He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins.
From the moment we take our first breath (and sometimes even before that, what with sonic imaging technology), the cry __t__ a boy_ or __t__ a girl_ ushers us into this world. As we grow into adulthood, everything about us grows and matures as we grow and mature. Everything except gender, that is. We__e supposed to believe that our gender stays exactly the same as the day we were born. Our genders never shift, we__e told. The genders we__e assigned at birth lock us onto a course through which we__l be expected to become whole, well-rounded, creative, loving people__ut only as men or as women. From where I stand, that__ like taking a field of racehorses, hobbling the front legs of half of them and the rear legs of the other half, and expecting them to run a decent race: it doesn__ work. Gender, this thing we__e all seemingly born with, is a major restraint to self-expression.That doesn__ make sense to me. Why should we be born with such a hobble? Does that make sense to you?
My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely
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From the moment we take our first breath (and sometimes even before that, what with sonic imaging technology), the cry __t__ a boy_ or __t__ a girl_ ushers us into this world. As we grow into adulthood, everything about us grows and matures as we grow and mature. Everything except gender, that is. We__e supposed to believe that our gender stays exactly the same as the day we were born. Our genders never shift, we__e told. The genders we__e assigned at birth lock us onto a course through which we__l be expected to become whole, well-rounded, creative, loving people__ut only as men or as women. From where I stand, that__ like taking a field of racehorses, hobbling the front legs of half of them and the rear legs of the other half, and expecting them to run a decent race: it doesn__ work. Gender, this thing we__e all seemingly born with, is a major restraint to self-expression.That doesn__ make sense to me. Why should we be born with such a hobble? Does that make sense to you?
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I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.
We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A____o I really have to find a word for it?_ Kyle interrupts. __an__ it just be what it is?___f course,_ I say, even though in the bigger world I__ not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own.We pause for a moment. I wonder if that__ all__f he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, __ou see, I don__ know who I__ supposed to be.___obody does,_ I assure him.
As the community stays with the uncomfortable tension of contradiction, individuals begin to perceive the truth of __he other_ as their own experience, and the polarities of conflicting positions often dissolve into an unexpected emergence of a deeper underlying unity: a profound recognition that, ultimately, there is no __ther_. We are all one.
Delving deeply in this [gender healing] work inevitably takes people on an inner journey, and, if they follow it far enough, they are ultimately let into an awakening of an expansive, all-encompassing love.
In gender reconciliation groups, we collectively reach for an unknown power or grace that has a healing potential far beyond our own capabilities or understanding. We invite this power and presence, knowing from experience that something transcendent and universal can and does work through us and it dwarfs our own mechanisms for healing, thinking, fixing, and/or reconstructing what needs to be healed.