Between your [social] legs

Sometime in the past, B was born..

B breathes, welcoming the air external to the host person.

A: ‘What is between your legs, little one?’

B cries.

A: ‘Congratulations, it’s a.. >insert binary pronoun here< .’

B cries, again.

A: ‘What are you going to call >insert corresponding binary pronoun, here< ?’

Sometime later, after B has spent years experiencing on earth..

B: ‘I still breathe, and cry. The questioning human at my birth got the pronoun wrong. It was a mistake to think that my anatomy somehow directly corresponded to a distinctive set of social behaviours. Or, knowingly or unknowingly, any attempts to make that the case. Other determining factors which continue to make me me, were quite underestimated, overlooked or ignorantly bypassed. As were possibility and actuality.’

B Pauses.

B: ‘Yes, I have something between my legs, and person/human/homo sapien is my name’

A: ‘What is between your.. social.. legs, big one?’

B: ‘A variety of focal points for questioning. And I may not be one, but many. And why the assumption of ‘I’, anyway? But that’s for another time.’

 

Untitled (titled)

Human

being

human

being

human

being

human

 

When our eyes meet

When our eyes meet in the street

I acknowledge us as fellow human beings:

Conscious, breathing, multifaceted entities

Navigating life’s variables in this vast space

Our existence, in this moment

I acknowledge us as nothing more, or less, than equals

 

C. L. Ayre Being who shares words. Being who breathes. Being whose eyes may meet yours in the street. Being who was born. Human. Person.