Axar.az presents an article "Ze/Zir/Zirs" by John Samuel Tieman.

Someone appears female. She wants to be called “they/them/their”. I'm confused. Yes, I am a writer who is confused by pronouns. Don't even start me on “ze/zir/zirs”.

In my home, Missouri – for that matter, in the United States – people's brains are imploding over gender identity, over folks who are trans, drag queen story hour at the county library, abortion, books that mention sex and, for that matter, just plain sex. As I write, 49 states have introduced 556 anti-trans bills, according to the “Anti-Trans Legislation Tracker”. Of these, 79 have passed, 373 are still active, and 104 failed. In Missouri, 43 such bills were considered during the last legislative session. Three passed. Then there's this headline I read not long ago. “Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey Promulgates Emergency Regulation Targeting Gender Transition Procedures for Minors”. Gender transition is an emergency, like a 7.8 earthquake? I'm confused. Apparently, so is everyone else. It's probably a bad idea to make laws, regulations, and policies while in the middle of all this confusion.

We live in an age of transition. Everywhere you look, things that seemed stable and unchanging are, indeed, changing. Our vice president is female. White will soon be a minority race in the US. I often listen to the evening news in Spanish. The last wedding my wife and I attended was between two women. “Wikipedia” does what Denis Diderot and the Encyclopedists only dreamed. Occupy Wall Street made it possible, for perhaps the first time since the McCarthy hearings, to openly critique capitalism. Then there's gender. How is it that someone can change their gender? Many states now attempt to control this confusion about gender. Yet confused we are. And afraid.

Fear is like your teacup. The mind can hold one cup of fear. But what if the world inundates you with a gallon of fear? You need some sense of control. A new law might provide a feeling of control, but it's wrong to mistake a passing feeling for a long-term resolution.

No one understands what's going on. We know we are in transition, but a transition to what? It's impossible even to know where we are along the continuum of transition. It's like particle physics. By the time we figure out where the particle is, it's already moved. Virtually everyone was raised with a simple binary sense of gender identity. Male. Female. “Wikipedia” lists 105 gender identities.

Much discussion, regulation and legislation, has focused on trans issues. This speaks to our confusion and fears. Let's be clear about the numbers. According to a study published by the UCLA School Of Law, about 1.6 million Americans over the age of 13 identify as transgender. According to the last census, the US population is 334,233,854. In Missouri, my home, there are about 9,500 adults, 18 and over, who identify as trans. There are not quite 6.2 million Missourians. That means that, unless you watch reruns of “Orange Is The New Black”, you're more likely to see an owl than to see someone trans.

Into all this confusion comes the Missouri General Assembly, what my wife calls “that great brain trust in Jefferson City”. Unlike most of the rest of us, our legislators don't just contemplate their confusion. No, our lawmakers banish the subject of sex. If we don't talk about it, our confusion goes away, right? A new rule in Missouri bans libraries from buying any books that are “pornographic for minors” as defined by state law. In part, Missouri statute 573.010 defines “child pornography” as “material or performance depicting sexual conduct, sexual contact … .” The measure of this is that such material is “patently offensive to the average person”. What could be clearer than banning “sexual conduct”? As for “patently offensive to the average person” – Listen. I love my state. Don't get me wrong. But I also know my people. The average Missourian prefers mixed martial arts to “Macbeth”. These are the same folks who are patently offended by algebra.

So why is all this a problem? People are afraid. But afraid of what? Most likely the usual things. The unknown, the oncoming question, the change. Why do people fear change? I don't know. I do know with certainty that a state of confusion is a bad place to formulate law, regulation, and policy. Ludwig Wittgenstein says, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." John Tieman says, when we're confused, then we listen.