Let me start this post with a story. A true story.
My mom was born different from “normal” people. Unlike roughly 90% of humans, she was born with different characteristics. Although nothing about her physical experience suggested that she was abnormal, by her early childhood, it became apparent that she behaved differently from other children. Many people found her behavior disturbing and suspicious, and expressed their desire that she change.
Because of society’s prejudice against people like my mother, she was enrolled in conversion therapy, to change her from the way she was into a “normal” person. This caused her great distress, both from being labeled as problematic for being who she was, and from the impossibility of changing who she was from birth.
Adding to this distress was the fact that her condition had been the subject of thousands of years of prejudice and suspicion. People like her were considered to be evil in many cultures, and her behavior was considered a true sign that she was a witch, even in the fairly recent past. Holy books mentioned her condition as a reason for genocide. Literature portrayed people like her as villains. People like her were at best described as “gauche,” and at worst as “sinister.”
Even the world itself assumed that “normal” people were more valuable and acceptable. Accommodations were geared toward “normal” people and people like her were at best ignored, and at the worst insulted. Attempts to rectify that were dismissed with derision - she should change herself rather than change society.
Eventually, she grew up, and it became apparent that all that conversion therapy hadn’t fixed her. She went right back to acting in line with her nature. Fortunately, society had changed for the better, and people like her were far better accepted, even if social accommodations were still not great. But at least, her traits were no longer considered evil or socially unacceptable, and she was allowed to live in accordance with how she truly was.
***
Any guesses about my mom’s condition?
My mom is left handed.
Let’s talk about that, because I believe it sheds a lot of light on neurodiversity and the tendency of humans to abuse and persecute people who are “different.”
First of all, for most of history, there was nothing about being left handed that was apparent from a physical examination. My mom had the usual two arms, two legs, two feet, two hands, etcetera. She looked perfectly normal. There was no obvious reason why she shouldn’t be exactly like everyone else, right?
Back in the 1950s, brain scans were a thing of the future, not available to most, or in common usage. And they were seriously primitive.
The only way you could understand her experience was to actually listen to her experience. And her experience was that her left hand was her dominant hand, and it was far easier and intuitive to write with that hand.
But back in the 1950s, many people, grandparents included, were still operating under the prejudice of the past centuries, when left handedness was brutally suppressed by such tactics as tying the left hand behind the back, beatings, and other tactics that we now recognize as cruel. I remember my mom telling me of the endless tears “conversion therapy” cost her as a child, and how she still remembers that pain and rejection.
And, of course, that “therapy” didn’t really work. If you see her now, she will be writing with her left hand.
But let’s look back on that history a bit too. If you take a look at Judges chapter 20, there is a sordid episode when the left-handed Benjamites were slaughtered at the purported order of YHWH, and the tribe nearly wiped out. This is from my own religious tradition, but suspicion of left handers can be found around the world.
In the Middle Ages, left handedness was literally one of the ways to prove a woman was a witch. (My mom’s love of cats, which I inherited, was another.) You can find literature around the world dating back centuries in which the villain is portrayed as left handed. Even in television, this is literally a trope.
I also mentioned a couple of words. “Gauche” is from the French, and means both “left” and “awkward.” “Sinister” also means left - you still see it used that way in heraldry, but it has entered the vernacular as a synonym for evil.
Even now, when we have largely lost the most pernicious prejudice, our society is set up for right handed people. As a right hander, I can be confident that I can find scissors and other tools designed for me. I don’t worry about smearing my writing. I don’t have to ask for “accommodations” because I am considered normal. In fact, I even have a statistical health advantage over lefties. And I certainly would not be expected to force myself to use the other hand because it makes other people uncomfortable.
***
Now, let’s talk about what “causes” left handedness. Back in the pre-scientific days, left handedness was believed to be caused by maternal stress. In other words: blame mom if the baby didn’t turn out “normal.”
Now, we know that left handedness is just a form of neurodiversity that is experienced by about 10% of humans. But we still don’t know exactly how it works, or why a person is born one way or another. While there is an increased likelihood of left handedness if you have a left handed parent, the inheritance isn’t simple, and has defied any rule or the identification of a particular gene. It is, shall we say, complicated.
What we can say is that it is all about how a person’s brain is wired. With our rudimentary neuroscience, we can finally note that areas of the brain light up differently for left handers, but the exact pathways and wiring are a black box to us.
Here is the important part:
We can only understand that a person is left handed by listening to their experience, and observing their behavior.
In other words, we have to trust left handers when they describe their experiences. And, if we are decent people, we strive to make the world as friendly for them as it is for us right handers.
***
So, how does this relate to the LGBTQIA+ experience?
First, let me start with a few caveats.
