#gender garbage

If your first thought was: "okay, so you're definitely not a woman, got it." Congrats! You're correct!

So, back in the pre-social-media days of online spaces, relative anonymity was a lot easier. It was also the default. We didn't put our real names on any of our accounts, personal branding wasn't particularly a thing, and everybody just kind of was whatever they wanted. We had chatrooms and message boards and we made friends with random people who we'd never meet and whose names we probably didn't know.

In the latest of the 90's and earliest of the 00's, I was pretty active on some message boards as a member and later as a moderator. And, while I'm not sure I recognized it for what it was at the time, I was goddamn elated every time somebody "incorrectly" assumed my gender. I got to be in this space where I interacted with people on a daily basis who would read me the way that I sounded online, and usually that way was something other than how I was read in person.

I miss this.

I'm thinking about it because being on this site--and I've only been here a handful of months--is probably the closest to that vibe that I've experienced in quite a long time. At the same time, I've found that now that it's generally fine to talk openly about gender and one's relationship to it (because when I was growing up we didn't have the language, nor did we have much security in talking about it outside of close social groups), it's difficult to convey the nuance of that relationship without, at some point, in some way, saying how I was assigned in the first place.

I don't know that this is an inherent negative, but it strikes me as almost paradoxical that in being able to be open about how I feel about my gender and my presentation and how great it feels when people are "wrong" (and "wrong" here is probably an artifact of old thought patterns that are no longer beneficial or applicable), I lose some of what the older variant of online anonymity gave me. I like being able to talk about it and find people who get it, and I also miss just existing and letting the perception be whatever it was. People usually felt right about me. It was validating in a way that's different from this.

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.

For much of my adult life, I've struggled with this strange combination of: the way I want to exist in the world is effectively as a femme woman; and, a profound alienation from womanhood/a deep sense that I am not and never will be a woman.

I've..... sort of thrown up my hands and nebulously described this as "non-binary-please-don't-ask-me-any-more-questions-because-I-don't-have-answers" for the last several years.

But! I think I've finally came up with an analogy that actually explains what's happening here.

Okay: So you know how there are species of animals that look almost exactly like each other and people for centuries reasonably assumed from this that they were closely related, only to discover after DNA testing that these species are more closely related to, say, jellyfish than to each other, but convergent evolution has led to them having strikingly similar appearances and niches?

Yeah.