News and Events => Opinions & Editorials => Topic started by: Shana A on August 23, 2010, 01:02:50 PM Return to Full Version
Title: Transparent on High
Post by: Shana A on August 23, 2010, 01:02:50 PM
Post by: Shana A on August 23, 2010, 01:02:50 PM
Transparent on High
by Jhos Singer
http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/confession/transparent-on-high/ (http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/confession/transparent-on-high/)
A maggid's psychic powers.
Of all my parental accomplishments, I am particularly proud that I have managed to delude at least one of my children into thinking that I am both omniscient and clairvoyant, and that beneath my rapidly thinning hair there lurks a never-sleeping eye always spying from the back of my head. My youngest son believes that I see his every move and know his deepest secrets.
snip
What I am is a transgender person who as a child survived the 1960s in America, who came of age in the late 1970s in Los Angeles, and who managed to fit into the world of politically correct, come-to-consensus-OR-ELSE lesbian feminism in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s. All my life I have been profoundly aware of how I do or do not fit into my social surroundings. Mostly I've lived outside the norms of femininity. I have been a tomboy, a firefighter, a butch dyke rock drummer, a deckhand, a neo-Hasidic androgyne, a Jewish lesbian spiritual leader, and finally, a married-with-children, transman rabbi-maggid serving a small congregation. Hardly the trajectory presented to me as a girl-child. I realized early on that if I was going to live to tell the tale, I could either totally tune in to the subtle cues of my cohort and conform, or I would have to utterly ignore all social conventions and bushwhack my way through the binary gender jungle. Mostly, I've done the latter. Regardless, I had to know who I was dealing with at all times, and take a chance on finding a way to fit in, or be so outrageous that fitting in simply ceased to be an option.
by Jhos Singer
http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/confession/transparent-on-high/ (http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/confession/transparent-on-high/)
A maggid's psychic powers.
Of all my parental accomplishments, I am particularly proud that I have managed to delude at least one of my children into thinking that I am both omniscient and clairvoyant, and that beneath my rapidly thinning hair there lurks a never-sleeping eye always spying from the back of my head. My youngest son believes that I see his every move and know his deepest secrets.
snip
What I am is a transgender person who as a child survived the 1960s in America, who came of age in the late 1970s in Los Angeles, and who managed to fit into the world of politically correct, come-to-consensus-OR-ELSE lesbian feminism in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s. All my life I have been profoundly aware of how I do or do not fit into my social surroundings. Mostly I've lived outside the norms of femininity. I have been a tomboy, a firefighter, a butch dyke rock drummer, a deckhand, a neo-Hasidic androgyne, a Jewish lesbian spiritual leader, and finally, a married-with-children, transman rabbi-maggid serving a small congregation. Hardly the trajectory presented to me as a girl-child. I realized early on that if I was going to live to tell the tale, I could either totally tune in to the subtle cues of my cohort and conform, or I would have to utterly ignore all social conventions and bushwhack my way through the binary gender jungle. Mostly, I've done the latter. Regardless, I had to know who I was dealing with at all times, and take a chance on finding a way to fit in, or be so outrageous that fitting in simply ceased to be an option.