Intermittently, starting in the first season, one of the boys in the show becomes involved with a ‘tranny,’ as seen here (sorry it’s not a great clip – someone lemme know if there’s a higher quality version):

While I was skeptical at first (and my roommate warned me of the “tranny” jokes before I started watching the series) I’m liking the show’s handling of things a lot more than I liked How I Met Your Mother. Because the trans character, Carmen, is totally unapologetic about being trans. In the above clip, Mac says “Is that a penis?” and she replies, “Um, yeah?” And when he says “You lied to me!” she says “No, you lied to me!” (About going to the gym…)

Likewise, in the episode I’m watching (midway through season 3) Carmen again uses Mac’s shallowness to compete with with his, um, shallowness. That is, he’s creeped out by the fact she has a penis. (Shallow!) But he’s drawn to her because she’s hot and plays into his insecurities. (Also shallow!) It’s kind of delightful to watch, particularly because she – even as a trans character – undeniably has the upper hand.

In the same episode, Charlie and Mac get into an argument. Mac thinks Charlie is trying to convince him to stop dating Carmen. Charlie is, in fact, trying to convince Mac to stop murdering people. (Mac’s not a murderer, but Charlie thinks he is. It’s that kind of show.) There’s a big back and forth of “You have to stop this!” “I don’t know if I can!” with both of them completely misunderstanding the situation.

Finally, when Mac breaks up with Carmen, he tries to justify it by saying “I’m not ashamed of you! I’m ashamed with myself,” prompting her to give a really great look of disgust. And then is really cute later when talking about having sex with her, saying “I’ve been doing some reading! She tapes it back – it’s complicated.”

I’m really curious to see how Carmen plays out, as searching for the video I included in this post hinted that she’s still around in later seasons. And while I’m certainly not thrilled with Carmen’s portrayal, I do kinda love her place as a ridiculous character in this show populated entirely by ridiculous characters.

Greetings! Ten years ago, we conducted a short survey of our community’s reactions to the use of descriptive terminology in the professional literature of gender identity issues. Basically, we were interested in reforming the literature so it could speak respectfully about transsexual and transgender persons. To do that, we wanted to find out which terms transsexual and transgender people liked, and which they didn’t like. The results of our study were reported at the 2001 scientific symposium of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), and had an immediate impact on the hundreds of medical and social scientists who were present.

A lot has changed since 2001, and we thought it would be interesting to re-open the survey, collect new data, compare the results 10 years later with the original results, and present our analysis at the 2011 scientific symposium of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (formerly HBIGDA) this September.

We are asking community members to rate and give us their opinions of certain terms which have been used in the literature, and some of the terms put forth by the community itself, so we can communicate the community’s opinions to the members of WPATH and (we hope) more widely in a subsequent academic publication.

There are no physical or psychological risks associated with responding to this survey, and there are no age restrictions for respondents, though we caution participants that some terms offered for your evaluation may be offensive to you or other individuals. The survey has only 8 questions (though most questions have many options to choose from) and should take less than 20 minutes to complete. Please complete it all in one sitting – if you exit the survey before you complete it, your answers will not be saved. The survey is scheduled to close June 28, 2011, so please respond soon!

If you are interested in receiving a copy of the paper which will eventually come from this, you will be given an email address at the end of the survey so you can contact the researchers separate from your responses to this survey. Any communication you initiate with us will not be associated with your survey answers, and no identifying information will be retained. We will treat your email address as confidential and will use it only for distribution of the paper to you. Your answers to the survey also will be treated confidentially, and no data reported in our analysis will be traceable to you.

Here’s the link to the survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8RGBH25

Thank you VERY MUCH for participating in this survey and helping us with our research!!

With Gratitude,
Jamison Green, Jason Cromwell, & Dallas Denny

I’m planning on taking it soon, and will let you know if I have any thoughts.

