ATTACK OF THE BRAIN –
What do you do when you discover your brain is working to sabotage you? It’s not fun. Actually, it’s mortifying.
To set the scene – I am sitting with a beloved trans friend, chatting, and I realize that in the back of my mind, I’m judging her without even realizing it. “She would be much prettier if she wore makeup, and got some different glasses,” I hear myself think. I am completely appalled.
Where did I get a 1950s-style gender-repressive brain?
I’m heartbroken. Did I just actually assess her worth as a woman as lacking because of her appearance? I love this young woman, and yet here is my brain is bringing out rules for what she needs to do to be a woman “the right way.” And by corollary, does that mean my brain thinks there are rules for everyone required to perform being a human correctly?
You have to understand how intense the awfulness of this feeling is. I’m a feminist, an ally to people of all modes of gender expression. I don’t wear make-up. And I would never consciously think this thing that just came out of my brain, completely unbidden, completely unwanted and completely consciously rejected.
This is one of the reasons the church’s Equity Ministry is so important to me, and to all of us. I may have grown up rejecting these societal norms, whether of gender or race or any other structural “ism”, but it’s been part of the air I’ve breathed, invisible and unavoidable. Discovering that is both embarrassing and humbling.
I want to do what I can to break that pattern, to find ways to let us all get in the habit of looking at our history, our current experiences, even the media we consume, and holding them up to the light to see what ideas may have snuck in. Are there foundational falsehoods that have corrupted our sense of self-worth? Identity? What we deserve in life?
If we can do this, to train ourselves to look at some of our underlying, unquestioned assumptions, we can expose the hidden messages we have breathed in unawares. Then our conscious minds can help us become the people we think we already are. I hope the Equity Ministry can help us move in this direction.
Kitty – she/her
This is the first of a series of columns from the Equity Ministry. We’ll be taking turns writing about the issues that move us, and to let you know what events will be coming up. In this way, we hope to keep the conversation going as we work to find better ways to be together.
