I Don't Know...

I've talked about this before and I am sure I'll talk about it again as it comes up A LOT.

Why do people think they hit you with a killing blow in an argument when you say, "I don't know?"

The amount of things that I don't know is massive and grows larger every day. There are things being discovered right now that are upending decades of work in fields that I didn't even know the first thing about to start with let alone how monumentally everything is shifting RIGHT NOW. 

I don't know a lot of stuff.

I do know a few things. And I know about a few more. And even with that a lot of what I know could change based on new information. What I know right now is (hopefully) not the same as what I will know in five or ten years. Even things I'm really solid in my understanding of right now could change as new information comes to light. 

It's okay not to know things. And it's okay to admit you don't know things. But not knowing something doesn't mean you are wrong about what you do know. 

I know that's confusing. As is the abundance of the word know in this piece. I know that too. 

But here's the latest example that has me writing this piece. It's actually a two parter. One is from a good conversation. One is from a discussion that turned into a fuck you.

So I was talking to a friend of mine who also has trans kids. They are in a different space because their kid is still a kid whereas mine is an adult. It's a different experience. I am not trying to fight school administrations while paying attention to the ever shifting legality of getting my child the treatment they need. But I can be an ear. And an if I had to deal with that I would do this. And this is what I think, and where I am sort of thing. In part of the discussion I said, "I will never fully understand what Katie is going through. I'm not trans. I just can't." And they agreed. We aren't trans. We can be supportive of them, and what they are dealing without ever fully understanding what that is like. That's actually the easy part.

Now parallel conversation and I had someone ask me what I would do if in a few years Katie changed her mind. If she decided to detransition. I said that I would do the exact same thing that I did when she told me she was trans, I'd support her in any way she needed me to. And so they followed up with their gotcha moment. So what I was saying was that I didn't know for sure that Katie was a woman! I said that wasn't what they asked me. They asked me what I would do if she decided to detransition and I answered that. As far as the other I know what Katie knows. She knows who she is and she has told me that. I believe she knows herself better than anyone else can. So they followed up with but you never thought of her as a woman before. Right. I didn't, I didn't know she was trans. And they pounced. YOU DIDN'T KNOW! So you can't know now! 

To which I replied, If you want to have a real discussion on this, I'm here. If you are just looking to make weird gotcha points because I didn't know something that I know now then we're done.

They tried again to point out that because I didn't know she was trans, and she didn't know she was trans, and if she decided she wasn't trans anymore I would follow her lead, that that meant she isn't trans at all. I pointed out that their argument was a hypothetical. If she decided to detransition. Which she hasn't done, nor has she made any sort of move that would make me think she would. They weren't asking about the nature of being trans even, the questions were all about supporting your child, even if you didn't fully understand what they were going through. I don't know what it's like to be trans. I do know what it means to be a supportive parent.

I know a lot of things. But what I don't know is so much vaster than that. 

But you don't have to know everything to be supportive. 

You don't have to know everything to move forward in life. 

And it's okay not to know things. And to say I don't know. 

Only people who aren't interested in ever learning something new think it's a gotcha moment to get someone to admit they don't know something. 

I do know I'll never have to have that discussion with that person ever again. That's a thing I do know. I also know that they will somehow feel like they won some sort of argument by me sending them to the cornfield. And that's okay, they can think that if they like. It's okay to be wrong. I know that too.