Yeah, curious about him huh?
I guess that I have always been particularly curious about trans and homosexual history. Homosexual history because that is what I was told I was at a young age when my family tried to fix me because I said that I was a girl. I have to say that as much as I vilify my family, until I was five I could dress and act however I wanted except at school. I had no permanent home and was moved around in the family so much that everyone saw me as someone else's problem. That all ended when I ended up with my mom's parents. The saddest part of that was that I was no longer allowed to visit my babushka (father's grandmother) who treated me as any other little girl. Whether we were cleaning or cooking or enjoying the labors of our baking she always told stories. My favorite was Vasilisa the Beautiful, her evil stepmother and the cruel witch Baba Yaga.
She also told stories of her home and family in Poland and my favorite was of her great grandmother's brother. His oldest daughter refused to be a girl and it caused problems for the family. Even though the family said that he should send her out on her own because she said that she would never marry a man and they were poor, he didn't. He took her to a relative that lived far south of them, maybe even as far as Albania, were a girl could take a vow of chastity and live legally as a man and that relative made her his apprentice. So he lived there his whole life as a brother to the man's children. She would always end it with, See Wnuczka, don't listen to them, it runs in the family. Lol, seems like one every two hundred years almost is not 'running in the family' but I have always appreciated that she said that.
That story always made me wonder about places where I could be myself. I saw myself as a girl but I think everyone else saw me as gay, was there a place like that for me? Has there ever been acceptance? Growing up studying the Bible I saw many places where modern belief would be unaccepting. After countless hours talking with a Rabbi friend, I learned that what was and what is currently is even more divergent than even the Bible I was taught. Over the years I have looked for the causes of the changes. I think that most assume that the Bible has never changed but that is not true at all, see if you can find the Arcangel Uriel in the Bible. Then look for the reason all mention of him was removed. Even in the New Testament there are separations. Paul was the most influential in the beginning of Christianity and he would have gladly ended sex and marriages but probably figured out that with no new people his budding religion would have a very brief lifespan. Let's not forget hell, where did that come from? And why do people believe that when we die we will go to heaven? That is neither before nor after. The only passage in the Bible that suggests that is Luke 23:43 Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." Everything else says you die period. Go to She'ol the place for all dead, to dust. Only on the day of the Lords wraith when he passes judgment will he bring the dead to be judged. Sorry, I can go on and on. Things have changed dramatically and not the separation between the Old and New Testaments, Paul changed things, the Catholic Church changed things and Dante Alighieri imprinted the fear of hell into western culture. Obviously my belief in god is no longer inhibited by the belief of religion, but I am not about bashing religious belief here, just asking people to look deeper. I have looked for so long because of the deep shame I felt at being born the way I was. Why was my family so ashamed of me? I am not a bad person, why should I go to hell?
It doesn't end there, what is real and what is accepted are not the same thing, why? I spent months in Saudi Arabia after Desert Storm before I went back to Germany, putting equipment through customs and loading it on boats. It is sooooooo not the thing to be gay there. It is rampant in the younger males though. We went through three groups of local friends that we played ball with, mainly soccer even though none of us had ever played it much before. Every evening we were out playing until after a week or two one of them grabbed my hand, pulled me a little away and kiss me. Everyone freaked out the first time and it came real close to a fight, made my life pretty bad for a while. We found another group of friends and on the second day of playing soccer one of them put his arm around me, kissed me on the neck and asked if I would go with him to a game of local teams on the weekend. Only my best friend talked to me after that for a few days and I never went to another game with the locals. They did though and after a few weeks it happened to another guy. Pushing and shoving happened and when someone suggested that they were gay they got furious. Everyone was young and unmarried, why should they not? They did not see themselves as gay. No one spent time with the locals after that. It made me question though. Yeah a big part of it was my own sexuality, I never enjoyed kissing a girl and was never attracted to them, this kissing guys thing was not bad though. After being back in Germany and getting a horrible crush on my one guy friend it put that question to rest. I never stopped thinking about the way the Saudi guys thought about it. Why does the movie Deliverance have that scene with Ned Beatty, you would be hard pressed to find a group of people more homophobic people than hillbillies, I should know I am one. So I started looking into it. Turns out that it is completely normal for young men, without the availability of women, to have sex with each other. It happens over and over in history, but history gets written over doesn't it? Sailors have been famous, or infamous maybe, for it. One country even tried hiring female prostutes to give to the men in hopes to dissuade the practice. They gave up on that because the men would maybe have sex with the women or more likely share the women but go right back to being with their partner. The Caribbean pirates even formalized their unions in what they called matelotage which was eventually shortened to "mate".
We look at the cliff notes of history written by the winner and think that this is the way transgender people have always been treated. It is not though. We could point fingers but it would not be effective, what people perceive to be real and what is actually real has never been the same, everyone understands that but they continue to believe in what they know, factual or not.
I keep looking to connect the dots though. I am absolutely horrible at living life, but I see the dots in everything and need to connect them.
Eeek! That was very long, many apologies.