As a transgender woman, I’ve read a lot of trans fiction. Stories about magical transformations, mutations which cause gender shifts, mind-transfer rays, nanotechnology, forced feminization, sexual domination. You name a way someone could possibly transform from a man to a woman, and some author on some website has probably beaten you to it. And I’ve probably read it: the full range of stories, from enthusiastic transitions of  willing participants to subjugation and rape.

When there is no one like you on TV, when pornography depicts “your kind” as a freak and a fetish item, when your story is absent from books and movies, you make do with what you can. Not all of the stories I’ve read were well-written. Not all of them cast trans people in a positive light, let alone a realistic one. But that hunger to find ourself in the world exists in all of us. Finding our own identity in stories certainly isn’t the only reason we read, tell stories, watch movies, see plays. But it’s a big one, the desire to find that resonance of ourself in someone else’s tale.

The first story I read that was definitively ‘trans fiction’ was The Saga of Tuck (online at http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes/writings.htm), a story about a teenage boy who begins what seems like cross-dressing but ultimately turns into a much bigger exploration of his (her? 142 chapters in and its still uncertain) identity. I stumbled across it as a young teen, and was amazed that characters could exist who asked questions like my own: what does it mean to be a boy? a girl? do I want to be a boy? what would it mean to want to be a girl? I fantasized about what it would be like to have someone in my life helping me dress like a girl, act like a girl, be a girl.

I’ve probably read hundreds of stories since finding Tuck – stories about forced feminization or unwilling transitions, ridiculous scenarios and poorly written dialog, ranging form the offensive to simply bad – to find the few gems of trans fiction that do exist. Whateley Academy (hosted at crystalhall.org) has stories about teenage superheros, including the stories of Jade and Ayla, two characters who – in very different ways – undergo their own transitions and have to deal with what it’s like to have a body that isn’t developing the way you want. Bridges (http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/20612/bridges) is a rare example in the trans fiction universe – a story about a trans woman, who is transitioning willingly, without any magical or supernatural help. Simply a good read about a character dealing with many of the same issues I face every day. From another perspective, These Lives We Seek (http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes/select/TheseLivesWeSeek.txt) deals with a college-aged journalist discovering her best friend is trans, and talks about the politics of being ‘out.’ These and others (some of which I’ve linked to and written about at http://fridaythang.com/blog/trans-fiction/) have helped me feel like I’m not alone in the world, even when friends and family might not understand what I’m going through.

So what about Orlando: A Biography? Is it trans fiction? The story of a man who – a third of the way through the book – awakes in the body of a woman? (Hopefully I’m not ruining that part for you, but you should really know that already.)

The timing for Orlando to be ‘trans fiction’ couldn’t be better. The German word ‘Transsexualismus” was coined in 1923. The first documented instance of sex reassignment surgery was performed just two years after Orlando was published, in 1930, twenty years before Christine Jorgenson became an international sensation with headlines proclaiming “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty!” Someone as interested in male and female roles as Woolf could easily have heard of such research and development coming from mainland Europe.

Alas, it has been pretty firmly established the titular Orlando is based off of Woolf’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. In a 1927 diary entry, Woolf wrote “And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other.” Likewise, Sackville-West’s son described Orlando as “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature.” Orlando wasn’t trans, simply a a woman exploring sexuality with other women in a time when such things weren’t spoken of.

But Orlando’s foundation in reality, in an actual woman, doesn’t mean the book is without its exploration of gender, and its transgender themes. As Woolf so eloquently says, “The change of sex, though it altered [Orlando's] future, did nothing whatsoever to alter [Orlando's] identity.” What a lovely description of the ideal transition: I’m changed, but I’m not. I’m the same, but I’m not. Above all, I’m still me.

