Dear God, the truths that spill from the cupboard.
All these years I thought I was of that boringly straight persuasion, the heterosexual.
But now I discover I'm a "cisgender''.
It's too much.
Lock me away.
When I first struck this queer new word, I thought a cisgender must be more than slightly different.
Cisgenders wouldn't merely bat for the other side, they'd play an entirely different sport.
I'm wrong, of course.
An up-with-the-trends web dictionary informs me a "cisgender'' is a chap who's reached the conclusion he's a bloke.
Or a woman who grows up in broad agreement with the doctor's pronouncement: "It's a girl.''
If we were very, very stupid, we might also define a cisgender as someone who's "normal''.
But such accuracy is too risky.
The use of "normal'' in the context of "sex'' and "gender'' invites a public stoning by the mullahs of correctness.
Why do we need this exceedingly ugly new word?
Don't "straight'' or "heterosexual'' do the job already?
They do, but cisgender has arrived because transgender rights have become the grand new cause, and transgender is a word that demands a tidy flipside.
Both prefixes are Latin - cis meaning "on this side'', and trans "on the other side''.
They're far kinder opposites than "bent'' and "straight''.
If you think being called "cisgender'' is slightly disparaging, that it's a word born from dislike, you're probably right.
On the web, "white'', "male'', and "oppressor'' are frequently found either side of cisgender.
But there's more.
We also have a new non-gender honorific.
"Mx'', pronounced mix or mux, is for the person who feels neither Mr nor Ms.
In Britain, its use is becoming more common among the larger organisations, always more vulnerable to the slavery of political correctness.
When form-filling for many British government departments, or banks like Halifax and Natwest, you may now circle Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, or Mx.
This year's Australian census gives sensitive Ockers the choice of being Male, Female or Other.
And Facebook now offers new users more than 50 gender options.
So you think remembering your password is trouble enough?
Now, dear reader, when registering on Facebook, you'd best recall whether you are Non-Binary, Two-Spirit, Genderqueer, Bigender, Transperson, or Intersex.
You may not, however, title yourself Reverend, Father or Professor.
All this will be hell for the classifieds online dating sites.
In what section do they list: "Professional Non-Binary of independent means seeks refined Gender Fluid Protestant. (Pet lover preferred).''
A pressing practical issue for the Mxs is toilet entitlement - and it's a battlefield.
North Carolina has decreed that genders use public toilets for the sex stated on their birth certificates.
(Outraged civil liberties professionals are taking the state to the US Supreme Court.)
The Obama Administration holds the opposite view, and directs that public schools have transgenders use the toilet of their choice.
(Frothbugglers of the Right call for the President's impeachment.)
Meanwhile, Otago University's Student Union is trying gender neutral toilets.
I'm unsure of the layout of the porcelain in such a facility.
But a spokesperson says the GNT is there because "A lot of people don't identify with binary gender experience surveillance''.
Somewhere in that sentence lies a mystery seeking to escape.
Sex is a tough enough minefield for the straight, so it's cloddish not to appreciate how much more difficult life becomes for people who find they're different.
We need to listen.
For all that, there is a magnificent absurdity to a weird new world of 50 genders caught up in the issues of the non-binary toilet.
I'm already caught short myself.
Last week, I finished a market research report on Chinese tourists.
Lamentably, it divides interviewees into only two sex categories - Male or Female.
Now these Chinese have flown home, every last Mr, Ms, and Mx of them, so there's no way of checking for non-binaries we missed.
My excuse for this omission is there's no Mx in Mandarin. Please tell me I'm right.
- John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
