The Kid in the Candy Shop

At the conference this past weekend, I accidentally found myself in a group therapy workshop that aimed to help us find our inner guide, which would lead us to a happier life. As much as I recognize that therapy's a great thing for a lot of people, it's just been a terrible fit for me every time I've come into contact with it. So this was my least favorite hour from the whole conference... but it succeeded for me in one thing.

One part of the workshop tried to get us to understand different subjects through a variety of lenses, which we would then embody and weigh deeply within our beings in order to judge their various degrees of worth. Most of this was having to imagine "Life" through the perspective of "Knife" versus "Midnight" versus "Outer Space" or things like that, but there was one configuration where they had a group imagine "Gender" through "Kid in a Candy Shop" versus "Rules and Boxes" and a number of other things. Obviously, these categories are not new ideas to me at all, but in combination with the medical paradigm shift I described in my TEC blog from yesterday, I was left with a renewed depth of perspective.

There is a certain extent to which the queer community revolves around a sentiment commonly expressed in such delicate terms as something like, "I don't give a fuck what you think, fuck off, I can do whatever the hell I fucking want. Na-na-na-na-boo-boo I'M FABULOUS, BITCH." I imagine something like this:

Now, I get that this is helpful to an extent, especially in the face of extreme prejudice - as a defense mechanism, and as a way to rally around common experiences we kept quiet for so long - but once any kind of substantial network has developed that could help us to look beyond that, I feel like there are better places to go.

The Kid in the Candy Shop model feels like you don't have to care about what other people are thinking because it's blatantly invalid or irrelevant (it's your gender and sexuality, so you're the authority in question, not them), not because it's part of a nauseating hate war of defense and intolerance. Obviously, that requires the assumption of access to basic physical safety, which is sadly not a thing pretty frequently. But when you can allow yourself to do whatever you want with regard to gender and sexuality on a whim, without harboring fear within your own self, you free yourself to be stronger than whatever opposition you might be facing. It is one of the most powerful movements of maturity that I have observed and begun to experience for the queer soul - it's most definitely inspired by the words and ways of queer elders I've had the blessing to learn from.

It's not that I don't appreciate media criticism or social justice movements. Obviously, those are both things I am deeply passionate about. But I have also found that we, as a queer culture, often get very wrapped up in spiraling negativity, where the entire substance of a community can become what ISN'T WRONG with us or what IS WRONG with the world. It's hard to remember, sometimes, that we have community and pride and all that because what we are is legitimately awesome and exciting in its own right. We don't merely exist as opposition to cishet society.

Last night, a friend of mine was over, and we were inspired by the King David costume my mother was in for Vacation Bible School to screw with gender a little. She is also queer, and a portion of our conversation that afternoon had revolved around the various extents to which we related and didn't relate to femininity/masculinity/androgyny.

You would not believe the childlike glee on her face as I put a beard on her chin. The kind of excitement, exhilaration, freedom, and plain straightforward joy that genderfucking gives to so many people of queer persuasion, whether definitionally "cis" or not, is exactly what I imagine when I think of the kid in the candy shop.

Watch this imagining the Candy Man as either God or Nature (as per your fancy), the candy as gender and sexuality, the storekeeper as a positive-cultured queer community, and poor little Charlie as a kid without access to the closet door.

"Listen, Wonka's got a new one today!"
"What is it?!"
"This is called... a scrumdidiliumtious bar." (If you know what I mean.)
"Scrumbigeldyunctions bar? How does he do it?"
"My dear boy, do you ask a fish how it swims?"
"No."
"Or a bird how it flies?"
"No."
"No siree! They do it because they were born to do it."

Want a lollipop? Awesome! Want chocolate? Awesome! The candymaker makes everything they bake satisfying and delicious. Who can take a rainbow and wrap it in a sigh, soak it in the sun and make a strawberry-lemon pie? Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream, soak up all the sorrow and collect up all the cream? The candy man can, because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good. And the world tastes good because the candy man thinks it should.

Want to bind your chest? Want to draw on a beard? Want to dye your hair pink? Want to plunk your eyebrows and shave your legs? Want to be a hairy beast? Want to kiss someone of the same gender? Want to have tons of kinky sex? Have at it! Whatever you find tasty. As long as you're staying protected/consensual and watching your budget, science and life experience tell us that there's nothing inherently harmful about any of these things. Make sure that you stay healthy and happy, but part of doing that is probably giving yourself the freedom to let go and do these things if you want to. Dive into creation's diversity. God did see that it was good.