Likewise, Woolf spends no small amount of time describing Orlando’s shifting responses to being a woman, compared to those of being a man. Shortly after Orlando’s transformation, she is offered food by the Captain of the ship on which she’s traveling:

“A little of the fat, Ma’am?” he asked. “Let me cut you just the tiniest little slice the size of your finger nail.” At those words a delicious tremor ran through her frame. Birds sang; the torrents rushed. It recalled the feeling of indescribable pleasure with which she had first seen Sasha, hundreds of years ago. Then she had pursued, now she fled. Which is the greater ecstasy? The man’s or the woman’s? And are they not perhaps the same? No, she thought, this is the most delicious (thanking the Captain but refusing), to refuse, and to see him frown. Well, she would, if he wished, have the thinnest, smallest, sliver in the world. This was the most delicious of all, to yield and see him smile.

I’m not saying transitioning requires buying into a strict gender distinction between ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ with binarily defined roles. I disagree with Orlando that men have to be the pursuers, women the pursued. But Woolf asks interesting questions about how our personality plays into our gender roles, and the opposite. Do you take the initiative in relationships because that’s what men are “supposed to do?” Or are you a man because you take initiative in relationships? (Hopefully neither are true!)

I also got a kick out of that passage because it did ring true with my own experience. I discovered, over the course of my transition, that I like being the object of desire. I like having someone ask me to dance much more than I like asking someone else to dance. (Again, I am not saying all women feel this way, or all trans women, or that those feelings are why I transitioned. I don’t want to be taken as The Trans Woman Who Explains How All Trans Women Feel. But I, personally, have discovered to my delight that getting flowers makes me feel pretty and feminine and loved in a way giving flowers never made me feel strong and masculine.)

Back to my original question: Is Orlando trans fiction? And, as I’ve already started to answer, did it resonate with my own experience of transitioning? The answer to both of those questions contains both ‘yes’ and ‘no.’

Yes, Orlando explores both gender and trans-gender themes, questioning what it means to be a man, a woman, or somewhere in between. In that way, Orlando is trans fiction. But no, Orlando – the character herself, or himself – doesn’t seem to identify as trans. He wasn’t unsatisfied with being a man, and she wasn’t unsatisfied with being a woman.

Yes, Orlando resonated with my own experiences of transitioning. At the simplest level, going out in a skirt feels different than going out in pants, a power play Woolf comments on:

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us. For example, when Captain Bartolus saw Orlando’s skirt, he had an awning stretched for her immediately, pressed her to take another slice of beef, and invited her to go ashore with him in the long-boat. These compliments would certainly not have been paid her had her skirts, instead of flowing, been cut tight to her legs in the fashion of breeches. And when we are paid compliments, it behoves us to make some return. Orlando curtseyed; she complied; she flattered the good man’s humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a woman’s skirts, and his braided coat a woman’s satin bodice. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take to mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.

I can remember the first time I tried on a skirt, as a teenager, and felt awkward and uncomfortable. I felt like a boy in a dress, with hairy legs and a five o’clock shadow. But I can also remember the first time I felt feminine and pretty in a dress, years later. The experience of looking down at myself in wonder, at smooth legs and arms, at breasts (glorious breasts! MY breasts!) and at heeled feet and painted toes, way down at the floor. The feeling has faded somewhat since then, the sheer wonder of my body as a woman, but I still get shivers delightful when I get dolled up to go out.

I wouldn’t say gender is only a function of society – something Woolf implies when Orlando seems little different as a woman with the Gypsies and hugely changed when back in England – but I also reject that gender is purely biological, and I think Woolf and I would be in agreement there, as Orlando explores. The clothes don’t make the man (or the woman) but I do think the clothing we wear, the clothing we’re allowed to wear, impacts how we think of ourselves as gendered beings.

At the same time, no, Orlando didn’t resonate with my experiences as a trans woman. A transition was something that simply happened to Orlando, not something sought after and prized, as it is with transgender and transsexual women and men. I wished every evening growing up that I might wake up the next morning  a “real” girl, and Orlando barely seems to react at all. This did kind of bum me out, since I always love reading new stories about trans characters, about people like me, about people who don’t feel right in the gender imposed upon them by society. I admit, I wanted Orlando to be a novel about a trans character, rather than a (nevertheless very good!) novel which explores gender and trans-gender themes.

