(A long time ago, I remember standing on a muni light rail train in SF and having someone tell their child to say "excuse me to the man". I can recreate the feeling of "yes!" in my head like *that* whenever I need it.)
I'm in the last stages of completing Rabbinical School (just so you know). I tried to go when they weren't accepting women yet, and I tried again when women were okay but queers were not. So getting this far, even though I'm in my fifties feels like a miracle.
Anyway, my final project (called a teshuvah) is on the status of trans*, specifically in relationship to marriage, but also, generally: what does a person have to do under Jewish law to legally be a gender other than the one he/she was tagged with at birth?
Everyone is kind of surprised that this is what I chose to write. They don't see me when they look at me. What they see is a 52 year old woman with hip length hair and large boobs, and they don't get it. Because when I look in the mirror what I see is someone of completely indeterminate gender status. I have had it in for my breasts from the moment they appeared; I never wear dresses/skirts unless I'm trying to hide something from someone, and when I'm told to dress "up", I put on a tux.
But I've never had a name for what I feel or what I think I am so I wander around the edges of the genderqueer universe and try not to piss anyone off and it's only in the last few months that I've started trying to articulate what my gender might be. Writing the big teshuvah has actually been a great way to start articulating it, but I have a feeling it's going to take me years to figure it all out, even a tiny little bit.
Thank you for letting me work out a small bit of it here with you.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-23 02:10 am (UTC)I'm in the last stages of completing Rabbinical School (just so you know). I tried to go when they weren't accepting women yet, and I tried again when women were okay but queers were not. So getting this far, even though I'm in my fifties feels like a miracle.
Anyway, my final project (called a teshuvah) is on the status of trans*, specifically in relationship to marriage, but also, generally: what does a person have to do under Jewish law to legally be a gender other than the one he/she was tagged with at birth?
Everyone is kind of surprised that this is what I chose to write. They don't see me when they look at me. What they see is a 52 year old woman with hip length hair and large boobs, and they don't get it. Because when I look in the mirror what I see is someone of completely indeterminate gender status. I have had it in for my breasts from the moment they appeared; I never wear dresses/skirts unless I'm trying to hide something from someone, and when I'm told to dress "up", I put on a tux.
But I've never had a name for what I feel or what I think I am so I wander around the edges of the genderqueer universe and try not to piss anyone off and it's only in the last few months that I've started trying to articulate what my gender might be. Writing the big teshuvah has actually been a great way to start articulating it, but I have a feeling it's going to take me years to figure it all out, even a tiny little bit.
Thank you for letting me work out a small bit of it here with you.