Is it really?

some things will never change

Sometimes I blithely assert that “everything is pretend” which is another way of saying, “it’s all made up” which is another way of saying “everything (e.g. gender, time, money, you name it) is a construct.”

Your mental disorder diagnosis? It’s made up. Not because it doesn’t describe something meaningful about your experience, it likely does. But what it says in the DSM now may not have been there 70 years ago. Or maybe it was considered a disorder and slowly made its way off the books entirely (hello homosexuality).

It’s made up. It’s a metaphor. It has no inherent meaning. It means what we say it means.

Made up meaning is still very real in its effects. Almost any queer could tell you discrimination doesn’t require a diagnosis.

So what use is it to say that it’s all pretend?

It reveals that “That’s just the way it is” is not immutable. That perhaps we’ve confused This is how things are with This is how things have to be.

Is it really?

If my mug slips from my hand it’s going to crash to the floor. Gravity is an observable phenomenon. You can’t just decide that a dropped object won’t fall. But we often conflate what we’re truly stuck with, with what’s really really sticky. Even so-called universal moral principles—like the prohibition of murder—are not actually universal, or they couldn’t be transgressed. They’re social constructs. We have some choice about them, even when we’re deciding, implicitly or explicitly, to accept them.

Asking “Is it really?” questions what we’ve taken for granted. It can show us the water we’re immersed in: Is it really what it seems to be? Is it really the only option? Is it really inalterable?

When we get enough perspective on our context we have more ways to operate within it. Even if we can’t exit the water, maybe we can see other possibilities for moving in it.

I work with queer couples looking to create more possibilities in their relationships. Get in touch if that interests you.