But Orlando resonated with me on a human level, as a book about a character trying to continually discover who she “really” is. And I suppose that’s all any of us can really hope for, to connect with a character on some level, both because and in spite of our differences

Not much of a man by the light of day

One of the oddest experiences of my transition was going off hormones to deposit sperm. (Almost three years ago!) It made me feel – perhaps more than any other single situation – as if I was balanced on a knife edge between ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ I wasn’t a woman (the thinking went) since I was at a doctor’s office attempting to deposit sperm. And I wasn’t much of a man (the same train of thought concluded) since my sperm count was so frustratingly low the doctor couldn’t get a viable sample. It was an agonizing paradox, of sorts: If my sperm count was high enough for a successful deposit, the hormones weren’t reshaping my body in the way I wanted them to. If my sperm count wasn’t high enough for a successful deposit, the hormones were working but I’d have to stay off of them even longer, in hopes of getting my sperm count up.

Either way, I lost.

Since then, I’ve had many occasions where I felt uncomfortable being too ‘girly’ or to ‘manly,’ and have been unsure of how to navigate my way through. I’m reminded of a time, a year or two ago, I was bringing home groceries with a friend. I was attempting to carry way too much, and she laughed and yelled, “You’re not a man any more! You don’t have to do everything at once, so take two trips!”

Then, when I was in the hospital getting my gallbladder removed last year, my mom brought me a care package in the hospital. In it was some girly magazine with makeup and clothing tips, one of those thick glossy things you’d buy in the checkout line at the supermarket. I tossed it aside, not because I didn’t want to look at it, but because I was convinced I’d somehow be perceived as a girl if I did so. My friends who came to visit, the nurses, the doctors, they’d know I was a girl! (As if the boobs, name tag reading ‘Rebecca,’ and being referred to by female pronouns didn’t tip them off.) My roommate, of course, waltzed in and picked up the magazine, saying “Oh, can I read this when you’re done?” (So much for that worry.)

A constant worry throughout my transition has been that I’ll do something ‘wrong,’ whatever that means. My makeup will be applied incorrectly, my clothing will be hideously mismatched, my taste in movies or books or decorating style will be embarrassingly pre-teen to make up for the adolescence I feel I missed.

Slowly, though, slowly I’ve realized those worries are roadblocks rather than sanity checks. Instead of guiding me toward sane and reasonable choices, they’ve guided me away from exploring my at-long-last female identity. I’m comfortable and confident in my ability to dress myself in pants and t-shirts, but I enjoy putting on myself in tights (or leggings? I can never remember which is which) and a dress. Which means – in a lesson I keep relearning every few months – I should try to do that more! (Duh!) Likewise, while it’s easier and less stressful to go out sans makeup than figure out if my eyeliner application was even and appropriate, I like how I look with a bit of makeup. So the only way to make that experience less stressful is to do it.

And then, lo and behold, enjoy the compliments I receive when I put a little more effort into my appearance.

Because I’m not much of a man. I was never much of a man. I was mediocre at being a man, hated getting on suits and ties, and have only resisted reveling in my femininity because I’m scared of doing it wrong, not because I don’t think I’ll enjoy it.

Which is a silly reason to stay away from something.

One of the people I met, we’ll call her E, expressed interest in getting drinks or coffee with me after the festival. I said I’d like to, because E is a cool person and I need more queer friends, but I definitely had the thought in the back of my mind that this might be asking me out on a date. Since I’d be happy either way – date or friendly socialization – I didn’t bother asking E to clarify. We set up a time and place to meet on Saturday night, and I tried not to over-think things. (“Things” being whether or not this was a date, what I was going to wear, how much makeup I needed, noticing while walking to the bar that – oh bugger – I forgot to put any on, and so on.)