One, as a cishet male, I am not the best qualified person to opine on the LGBTQ experience, and certainly not in a position to dictate to them how they should feel or exist. Thus, my intent in this post is directed primarily at cishet people - those like me - who might be helped by my own experience of coming to understand the LGBTQ experience. Since I was raised Fundamentalist (and eventually in an authoritarian cult), and thus trained in bigotry against LGBTQ people from birth, I had a LOT of deprogramming to do over the years. You can read about a small portion of that journey in my post for Pride Month two years ago. I might eventually get around to talking about other moments in that journey - and you can read my thoughts on the various “christian” approaches in this post. For my LGBTQIA+ readers, I will probably get things wrong, and I apologize. I am continuing to learn, and sincerely intend to help more than harm. Your humanity matters to me and I want it to matter to everyone.
Second, we humans have to think in analogies and metaphors a lot more than we realize. Particularly as science has advanced beyond the ability of the average person to grasp, we need ways of understanding that do not require advanced mathematics or expensive equipment. The various “models” of the atom are this sort of metaphor - none of us can see subatomic particles - but we can see how they behave and thus develop a metaphor that enables us to work with them. Likewise for Relativity and Space Time. For neuroscience, which, again, is barely in its infancy, we have to rely on analogies and metaphors. I am going with “wiring,” treating the brain like a computer. I know that is imperfect and incomplete, but I think it is a helpful way of understanding how our brains work.
Moving on, then, I want to clarify part of my thinking here. I believe one of the most damaging beliefs of Western thought is mind-body dualism. It is important here to remember that this idea derives far more from Aristotle than from the teachings of Christ - but it was profoundly influential on Saint Paul and other writers of the Roman Empire. (I personally think that it is impossible to understand Saint Paul or Augustine or pretty much anything about historical Christianity without grasping how much was the product of Aristotle and other Greek thinkers.)
In some ways, Christian theology pushed back against this dualism. In fact, in its most obvious form, dualism was considered a heresy - Gnosticism. Likewise, Christian theology has always emphasized a bodily resurrection - we don’t just exist in eternity as disembodied souls, but as embodied humans. However, I think that in many ways, the Puritans undid all the progress toward a more integrated view of mind and body, and this has, unfortunately, borne rotten fruit in Evangelicalism (and particularly in its American version) for several centuries.
While I am not confident enough to say exactly what my understanding of the mind is - although I am not a determinist - what I do believe is that our “minds” are not really separable from these bodies we have. Our brains are part of our bodies, our emotions are experienced in the body, and the way we are “wired” is inseparable from who we are. To the extent that we can make a distinction between mind and body at the philosophical level, we cannot separate them in our experience. We cannot simply put mind over matter and will our bodies to exist how we wish them to.
Let me give a few examples. My wife and I had five children in seven years. We had three aged two and under for a while. It was….an experience. In what will surely surprise nobody, we had some rough moments as a married couple during those years. As I came to realize, though, the problem wasn’t that either of us was being bad, or not “godly” enough. The problem was WE BOTH NEEDED A FUCKING NAP! And in fact, there were plenty of times that sufficient sleep solved an argument. On a related note, we found that as the kids got older and less needy, we were less stressed and thus were a good bit better at resolving conflicts. Gee, who woulda thunk it?
[Also: special shout out to my mother-in-law whose many mornings with the kids saved our sanity. She was an incredible help, and we both truly appreciate it.]
Here is another example: I was a sickly kid, and even now am vulnerable to episodes of illness that knock me out for a while. (Thank science for flu shots, though…) I particularly remember one when I would have been 12 or maybe 13, where I was ill for a full month. It probably started as a flu, but it just refused to go away, and even though I would do school for the morning, I had to spend most of the afternoon in bed recovering. It sucked. And, I think it is fair to say, I experienced symptoms of depression. I am not particularly prone to depression - I’m not wired that way. But when my body let me down like this, it affected my psyche.
This is NORMAL.
So, when we try to separate mind and body (or soul and body if you prefer), we end up asking the impossible of people. Just to name a few cases of bad fruit arising from this, think of the way Evangelicals shame people for struggling with mental illness. Or the belief that moral lectures will cure addiction or poverty. Or the toxic positivity expected of people.
But perhaps the most damaging has been the severance of sexuality from personhood.
Let me explain. We humans are animals. Not merely animals, but we are animals. We exist where reproduction takes place as the result of sexual intercourse. Our brains are wired to make mating pleasurable which gives most of us a sex drive. Because of how we evolved as social animals, we also can and often do experience sex not merely for pleasure and reproduction but as a form of bonding and a source of a feeling of well being and love. Our sexuality is, thus, complicated. Just like the rest of our bodies. Our sexuality, however we express it (or don’t express it), is part of having a human body - of being a human. You cannot just excise that part and declare it to be “mind only.” Or worse, “body versus spirit.”
