What's my gender?

Before you were born, were you girl or boy?
And after you die, what then?
When a cold and starving, hand reaches out from the darkness after being offered food
Are you troubled by not knowing if the hand giving belongs to a male or female?

I knew a man once who had cancer of the balls
They just kept growing until the doctor had to cut them off
Then what? Should he be cast out?

Not a real man, not anymore

Lets make him wear skirts

Her

It
lets gather around in a circle

And laugh at it

And throw rocks at it

Like good little Christians

My mother, a few years back, she had cancer of the ovaries
And the doctor had to cut them out
The full Monty: womb, tubes, eggs, all gone
Now she takes female hormone pills every day

Just like the other strange girls with no ovaries
Trannies and hijras and hookers and freaks
It was traumatic for all of us because we didn't know if she was still a real woman or not

Really, we had to have counseling

We needed help deciding which pronouns to use

It's a matter of simple social politeness
If you say you're a he, you're a he

And if I say I'm a she, I'm a she
And if anyone says otherwise, that's kind of weird

Because what business is it of theirs?
Does it matter?

My gender?
Of course it matters

To me. And a little, perhaps, to my lover
But not to anyone else

And man or woman, there's one thing that really does matter

To all genders

To all beings
Not forgetting to be yourself
Be human.

For our true nature, all of us,
Boys, girls, and all rainbows in between
Our deepest and truest identity
From long, long before we were ever conceived
To the longest time after we pass
And most particularly, right now
Is not man, nor woman, but simply this:
Human
That's who I am

I think if you look, really look, deep enough inside yourself
Beyond all the pain

Beyond the separation

Beyond all the division into boy/girl, black/white, me/you
You might just find
That's who you are too
You're human

That's the only real gender
Anything other than human is really queer
And not in a good way.