When we met at the bar, E bought us both drinks and left her card with the bartender. I figured this was a good sign, but still tried not to over-think things. She then pulled out my chair for me and helped me remove my coat, at which point the signs became a little more clear. We chatted for the next hour or so, talking about the Fringe Festival, our previous and future artistic projects, our experiences living in Chicago, the ridiculous drunken people walking past the window; all the things you chat about with someone when you’re enjoying their company, getting to know them, and getting a little tipsy.

As we both worked on our third drinks (mine: a vodka cranberry, hers: a dirty martini) I realized I had almost reached the bottom of my glass while E had barely touched hers.  ”E,” I asked, “are you trying to get me drunk?”

She looked at me. “Yes.”

“I would keep pace with you,” she continued, “but if I get drunk I’m worried I might just lean in and kiss you.”

(What a great line, right?!)

Well, she leaned in, and I leaned in, and we both pulled back a bit breathless. Somehow the decision was made to walk back to my place, a few blocks away, as opposed to sitting in the bar window and making out on display. E helped me get my coat on as we were getting ready to leave, something which made me simultaneously feel awkward and ungraceful (trying to find the sleeves) and put a flutter in my tummy.

E and I continued to chat on the walk back to my apartment, and upon entry I defaulted into the apartment tour. (In my mind, being a good host means showing around newcomers to my apartment…) When we went into my room, though, she leaned in again for a kiss. A few moments later, I’d been pushed back onto my bed.

I’m not going to go into detail about the sex we had, except to say a few things. First, I had a ton of fun. I’m not one to go on many dates, let alone have super-hot sex on a first time out.

Second, the experience reminded me both of what I currently like and am frustrated about concerning my body. I love the sensations it provides, the fact that my erogenous zones have multiplied and heightened since going on estrogen, the peaks to which my excitement can reach. And yet, I’m not totally sure I ever came while E and I were having sex. She did, which is a good thing, but my body is still sending mixed signals about what it wants, where, and how, so while I had a blast and am in no way complaining, I didn’t quite have that cathartic moment of cumming.

I think part of that was knowing what to ask for, and when. I was still a little too in my head when we began, and worried about somehow disappointing or frustrating E. For example, I really should have asked for lube sooner than I did…

Third, I really like being the more passive or submissive one in a sexual encounter. That isn’t to say I don’t also like being on top (emotionally or physically) but I’d say I lean at least 60/40 towards wanting to be overpowered, rather than overpowering. Who knows how this will play out as I continue to become more comfortable as Rebecca, but I think a lot of it has to do with feeling like it’s an affirmation of my femininity. (Likewise with E pulling out the chair for me, buying my drinks, and helping me with my coat.) I don’t need those things, and might get tired of them if I felt I could only be in that femme role, but it was really enjoyable to try it on, so to speak, this weekend.

Linked with that was how wonderful it felt to be told I’m beautiful. Not shocking news, I imagine, but it made me feel good and turned me on to know the person I was with thought I was hot. (And reassured me that my unreasonable noisiness was also OK! Fortunately, neither of my roommates were home. They serendipitously arrived about 30 minutes after E left.)

E also surprised me by referring to my penis as “she.” I’ve talked before about whether “a penis need[s] to be a male organ” or “a vagina …a female organ.” But it’s easier to say something like that as a political statement than really think about it. When masturbating, I usually don’t think much about my penis at all; it gives me pleasure, but I don’t dwell on it. But E made a point of asking how “she” was doing, something which made me laugh but also feel that more more like I’m allowed to claim ownership and naming rights over my body. My dick doesn’t need to be an “it” or a “he,” unless I want it to be.

Or want her to be.

Sadly, I don’t see a longterm ‘dating’ relationship happening between myself and E, for some reasons I won’t get into here. But I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to grow the budding friendship we have, and wouldn’t complain at all if that also meant we got to hookup every so often.

To that end, here’s a thought for this Saturday:

Google News archives have just over 70,000 results for a search of ‘transgender’:

They also let you see a graph of news results over the last 20 years:

And a timeline for all the results in their archives, since 1960:

An interesting pattern, no?

