Mad Honey

by Jodi Picoult

People want the world to be simple. But gender isn’t simple, much as some might want it to be. The fact that it’s complicated—that there’s a whole spectrum of ways of being in the world—is what makes it a blessing. Surely nature—or god, or the universe—is full of miracles and wild invention and things way beyond our understanding, no matter how hard we try. We aren’t here on earth in order to bend over backward to resemble everybody else. We’re here to be ourselves, in all our gnarly brilliance.

I think sometimes about all the strange and wonderful things the world contains—the blue potato, the Venus flytrap, the duck-billed platypus. If there is room under heaven for all of these miraculous things, couldn’t there possibly be room for me?