Okay, so some cis folks are feeling ... stuff. I don't know, I'm not cis, so you'll have to tell me. But stuff. In relation to a Wonkette commenter named Phantom Stranger blowing off steam about the nonspecific everything having to do with cissexism in this moment.
There's a quote from Kahlil Gibran, a middle eastern Arab Christian, which says something like:
You are born owing nothing to anyone, and everything to everyone.
The idea -- a difficult one -- is about balancing personal responsibility with larger duty. No, as an individual cis person you don't owe me or Phantom or anyone else some specific make good for all the cissexist crap in the world. You. as an individual owe nothing to any one other individual.
But we as humans can't get by without each other. I write. I don't farm. I share ideas, emotions, hopefully inspiration. I don't grow potatoes or soy beans or Oreo fruit. I need others to survive, and I owe them, the nebulous everyone, a decent world in which they can thrive.
Phantom is in the feels right now: Go with them, if you dare. It's not bad to ask for clarification and it's not bad to share your own feelings as a cis person if you are one. No one is calling you the sinner responsible for this or that wound to Phantom's heart, or to mine.
We are not better than you. We owe the world to you as well. We want you to flourish and feel joy. We want you to nourish your bodies and feed your minds. We want you to feel the crisp discomfort that arrives as you outgrow your current skin. And if, at times, we feel our own crisis and call attention to it, remember that you do not owe it to any one of us to meet us in that valley of despair.
If you can't get there today, that's fine. If you can't get there this week, that's fine. If you just don't get trans issues and you're never able to hold the hand of a gender outsider whose fist has grown bloody from pounding on a firmly closed door, you still are loved. You still are valued. You still are owed the world.
Be there for the trans people in your lives, if you can. But if you can't, do what you are able, when you are able, for the people you are able to aid.
You owe nothing to any one of us, much as you might wish to pay a debt when you hear the desperation of one person's cry.
The desire to pay that debt, to be free of others' pain, that's a false vision of what it means to be human in this world. You can't ever pay the debt. As long as we share this life, we owe each other the world.
You owe everyone the world, which can feel overwhelming, but is not. For our meditations on Gibran's words teach us that we are part of the everyone who is owed life, and health, and flourishing.
If you can't help another today. That's fine. If you can't even listen to someone else today without costing yourself more than the other receives, turn your ears, close your eyes. Taking care of yourself is part of paying the debt we each owe to this world.
So listen, if you can. But if you can't, it's no failing. Not merely because there's always tomorrow, but much more importantly because as long as you live, there is a you to concern yourself with.
I don’t understand how most cis people think that trans issues don’t affect them. Any right that can be taken from one group of people can be taken from others.
Then a lawyer said, But what of our Laws, master?
And he answered:
You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.
But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness? What of the one who cannot dance who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters lawbreakers?
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge their laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weather-vane shall direct your course?
What man’s law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man’s prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man’s iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man’s path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?