***
Now, let’s talk about the implications of mind-body integration. Because our brains are inseparable from the rest of our bodies, differences in brain “wiring” are part of our bodies as well. In fact, differences in wiring are physical differences, just like height or eye color or athletic ability.
Let that sink in thoroughly, because it undergirds any holistic understanding of sexuality and gender identity.
If indeed our “minds” are part of our bodies, and our bodies exist as they are, then innate traits are just that - innate. And thus, there is no more “abnormality” in being LGBTQIA+ than in having green eyes…..or being left handed. Being in a majority doesn’t make you more “normal” than other people.
This is where I think talking about intersex is important. In fact, my experience with an intersex client was one of the most profound moments in my journey toward better understanding and acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people. I wrote about intersex traits several years ago, and I won’t reiterate all of the details, but I think a basic discussion here is helpful.
Roughly 1-2% of all humans have traits that put them somewhere between the “male” and “female” poles of existence. This has been known literally as long as humans have existed. Intersex traits abound elsewhere in the natural world, as do homosexual and bisexual behaviors, transgender behaviors, and just really weird shit too.
These intersex traits vary a good deal. Ambiguous genitalia are visible to the naked eye, and thus have been described for millennia. Chromosomes were first discovered in 1882, and soon scientists noted that not all humans had either XX or XY, and furthermore that not all XXs were female and not all XYs were male. And the animal world is even more diverse. So, we discovered yet another expression of intersex. With the partial decoding of the human genome, we can now see even deeper into the ways that genes related to sex and gender can be turned on or off, so that chromosomes are far from the final word when it comes to sex, let alone gender.
Okay, so what do intersex people have to do with this? Well, aside from the fact that most Evangelicals remain in DEEP denial that intersex people even exist, (See any number of Republican politicians making the claim that there are only two genders and everyone is clearly one or the other. Which is, scientifically speaking, utter horseshit), I believe that intersex is a helpful way of understanding other LGBTQIA+ experiences.
Once upon a time, we could only “see” intersex if genitals were ambiguous. Then, we could see diversity in chromosomal and hormonal makeup. After that, we could understand genes and how they are expressed.
So, let me lay it on the line:
I believe that there are physical differences at some level between heterosexual and homo/bisexual brains. I also believe that there are physical differences as some level between cis brains and transgender brains.
This is what I mean when I say “wiring.” I believe that there are actual, physical differences. Just like there are for left handedness. And just like there are at the chromosomal level for some intersex people.
We just can’t see them, because we lack the tools and knowledge to do so.
Just like we can’t “see” the physical differences that lead to left handedness.
Maybe we will be able to someday, maybe not.
But until we can, we have to go off of the one way that we can understand different wiring - that is, neurodiversity.
We can listen to people.
We can listen to my mom when she says she is wired to write with her left hand. We can listen to autistic people when they describe how they experience the world. We can listen to gay, lesbian, and bisexual people when they describe how they experience sexuality (and all the complex socioemotional experiences that go with that.) We can listen to transgender people when they describe their experience of being “wired” as their particular gender.
This is where I think that using the analogy of intersex really helps. At some level, transgender people are intersex. They are not completely to the “male” pole or the “female” pole, so to speak. Just like with intersex people whose chromosomes do not “match” their genitalia or secondary sex traits, transgender people do not “match” the way that cishet people do. That doesn’t mean that they are “defective” any more than left handed people are “defective.” And they are no more sinister or gauche than lefties either. They are just examples of the diversity of nature. And just because we cannot “see” the wiring differences doesn’t mean they are not real.
Likewise, understanding sexual orientation as an expression of intersex traits can be helpful. The wiring is different. We can’t see the physical differences, but that doesn’t mean they are not real.
This is neurodiversity. Just like Autism. Just like left handedness.
I mention Autism intentionally. Because not only is Autism a different “operating system,” so to speak, it is strongly correlated with being LGBTQ+. And especially with being non-binary or transgender. Which is why I see anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry as a manifestation of bigotry against anyone who isn’t “neurotypical.” Hey, kind of like prejudice against left handers!
***
In fact, I have found it helpful to look at this through the lens of intersex traits. Let me explain my thought process, while acknowledging that, as I noted above, this is a metaphor, a way of understanding, not a rigid “fact.”
For a variety of obvious reasons, Patriarchists have pushed the narrative of a rigid gender binary that goes far beyond reproductive function. Most of the beliefs about the binary have nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with culture. Let’s look at how this works in our society.