Frustratingly, the graphs above are massively not to scale. For example, the spike in the 1960s – seemingly rivaling the early 1990s in volume – really only had 182 articles, compared to almost 4,000 articles for the similarly-tall 1990s. (In fact, 1990-1995 is shorter than 1965-1970, even though it has more articles.) It’s a shame, really, because the graphs provide an inaccurate view of the data, but they still allow for some fun analysis.

The number of articles containing the word “transgender” has been increasing pretty steadily over the years, something that isn’t too surprising. It looks like a lot of the articles from the spike in the late 1960s is due to articles about the 60s – Stonewall, Pride anniversary celebrations discussing their roots, and so on – than articles from the 1960s, which also isn’t terribly surprising.

Anyone notice any other fun patterns, or interesting articles?

That’s been my general coming out tactic lately, and I think I’ve mentioned it once or twice before on this blog. Today, K paused (awkwardly, I felt) and said, “Oh, yeah.”

I like “You know I’m trans, right?” because it gives me – the one coming out – some amount of power. It’s absolutely a leading question, which means there’s a social impetus on whoever I’m speaking with not to say, “No! Oh my god! You’re trans!?” The pressure is there for them to agree, say they knew I was trans, and move on.

At the same time, I’m coming to dislike using this as a way to come out (or verify that I don’t need to) because of that same pressure. I always want the response to be, “Oh, wow. No, I didn’t know that,” because it’ll make me feel better about my presentation as a woman. (It’s happened on occasion, but not frequently.)

I’m curious how (or if) other people handle similar issues? I consider my work environment (at this job, specifically) to be somewhere I’m comfortable enough to joke about my trans identity. At the same time, I needed to make explicit that aspect of my identity to K. Or did I? I obviously could have either kept my mouth shut, or told the joke and not explain it. But I’m not thrilled with either of those options.

What would you have done?

• Did you dress like a girl before you considered yourself transgender?  (Dress in drag, I guess?)

Occasionally, but not a lot. And that’s due in large part because of that language: it felt like dressing in drag. And the last thing I wanted, the last thing I ever wanted, was to feel like a boy in a dress. So while I did experiment every so often with sneaking something from my mom’s wardrobe, it was never that satisfying. (I denied taking her clothing the one or two times she confronted me about it. Maybe, in retrospect, if I’d come clean – and talked about my desires to not be a boy – my life might have turned out very differently.

Once I was able to put a name on my discomfort – I was trans, not a crossdresser – I was able to start experimenting with ways of feeling more feminine. Things like growing my hair out, shaving my legs, and so on. That eventually turned into buying women’s clothing, but by that point I’d say I was actually transitioning and not just experimenting.

• Could you describe the process of taking hormones and what that did to your body?

I think I’ve gone in depth about that elsewhere on this blog, but here are some general answers.

I’m taking three sets of pills every day: estrogen (female hormones), progesterone (more female hormones), and anti-androgens (male hormone blockers). This has the overall effect of lowering the testosterone in my system and boosting the estrogen, so that my hormone levels are within the normal adult female range.

The most obvious effect is the redistribution of muscle and fat, making me lose some strength and gain boobs and a butt. In the ~3 years I’ve been on hormones, I haven’t gained any weight, but I’ve gone to a B-cup. Much of that came from muscle loss, so I look a bit thinner than I used to, without any actual weight loss. In addition, it softens my skin (my girl friends bitch about how good my complexion is), and thins body hair a bit. I’ve still had to do lots of hair removal, though.

It also has changed how my sex drive works, but hasn’t lessened my sex drive. It does take me longer to orgasm, but I think I have more fun getting there than I used to.

Beyond that, a lot of the changes are mixed with mental and emotional stuff. I feel emotions more strongly now – both positive and negative – but that’s probably from a combination of the hormones and just being more introspective while transitioning.

