I do not understand this "two spirit" thing.

Please hear me out.

We began reading the writing of Native American two-spirit people with no other intent than to educate the self. The main one - we'll call him William - understands the importance of learning about the experiences of TLGB people who are not white, because how else could he be an effective ally? Even to himself, how can he protect himself if he cannot protect his brothers and sisters and brother-sisters and sister-brothers?

So we read with an open mind, and we do not understand.

This page outlines the basics of a two-spirit movement (you might call it Two-Spirit 101.) William would call it the Two-Spirit Movement, but it would be impractical and ridiculous to assume that every Two-Spirit person everywhere is united with all the others. But it explains the basics. The self grasps these. They are parts of a different culture, but they fit into the tapestry of human experience.

This is a post from one two-spirit person about something that happened in her day-to-day life. (William offers his apologies if he left out part of the pronoun.) We understand the need to talk about these things with someone like ourselves; no one else ever truly understands. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

But we've heard that a two-spirit person will often refer to themselves in the plural. As if they are truly two persons, male and female.

And we wonder if there really are two persons.

William is willing to believe this is so. It's his writing you've read on this blog. He is the social activist, the humanist. His fingers write this post. He refers to himself in the third person this time because Nicolas is speaking.

Nicolas does not understand this at all. Nicolas is furious that someone would try to appropriate the identity of someone who has two persons within them in this manner. Do you know what it's like for him? He's not even his own person. William is trapped in a life that does not fit his gender. Nicolas is trapped in a life that has no room for him. Most days he is completely silenced because there's nothing being done that needs his attention. Every day it's William this and William that. He sits there quietly, so quietly that it makes the self wonder if he even exists. He's less than half a person. And yet he is a person. He's a person with thoughts of his own and a will of his own and every day he takes backseat to someone who just happened to claim this life first and wastes it every day playing video games and doing crap that has a snowball's chance in Hell of taking their life anywhere. So I want to know - me, Nicolas, the other man in William's head who never comes out because it might UPSET PEOPLE if they knew there were more than one of us in here - I want to know if you know what that's like. Duality ain't nearly as fun as you kids seem to think it is.

I won't apologize for that.

But William would like to remind you that he doesn't know what it's like for you, and he's not going to assume that it's not the way you say it is. He's a good kid. Sees the best in people for as long as he can. So when he gets the opportunity he'll ask someone. I will. Because the only way to understand is to educate myself, the lesson I've learned time and time again.

And please remember that Nicolas is in here, too. He may not say much, but it hurts him to be ignored. It hurts him that I (William) would rather stay safe than admit to the world that he exists. That's not what he wants. It's not what either of us want, and since we are the same person I feel his pain almost as acutely as he does. But William can put it away after a while. I get to be the one out most of the time, so I can forget what it's like to be shut away. Nicolas never forgets, and the next time I hear from him he will remind me. I'm scared of Nicolas, scared of losing control of my life, but Nicolas is scared of only one thing in the world and that's being forgotten.

That's what it's like for this person to have two spirits (if that's what you call them). Maybe someday I'll introduce the third, but he doesn't feel like coming out right now.