
While we are shouting at each other we deepen our resolve around our opinion and refuse to listen and make connections with any other group besides our own. I realize writing this as a white-man from a traditional family you might be rolling your eyes that I’m weighing in on such topics. I would counter that this is the problem with our current dialogue, or lack thereof, on deep held beliefs, strong emotions, and difficult social topics. We are limiting the number of different groups from the discussions to just include those who agree with our firmly held opinion. Sometimes my opinions are uniformed, and come from a lack of knowledge on the topic but I feel like throwing in my two cents. I need people who disagree with me to tell me what book or article to read to understand their opinion. I need to hear stories from those who faced struggles as a white man I will never have to deal with. I need to converse about other people’s thoughts on God, miracles, or their lack of.
As I have taken in numerous articles, facebook posts, memes, and tv features around North Carolina's controversial law around what bathroom people are allowed to use, I continue to see that this issue separates us. I have been lucky enough to be around a handful of wonderful Transgender people in my life and I have seen how society has left them out. I have seen and heard their struggle to come to grips with what they are going through. I have cried with Transgender people as they describe their horrible emotional experience with their family, their friends, and themselves as they attempted to answer the question, “Who am I?” I can fully support and understand Transgender individuals using the bathroom of their preferred gender. Want to know why I can support this? Because I too, have spent countless hours attempting to answer the questions, “Who am I?” We all have.
I have had conversations with people against the law out of fear of the unknown but also out of protection of their loved ones. Hearing a women who used to be a man, is going to use the same bathroom as your seven year old daughter can be scary. When we are afraid for our kids we can over think, over react, and error on the side of caution. No I do not have kids that cause a great sense of fear in me, but I have been afraid. I have rushed to judgement when fear runs my thought process. We all have.
The truth is, we are not that different, we can all be happy, sad, afraid, and ask the question, who am I, or where do I belong?” I can keep going with blanket statements, like we all have wondered does God exist? We all have felt left out, we all have been judged by the way we have looked, because in truth, we have all faced these questions.
What if we started to find ways to connect, instead of retreating to our corners? Instead of yelling at someone who has a different opinion of you, ask them why they feel that way, and can we talk sensibly about our differences? Maybe, just maybe we can sway our opinions to be more sharing of our space, money and our personal selves. Maybe we can stop coming out of our corners swinging at each other’s ideals, beliefs, and opinions. Instead of focusing on what separates us we can look to understand what connects us and realize it may not be so scary.