• How did you react when you first realized you were trans?

I’m not sure, because it wasn’t an “Ah ha!” moment of epiphany. My discomfort with being socialized as a boy has always existed, so it was more a gradual understanding of “Oh, this is a label that might apply to me.” It was nice finding information (online, mostly) about people “like me,” but it took me a long time to go from thinking about the idea of being trans to actually identifying as trans to acting on that identification. Part of that, I think, is because the most public trans figures – particularly the ones who were online 10 or 15 years ago – were older trans women. As much as talking with and reading about them did help me, I didn’t feel like their experiences or problems were like mine.

That’s part of the reason I’ve come to think this blog and my performances are important, because I’d like (at least in a limited way) to provide something of the role model that I never felt I had.

Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al ha-milah. Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu lihach-neeso bivreito shel Avraham aveenu.

Blessed are You, O Lord Our God, Ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and has given us the command concerning circumcision. Blessed are You, O Lord Our God, Ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and hast commanded us to make our sons enter the covenant of Abraham our father. (Source)

Eight days after birth, Jewish boys are supposed to be circumcised as part of the covenant between God and Abraham (in Genesis), as specified in Leviticus. In this way, Jewish boys are supposed to continue the line of the Children of Israel, fulfilling the obligations and duties laid out for them in the Torah.

There are no required rituals or ceremonies to mark the birth of a girl.

Snip snip!

What does that mean for me?

I was circumcised. I did not ask for the circumcision, the gender it carried as baggage, or to enter in any sort of covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but I was circumcised.

According to Jewish law, have I renounced that covenant by transitioning? If a circumcision is a ‘male’ ceremony, one which need not apply to those created from Adam’s rib, is my circumcision null and void by rejecting that male identity? Biblically, will that rejection only be complete if I go through with The Surgery?

All of this very much links back with my Ba(r/t) Mitzvah post, because the deeper I dig into Judaism the more frustrated I get with the historic, institutionalized, ritualized, ceremonialized, holy gender roles.

Take, for example, the following passage. It’s something I came across while doing some research for this post. From Being Jewish:

It is noteworthy that woman has no similar Commandment. Most things in the world were created before man, so that it would all be completed and ready for humanity’s use when we were created. Woman, however, was created after man. Thus, we find that woman was created at a higher level. Therefore, man needs woman to become complete, and until a man gets married, says the Talmud, he is not complete. Men are required by Jewish Law to get married. A man breaks a Commandment if he doesn’t get married, but women have no such requirement, and do not break the Commandment if they don’t.

Woman is the completion of man, but woman needs no completion herself.

That is why a woman says the blessing, each morning, “Blessed are You, Hashem, King of the universe, Who has made me according to His will.” Woman is made according to G-d’s will, but man is not! (For more about this, see my wife’s letter on this subject.) Man needs woman for completion, man needs circumcision for elevation, but woman needs nothing except what is within her, which was granted her by G-d. The man cannot say that G-d has made him according to G-d’s will. G-d’s will in this case is something that man must complete.

Ah, the midwest. Corn. Farm girls. Circumcised cocks.

That’s pretty fucked up, both in terms of assigned gender roles and in how it highlights the absurdity of circumcision in the first place: how could man possibly not be made to God’s will? How else would man be made? It’s God’s will (apparently) that men go through self-mutilation of their genitals, but that doesn’t mean the foreskin is anti-God somehow. By the creation story (stories, actually) in Genesis, everything is made in and by God’s will.

More to my point, the above passage is a really odd interpretation of circumcision. Its author is saying that women are somehow more “complete” than man, and thus needs no direct covenant with God. Wouldn’t it be a simpler (and less ridiculous) reading of the Torah to say that, biblically, women just aren’t as important as men? So no covenant is needed, by virtue of no one caring what women think in the first place.

Awesome.

