We will start with a brief digression. We picked up our eight year old granddaughter from her camp bus yesterday afternoon. My wife asked her, as we drove her to her house, whether she had made any new friends at camp this year. She thought a minute and told us she had made six new friends. That seemed like success. She went on to tell us that her best new friend wasn’t a girl or a boy. Her best new friend was non-binary.

We didn’t ask a lot of details, but we were told that her non-binary friend goes by her middle name, which is non gender-based, and that her friend is a they, not a he or a she, and that our granddaughter has trouble remembering to use they, but she is trying and getting better at it.

I have no real comment beyond what I have said, but I want to remind you that these are 8 year olds at summer day camp.

End of digression. Or maybe not. I am pretty ignorant about all of this. What does it mean for an 8 year old to be non-binary? Is there more than one answer to that question?

Now, I take it that a non-binary person (as opposed to a gay person for example) is someone whose gender is neither male or female, but some sort of combination. And one is born non-binary. Is that right? And because non-binary has a combination of male and female characteristics, two non-binary people will not necessarily have the same characteristics?

If you are born non-binary, what happens on your birth certificate? Does it have to see male or female? And as you progress through your childhood, how are you classified? What teams can you play on? What locker rooms and bathrooms do you use? And what about sexual preferences? Etc.

Do you see how little I know about all of this?

I also assume that non-binary is not the same as trans. Am I right there, too? I guess I don’t even know what trans means. Could I – a cis male, as they say – decide I want to be a woman today and get surgical treatment or hormone treatment or whatever it is tomorrow that would make me into a woman? Would there be some things that women who are born women could do that I couldn’t?

Or, do you have to have something of the female in you (even if it’s a psychological something) in order to become trans? And if I am a male who thinks I am a female and I get surgery to convert to being a female, but I only get surgery, say, on my upper half, not my lower half, what am I then? Am I non-binary? Am I classified with this 8 year old who is self-defined as non-binary?

Now trans and non-binary are radical (I don’t know why I use that word – I am sure there are better ones) conditions, in a sense. But then there are people who are cis, who are gay, who are bi-sexual, who are lesbian. Are those totally different categories from categories like trans and non-binary? Or is there a connection?

And what does it mean to be queer? Are all gays and lesbians queer, or to be queer do you have to have any additional characteristics, physical or psychological? Does everyone who is gay think of themselves as queer? Does it make any difference what they think of themselves?

I know this is not a very intelligent post, and that I sort of rushed through it without the help of Dr. Google, but it does show how little I know about these things in spite of all I see or read. (Okay, I just did turn Dr. Google on and he told me I forgot intersex, asexual, two spirit and questioning.)

What more can I say? Even if I don’t know anything, I am glad right wing Republicans know everything? They sure seem to.