In my dreams I am never me. Sometimes, I am a child, or a man, or another woman. It is never someone I know; just a stranger conjured by my subconscious, or perhaps the dream-life of someone from an alternate universe. The world, too, is never my own - always some strange, foreign landscape that only seems unfamiliar upon my waking.
A while ago, I had a dream about being in love. The plot isn’t important, but I was trying to revive my lover who was in a coma-like slumber. I kept coming back to see them, and each time I did, their body was different - one time they would be a woman with red hair, the next a black man, etc. - but this didn’t register to dream-me. All I could think of was bringing them back to life, which I eventually did by winning a brutal war (who knows why? dreams are weird). When I woke, I wrote of our reunion:
i fell to my knees and sobbed. and i remember the pure relief and love and emotion i felt. we hugged and i stroked her hair and stared into her eyes and i knew she was it for me. after what i had been through i wanted her and only her for the rest of my life. i wasn't sure if he would feel the same way as me, but she kept gazing at me like she was waiting for something. i don't remember if i asked him - i think i woke up around then. but i remember the love and the pain and the fear and the relief, and i remember us laying next to each other staring into each other's eyes and me thinking, he's it for me. i want to be with her forever. i want them to want that too.
The day after I had the dream, one of the readings for a class I was taking included the following quote.
“[The beloved] suddenly shatters into the plural and we speak of her as “them”. “She” can become “he” within a single poem. Or, the feminine can be used to refer to the male beloved, or the male pronoun to a female beloved. In whatever form we try to seize her, she eludes us. She cannot be possessed. To attempt to possess her and seize her in a particular image is more than idolatry. The desire for possession violates the adab1, the basic politesse of how love works.”
- Michael Sells, Station of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn 'Arabi2 and New Poems
Though the author is referring to ancient Arabic poetry (which, side note, is the best poetry ever written), the implication here - to me, at least - is that love, real, genuine, all-consuming love, destroys gender, or at least renders it totally irrelevant. Isn’t that an incredible idea? That love - the truthful, complete, and holy respect for another - is so powerful that it can conquer the longest-standing and perhaps most deeply ingrained social construction of all time.
The flipside of this idea is the implication that if your view of someone is ‘clouded’ by gender, your love for them is incomplete. This, of course, is a statement sure to spark immediate rebuttal. Parents may enforce gender socialization upon their children, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t love them fully, right?
I’m obsessed with the second half of the quote - the idea that to gender someone is an act of possession. I think about self-proclaimed “Boy-Moms” and “Daddy’s Girls” and the inevitable fallout when the child begins to exert their independence. I think about heterosexual relationships, which are not only influenced by but contingent upon the unspoken agreement that each partner will uphold a standard of gender conformity. I will pay for dinner, you will wax your entire body. This is natural; this is right; this is love.
I have heard, time and time again, that queer people love differently; that we understand the concept more fully. I don’t think this is inherently true. Our communities are equally as wrought with abuse, neglect, infidelity, and manipulation. But I do think that those of us who (by force or otherwise) take the time to critically examine the love we are taught to desire are more inclined to realize that most of the time, it falls short of really being love at all. We come to discover that love, real love, is something much more complex than a series of exchanges or the fulfillment of expectation. It requires a deep, conscious respect for the personhood of another. And to truly enable the exercise of that personhood, we cannot impose upon them the limitations or requirements of gender.
After all, isn’t that what possession is? To exert control upon another? If I look at my child whom I love3 and tell him, boys don’t cry, I have soiled my love for him. I have placed a boundary around what he can or cannot be, and this has harmed him. If my love for my lover is predicated upon their compliance to the gender boundaries imposed upon them by others, am I not also guilty of constricting them? Am I not, too, attempting possession?
I’ll leave you with one final quote.
“So here it is. My friends call me he, or they. The government and most of my family call me she. The media calls me she, because I don’t trust them enough to request that they do anything else. My lovers call me sweetheart. Or baby. Somewhere in all of that I find myself. These are, after all, only words.”
- Ivan E. Coyote, Gender Failure
Adab refers to customs and etiquette that display respect and morality.
If you haven’t read Ibn ‘Arabi, that’s your homework. No one writes about love like he did.
I don’t actually have a child. At this point, I am essentially my own child.