I emailed my mom and asked about my own circumcision, how and when it happened, and here’s what she had to say:

Wow!  What a weird question.  Yikes!  I so think of you as female that it’s hard to imagine circumcision for you.  Anywho….. in answer to your question, you were circumcised at the hospital.  I complained because they would not allow me to accompany you.  I couldn’t get out of bed when [older brother 1] was circumcised & [older brother 2] was 6 when he asked for it.  They said that’s how it’s done in the hospital-no parents allowed.  I couldn’t handle the idea of some old guy giving you wine & then using (what in my mind was) a dirty old knife. And your father would not even consider a home circumcision.  That’s the story.

(Yes, her font of choice is Comic Sans. I apologize.)

So it sounds like my circumcision was somewhat religious, but was also done under the auspicious of the medical establishment.

The older I get, the more anti-circumcision I’ve become, at least if it’s done at birth. I don’t have a problem with an adult choosing, of their own free will, to get circumcised. I think it’s kind of silly, but I’m not against it. But I do have very real problems concerning at-birth circumcision, problems related to personal autonomy and the sanctity of one’s own body. If it’s not alright to medically assign genders to children, why is circumcision considered an “acceptable” genital modification?

Fitting circumcision in with my identity as a Jew is even trickier. I already feel Judaism is at best complacent in the unwanted and unwarranted gendering of children, if not an active encourager. To go a step further and surgically mark children assigned “male” at birth really upsets me, and makes me feel violated in the name of a religion to which I’m not sure I subscribe.

And where do trans men fit within the Jewish community? Would it be better for a penis created via phaloplasty to be uncircumcised, so the Jewish man might under go the requirements of the covenant, or already circumcised, a retroactive circumcision? Am I, as a circumcised woman, higher in the Jewish religious hierarchy, or am I already so far outside it by virtue of being trans that my circumcision is irrelevant?

These may sound like stupid questions, but that’s what Judaism is implicitly and explicitly saying I should be thinking about, by virtue of placing so much importance on the penis in the first place.

I rolled down my window and he started talking across the gap between our cars. I couldn’t really hear him over the rain, complicated by his soft voice and foreign accent. I finally understood that he was complimenting me on my bumper stickers. This happens every so often, and I always get a kick out of it. I have a couple dozen bumper stickers on the back of my car, ranging from the political – about Obama or women’s rights – to the silly (“No, I will not fix your computer”). I thanked him, and started to roll my window back up, when he yelled something I heard very clearly:

“Wanna meet up some place?

I rolled up my window, turned back to the light (green, by this time), and sped away.

This absolutely ruined my good mood, and I’m still pretty cranky. After talking with a friend, I think I’ve teased out why.

First is the obvious reason: he was making assumptions on my sexual promiscuity (and interest in his sorry ass) based on my self-expression. This is a little different than assuming someone in a short skirt is a slut, but I think it’s in the same ballpark. (Though I can’t imagine “bumper sticker shaming” catching on as a term.)

I also don’t like how his behavior made me question myself. I’d love to be able to write him off and go along my merry way, but my initial reaction (after “EW!”) was, “Well, maybe it was foolish of me to have all these bumper stickers proclaiming my political views and strongly implying things about my sexuality. Maybe I was asking for it.”

Except I know that’s bullshit.

I’m also really frustrated because I try – mostly with success – to focus on the positive things about transitioning and being a woman. Sure, I miss my upper body strength, but I love my boobs, my smooth legs, my self-expression, my hair. I really enjoy being a woman. But I’ve been pretty insulated from the “bad” things about being a woman. First, I was insulated by not presenting as female. I was still bombarded with the media depictions of womanhood (not to mention trans women) which did take its toll. But I was never socially trained about the negative ramifications of presenting and being perceived as female. First and foremost, that there’s a segment of the population who will assume that any display of sex or sexuality will make them assume you’re ‘open for business.’ And this guy definitely reminded me of that.

And maybe I do need to grow a thicker skin. I just can’t help but miss my childlike innocence about the wonder of the world, and of womanhood.