Has anyone heard of Taylor Swift? For the uninitiated, she’s a pop star and savvy business woman who has won about every award a musician can win, is followed by an extremely devoted group of fans, and sadly, by some very verbal haters. I bring her up not because I have her 2019 hit “You Need to Calm Down” stuck in my head (it's a fun and catchy pride anthem and pointed repudiation of the attacks on trans folks) but because a Swiftie and mother named Jordan LeVeck took on Taylor’s haters on social media, writing:
I want to remind you of something.
Your children are… watching you judge a woman for literally just EXISTING and taking up space happily.”[i]
I came across her post as I sat with my morning coffee scrolling, and more than a year later, her post sticks with me. I remember it whenever I see people being judged for just existing. For just taking up space happily.
I thought about all the ways we are taught not to take up space with our authentic selves. And how we are taught to police one another when we do take up space, even someone like Taylor Swift -- a temporarily able bodied white cis woman who is a staple of mainstream culture.
Our reading today was by Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, a queer disability activist, from her book Loving Your Own Bones. What a powerful description of that moment her brand new mobility scooter "clipped the corner of a cardboard pantyhose display and found myself suddenly surrounded by a thousand runaway nylons in their little plastic balls. I wanted the earth to crack open and swallow me up, scooter and all." When the earth did not swallow her up, "that moment when my body on wheels was so obviously too big for the place I was allotted" she realized that she would have to take up space. Not because she was hungry for the limelight, but because her body, her scooter, takes up more space than society allotted, and just to inhabit her own body was going to require more space than she had taken up before.
It is hard, right now, to take up space if you are trans, if you are queer. The change in political climate means that many people feel more empowered to be haters, including the legislators who are supposed to be serving the needs of all their constituents, but instead are scapegoating those whose gender requires space than the strict binary boxes of some imaginary norm.
Back when I was growing up, most queer folks were in the closet because they knew they would face discrimination and even jail if they claimed that space to be their authentic selves. In 1978 Harvey Milk called on all queer people to come out, and gradually more and more of us did. The rights we have today come in no small part to all the LGBTQAI+ people who bravely came out, and took up space.
And… and…
There are real challenges to being out, in fact some new laws and executive orders would legally send people back into the closet – The white house has 2 orders that require you to use the gender on your birth certificate on your legal ID[ii], [ LAMBDA legal has a great resource on how to navigate this ] Several states such as Montana, south Dakota are requiring folks to use the bathroom of the gender on your birth certificate, and a number of other states are restricting bathroom access in government owned buildings, including schools. [iii] More bills are in the legal pipeline.
How shall we respond as a congregation? Our Unitarian Universalist values of Equity, Generosity, Interdependence, Justice, Pluralism, and Transformation, and Love. Call us to continue to stand up for the most vulnerable, to make space for people to be their authentic selves. First we do that here, in our little community. We must continue to be committed to making this a space where people of every gender can take up space. We’ve actually been working on this as a community for quite some time, and we’ve made real progress but this is not an achievement one and done, it’s something we must continuously live into – if you are wishing you had more space to be yourself in this church, come talk to me or someone on your board of trustees- let’s talk, and listen, and become the community we want to see in the world.
As UUs we also partner with organizations like UU Justice PA[iv] to fight this hateful legislation. We show up at one of the many pride events in our surrounding communities with respect and gratitude for the great diversity of people in our community. The reason Pride is traditionally flamboyant and colorful, is because very early on the organizers wanted “to develop courage, and feelings of dignity and self-worth” in the queer community.[v] Our congregations must “come out” again and again in solidarity and support for the LGBTQAI+ members and neighbors.
But each of us, individually, are called to discern how and where you want to take up space in any given moment.
Because we don’t just come out once, we have to make choices everywhere we go. Is this a place I can take up space? Maybe you’re loud and proud with everyone you know, but now you have to travel to Idaho, and you are feeling like you want to put safety first. Or maybe you really take up space around your dear friends that really know you. Or maybe you are still trying to figure out who you are, and you are not feeling loud and proud just now. That’s okay too. I wonder, can you just quietly give yourself the space you need? I’m talking to queer and straight, cis and nonbinary, every soul here- Can you just .. in this moment… see and honor yourself just exactly as you are. Can you allow yourself to take up space in your own heart, all the space you need. Maybe sit up a little taller if you feel it, give yourself that space to be yourself. Each of us here this morning is totally unique, no one like you has ever lived, nor ever will again. You are holy.
Our service ended with the beautiful Glitter Blessing written by Caitlin Collier Coillberg, I would encourge you too to anoint yourself with something sparkly to "marvel at...how fabulous we are"
