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dadyomi · 3 years

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Daf Yomi Week 49: Right Spirit, Wrong Holiday

Shabbat Shalom, Chag Sameach, and welcome! Seems a little weird to be posting a chanukiah in the middle of tractate Pesachim, but I didn’t have a “second passage” to share for the Week in Review. This is a 19th century chanukiah from the Netherlands, artist and origin unknown.

In 2018 I was in New York during Hanukkah and visited the Jewish Museum; it was the last day of a very intense trip, and I spent a long time on the bench in the Menorah exhibit, admiring all the fine craftsmanship while I rested. I was supposed to go back in early 2020; having been promoted in 2019 I was making substantially more money than previously, and I meant to see the city in real style. Unfortunately we had to cancel the trip due to an injury that precluded flying. Which potentially saved my life, given how hard and fast COVID hit New York around that time. So thanks 2020 for that, I guess, even though I was devastated then.

In March, before any official declaration of quarantine, my office had already introduced certain safety protocols; we were staggering who came in on what days. I just happened to be in the office on the day that we were told we were going to full-time remote work, and that the building itself was being locked down so we couldn’t come in to the office even if we wanted to. I threw my laptop and any paperwork I thought I might need into my messenger bag, threw a spare monitor into a tote bag I had handy, and got gone. I expected within a few weeks we’d be back to partial time in-office.

Today I’m going to the office for the first time since March. We’re not reopening it, but there’s administrative stuff that simply can’t be done from home, so I’m coming in to help.

My cubicle has basically been frozen in time since early spring. I’m finally going to rescue my favorite mug, which I forgot in the rush of packing in March, and also my plants, which an extremely kind building security officer has been watering weekly for seven months. I’m excited and a little worried but mostly just hoping I get through it without too much sadness.

In any case, 338 weeks to go in Daf Yomi! And things are looking brighter, even if the days are still very short.

#daf yomi week in review

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chal-converts-archive · 6 years

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Okay you know what - writing things out is usually how I process them best, so I’m going to just do the diary post. Please don’t reblog it - if you want to respond to it you can, but either message me or leave it as a comment.

Right so today was the first day I’ve been back at the modern orthodox shul I go to since a couple weeks ago when, for the first time in years (and thus the first time here ever) I ended up having a serious gender dysphoria issue.

I normally sit on the women’s side and present as a woman and try to blend in the best I can, and up until a couple weeks ago that has been just peachy. My thing is that I’m non-binary but I happen to prefer women’s attire and fit the social role for women better than the role for men, and so it just makes sense to blend in. I’m always conscious of the fact that I’m not and never will truly be a woman entirely. (Parts of my identity, sure, but never 100%.) But no one else really needs to know. It’s not their business and I don’t feel like explaining it or talking about it most of the time. It just makes things way more complicated than is necessary.

I didn’t used to be like this. I used to care a lot and present myself differently, etc., etc. – but as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten less enamored with the idea of educating folks and so I’d just as soon spend my time doing other things. Unfortunately, at present, there really isn’t a way to “present as” genderqueer or what-have-you such that your average Joe on the street could look at you and go – yup, that’s an enby! Most people barely even know that there are binary trans people let alone non-binary trans people, and while that’s changing, it’s going to be a long time before there’s an actual socially coherent gender role for non-binary folks. (And, to be perfectly honest, it’s fair to question whether that would even be desirable. I’m not sure and I’m not going to go into that for now.)

So the reality is that my choices are (a) present as a man or woman and do my best to blend in, or (b) educate everyone I meet about gender theory. I used to be a hardliner option (b) person, but I also used to be a lot more excited about being non-binary, too. Early on, I was just thrilled that I finally understood what was happening internally.

The older I get, the more I wish I wasn’t.

Or, at least that I could appreciate being non-binary again. Unfortunately, what I really want is just to be 100% comfortable as a woman, because those are issues I understand – I lived with them for a long time and I basically have to deal with them anyway because of how I present most of the time.

This? I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t understand why Hashem made me like this and what I’m supposed to learn from it. I don’t know what it means or how I should approach halacha as a non-binary person. I know that we’re all made b’tzelem elokim – and with regards to gender, how ironic that Hashem is essentially genderless? – and I know that we’re supposed to appreciate that we’re made according to Hashem’s will. I’ve increasingly struggled with this, and so needed to focus on other things for a bit.

So what I essentially did was push these issues underground because I’m close – I’m so close – to being able to just be a woman that I just tabled the issue entirely for months. Most of the time, my non-binaryness doesn’t really impact how I exist in most spaces. And then?

Well, and then there were the services a couple weeks ago. Nothing was out of the ordinary. I sat where I usually sat and I dressed how I usually dressed, and no one said anything odd or did anything to set this off.

But for the first time, it just hit me. How much I really didn’t fit on this side of the mechitza – or the other, for that matter. And the worst part of it was that I could’ve gone to the back area where people do sit sometimes that’s a more neutral space, or I could have gone up to the balcony which is also a more fluid space, and it wouldn’t have fixed it because I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be exactly where I was and be okay.

I ended up needing to dip out immediately as services ended and I think I said “Shabbat shalom” to like, three people before leaving and then sat in the park for a while on my way home just thinking and trying to understand.

The reality is that no matter how much I wish I was a woman, I’m not. I’m not. I am under no illusions that I could “fix” this with proper prayer or whatever else, or that any sort of counseling or personal behavioral changes would ever make a difference. I’m as stuck with this as I am with my height, or my choices.

And when I really get down to it, I’m not sure I would change it even if I could. Without my gender garbage, I’m not sure who I’d be, but I would be a very different person. At the same time, that doesn’t change the fact that there is a significant part of me that just wishes I could be content with the sex I was assigned. It would make everything so much easier, and I’m so very close. Just not close enough.

I’m sure there’s something I’m supposed to learn from this or do with this, but I have no idea what that is and I’m just really tired. Work has been wearing me very thin, and particularly at that moment, I think what actually set all of this off was the fact that I felt completely inadequate at the work I was expected to be doing, and navigating all this gender nonsense and trying to understand what it means is just another difficult task that I felt completely unequal to and exhausted by.

I spent the next few days more liminally and presenting more masculine. Things got a lot better at work, and I eventually settled back into my women’s mask.

I went back to services there today, and I felt completely fine. Nothing like I had the last time. At the same time, I think I need to stop back-burnering this. So far, I’ve taken the strategy of just letting this issue lie fallow and hope that it works itself out eventually, in time. It seems, however, that perhaps I need to start investing more spiritual energy in what it means to be true to myself in any space, and then try to understand how I can even begin to apply that in this space.

I guess time will tell.

#gender garbage

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