Men. Men are reproductive males, are attracted to women, have secondary sex characteristics like beards and deeper voices. They are bigger than women. They are constantly horny, and if given the chance, will rape women. They want to have sex with as many women as possible. They like competition, sports, dogs, red meat, beer and whiskey and Red Bull. They drive big trucks and shoot guns and burp. You get the idea.
Women. Women are reproductive females, are attracted to men, have breasts and long hair. They are small and fragile. They prefer love to sex, and housework to other jobs. They love babies and kittens and flowers and romance. They prefer white wine, sweet tropical drinks, bland food, and can’t handle their liquor. They like cute convertibles and shopping and pastel colors, and they are the only thing that can civilize men. Again, you get the idea.
You could go on at nauseating length about all the stereotypes. But whatever the statistical average, you can find so many exceptions that the stereotypes are meaningless at the individual level. Just to name one, while statistically males are taller, a great many women are taller than I am. I also prefer cats to dogs, violin to trumpet, and am the romantic in our marriage. Likewise, my wife enjoys a good bourbon, values her career - and her management position, wears red more than pastels, and so on. [Fun literary connection here: The old ladies in a certain Alice Munro story would definitely consider me to be gay.]
Now, here is the point when it comes to the supposed binary:
LGBTQIA+ people pose problems for the binary: they defy categorization on the poles. They may be attracted to both men and women, or exclusively to the same sex. They may not have sexual attraction at all (that’s the “A” in there.) They may have ambiguous genitals or chromosomes (the “I”.) They may not prefer to present certain cultural gender signifiers - hence butch, femme, or androgynous appearances. They may have less visible neurodiversity resulting in being (and functioning) as genderqueer or transgender.
The point is that ALL of these are in some way in the “middle” portion of the spectrum, between the poles of the supposed gender binary. Which is why I have found it helpful to think of ALL of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum as forms of intersex. Again, this is a bit of an oversimplification, and I intend it only as a metaphor, not as the One True Explanation™. It is a way of thinking about something I do not experience directly, as a cishet man. But also, I would say that from listening to the LGBTQIA+ people in my life, there is a recurring theme of “I don’t really fit with the binary.”
***
And let’s get to the most important part:
Persecuting and bullying people because of their neurodiversity is evil.
Just because we thought that left handedness was a sign of the Devil for centuries doesn’t mean we were right. And it never should have justified persecuting left handed people.
Just because we thought Autistic or epileptic people were demon possessed doesn’t mean they are. And it should never have justified persecuting them for being different.
Just because patriarchal societies believed that homosexuality was sinful doesn’t mean that it is. It was a huge threat to a system that placed one gender over another and treated females like property, so of course it was viewed as a sin. Just like left handedness was “sinister.” It was different, and threatened a hierarchy too, so of course it was vilified.
Just because transgender people (who have always existed, by the way) make people uncomfortable doesn’t mean that it is okay to persecute them. Just like with homosexuality, the source of the discomfort isn’t the existence of neurodiverse people - it is the fact that their existence challenges the hierarchy. The reason it is so “important” to know someone’s gender is so that you know “how to treat them.” In other words, can you disrespect them like you would a woman? Can you assume they are a rapist like some people do for all males? Can you make assumptions about their likes and dislikes based on gender stereotypes or not? And maybe, you might stumble over pronouns from time to time. (God knows I do. Gah! Sorry about that, 45 years of cishet cultural conditioning is a lot of work to overcome. Kind of like implicit bias. I’m trying, though.)
By viewing LGBTQIA+ people as neurodiverse, I think we can work toward making the world more welcoming and safe for them. Just like we can and do make left handed scissors, and are learning to coexist with autistic people rather than institutionalize them, we can and should work toward coexisting in peace with our LGBTQIA+ neighbors. And we can do it with love and respect if we recognize that humans are not wired identically. That’s the beauty of diversity.
***
DISCLOSURE: While I am cis-het, my eldest is transgender, so this is to a significant degree personal. Although I have known for decades that the Religious Right tells vicious lies about LGBTQ+ people, it hurts a lot more when it is your own kid that gets harassed and bullied by adults that seem to get off on cruelty. And I can say that my kid has always been one of the kindest, most compassionate, and decent human beings I have ever known, so any implication that this is because of “sin” will be met with the appropriate level of contempt.
***
Outside the scope of this post: There ARE some non-typical wirings that we need to be more wary of. Not that we should kill them or persecute them or exclude them from society, but that we need to find ways of limiting the damage they do - and learn how to re-direct them into behaviors that are better for society, if possible. I’m talking about Narcissists and Sociopaths. Which I have a bit more personal experience with than I would prefer. Again, outside of the scope of this post, but Narcissists and Sociopaths are unfortunately revered in our society (in practice) and given disproportionate power in our institutions, which is where they can do tremendous damage.
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