An act of creation
After reading our Friend Robin Waterston’s recent call for the sharing of knowledge (Letters, 9 January), I found myself wondering what knowledge I might have to share on the topic of gender, and, in turn, to what sharing from others I am able to keep myself open.
What new information could possibly convince me that I am wrong about my gender?
I’m afraid that there isn’t any, because, to me, gender is like faith. I am non-binary in the same way that I am a Friend – on a level that is beyond objective evidence. Just as there is no blood test for Quakerism, I don’t think there’s any medical test that can truthfully show you what my gender is.
If I behave towards others in a violent or hateful way, then I should like to be challenged, as those are not the actions of someone who believes as I say I do.
The same sort of challenge to my gender, however, would diminish both femininity and masculinity in a way that rolls back decades, perhaps centuries, of progress towards gender equality. You saw me wearing a skirt to Meeting for Worship once, therefore I must be a woman? Is womanhood genuinely so small or manhood so easily negated?
Truly, the only thing I wish for Friends to consider is the sentiment offered by Akiva ben Joseph, who was a leading contributor to the Mishnah, as interpreted by Julian K Jarboe: ‘God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.’
Ell Conner-Maling
To a tea
I have been so grateful to the Friend of late for presenting a balanced dialogue on so many issues and upholding the spiritual dimension on which we are founded. At times of great change and upheaval in Quaker structures, this is so important.
We are in large part how we relate to others.
Imagine my shock therefore on reading that someone, during the visit of the police to Westminster Meeting House, felt pride in not offering the police a cup of tea when they made one for themself; they felt that small act was offering resistance!
When the Campbells arrived at the MacDonald home on a very cold winter snowfell, they were fed and given dry clothes. Hospitality. The horror at what happened next is remembered for centuries, not because they murdered their hosts and drove them out to die in the snow, but because they violated and rebuffed the hospitality they had received.
What does it mean to see that of God in everyone? What is nonviolent action?
Margaret Roy
