To the old women in the bible belt who’ve known me all my life, I look like a boy. I have always looked like a boy. I do this without ever having to think about it.

I wear button downs and cargo shorts, and my hair is cut short for the summer. The legs are hairy and I don’t care. If I wear makeup, it’s to cover the acne when it gets so bad that I don’t want to see it in the mirror anymore.

This wasn’t a big deal when I was thirteen, but now I’m twenty-three. The Bible belt ladies are starting to make comments. They don’t ask. They just drop hints.

“What do you think about this they/them business? Don’t you think it’s going a bit far?”

Whenever I can, whenever I have energy, I try to plant seeds of understanding. I can’t shake the feeling that this should not be my job. But if I don’t do this, then I don’t know who else will.

I tell them that there have always been androgynous people. Always. They often grudgingly concede that this is true.

I tell them about the evolution of language, how words change and take on different meanings over time.

I talk about how our species uses books and poetry and theatre and art to describe what we experience. We use language to communicate about who we are, what we stand for. We have always done this. It’s one of the single most triumphant accomplishments of the human race. In our brief time on this spinning ball of rock and dust, we have made a lot of mistakes. We have also created fine characters with stories worth telling, stories that are worth telling with exactly the right words.

I talk about the disconnect between social norms in different generations – I compare this to traveling in a different part of the world with different customs. I talk about calculus, about rates of change in social norms over time. I talk about old traditions, buried by the church, I talk about new traditions, new entries in the dictionary, new ways of being polite.

I extend all the compassionate patience I can muster to the well-meaning folks who don’t understand because they’ve never had a reason to learn. My chest aches for all of the people who keep getting badly hurt by that misunderstanding.

The old bible belt ladies tell me it makes them uncomfortable to be in a room with someone who’s not quite like anything they’ve ever known. I ask them to imagine if almost every room was full of people who felt uncomfortable because you had the audacity to be comfortable in your own skin out in public.

All the years that will take off a life in one afternoon.

The old bible belt ladies don’t understand. But most of them are mothers who love their children with all the fierce love that it takes to never stop caring for someone they brought kicking and screaming into this world, no matter who they turn out to be.

Sometimes I catch them off guard in a moment of unexpected sympathy. And sometimes all the confusion and disgust comes flooding back in, and I feel like maybe it wasn’t worth it to try

but it was

and sometimes I don’t have the energy to say anything, and I just – make my cowardly excuses and leave, and feel nauseous all the way home.

I am learning to appreciate the company of people who don’t need to exchange words in order to understand.

I am so lucky to have a mother who will hug me and tell me that she loves me the way that I am. She doesn’t even completely know what that is, because I still don’t have exactly the right words to tell her. She just loves me, and she’s on my side no matter what that turns out to be. That’s a gift.

She is a lady who grew old in the bible belt, but she’s not an old bible belt lady.