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That Which Divides Us.

My daughter was looking through posts on facebook the other night when she came across a term she didn't know:  Cisgendered.  I didn't have a clue either, so we looked it up.

Cisgender and cissexual (often abbreviated to simply cis) describe related types of gender identity where an individual's self-perception of their gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

So we need a term to describe people who are okay with either having male sex organs or female sex organs.  

I look around our country and watch politicians and regular people alike assign everyone they know to a group.  White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Male, Female, and now we have....Cisgender.

There used to be a time when we encouraged our children not to label people based on the circumstances of their birth.  We told our kids not to judge a book by it's cover.  Now, all we do is separate our society into groups based on skin color, religion, and it appears, sexual orientation.   Now according to all those people fighting for transgender rights, I am obligated to qualify myself as cisgender?  

Take a look at all those groups above.  Instead of seeing what's different about them, try finding what's the same.  Let me help you.

We all have a mother and a father. (Whether or not they were good parents, or even parents who were around, it's a basic biological fact that you need both to exist.  Crappy parents is a post for another time.)

We all have a beating heart and a brain.

If you cut us, we all bleed.

We all have fears, hopes, goals and dreams.

We've all smiled, and we've all cried.

We all have unique personalities.

And yet, we divide ourselves, every day, based on one characteristic.  Whether it's skin color or religion, political party or sexual orientation, we separate ourselves into groups.

I am not cisgendered.  I'm a person.  Just because I am a girl, who is perfectly okay with being a girl, doesn't mean I need to be separated into some group, just so that some other group has a name for me.

I am a white female, stay at home mother, of both Christian and Libertarian values.  But beyond every single one of those individual things you will look at to label me, I AM A PERSON.  Same as you.  Same as my neighbors.  Same as people who live on the other side of the world.  

And as far as this country we live in?  We have one more thing in common.  We are all Americans.

You want to end divisiveness and hate and bigotry?  

Stop.Labeling.People.

Period.

The End.


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