I just got back from a much-needed and all-too-short vacation, and my brain is still on the trip. Therefore, I am presenting an excerpt from Teeny Weenies and Other Short Subjects, written when I was not so exhausted. Remember, Teeny Weenies is available in paperback, e-book, and Kindle format.
Putting the Men in Menopause
Shortly after I turned fifty, I started to perspire. It wasn’t the glowy dew that I had produced as a female and it wasn’t the labor-intensive, manly sweat that I like to think comes naturally to a hard-working, macho man who sits behind a desk and types for a living. It started at the top of my head and crept its way down, as if I had slowly stepped into a sauna, head first and then body part by body part, activating sweat glands that I didn’t even know I possessed, until I was left soggy and soaking, my clothes tattooed to my sticky, wet body. It was nature turning a hose on me as if I were some hormone-crazed dog.
This happened whether I was sitting on a blanket in the sun or directly in front of an air-conditioner turned on at full blast. It happened in bed and it happened on the street. It took me a while to realize that not every place I went was mysteriously undergoing random temperature fluctuations. This was internal – my own personal global warming.
The worst thing about these episodes was that they had a scary emotional component that often went with them. This part happened primarily at night, when things are scarier anyway, when I already found myself lying awake for hours wondering what hideous rare disease I was going to die from, how I was going to pay my bills until that time, and what exactly was going to happen to me when the universe stopped expanding and started to fold back in on itself.
As I pondered these things, a new and unfamiliar feeling crept over me – one of imminent dread and doom, as if something were horribly wrong right at that moment and I just didn’t know about it yet. Maybe the universe was folding in on itself already, and it would all get back to where I was before the flesh-eating-mad-cow-avian-flu caught up to me.
Then, within a minute or five, the wave of heat began moving down my body, inch by inch, or sometimes millimeter by millimeter. I could feel it beginning at the roots of my hair, creeping down my face and neck, across my chest, down my stomach and legs, and out the bottoms of my feet. Then it was all over, leaving a trail of sweat, and a resulting chill, in its wake. It was so powerful an experience that, even when I had managed to fall asleep in spite of all the worldly threats out there, it woke me up to lie shivering in my own perspiration. Continue Reading »
Ask Matt: ‘Trans-Friendly’ Synagogue is Anything But
May 31, 2012 by Matt Kailey
“I am converting to Judaism. I have been going to a Reform shul (LGBTQ friendly) and recently met with the assistant rabbi to talk about converting and what I will need to do. During our in-depth conversation, in which I admitted that I am trans, the rabbi asked me my assigned-at-birth name. I told him that question is the only one I won’t answer because it is never relevant.
“The rabbi told me that I needed to be ‘open and honest’ and maybe that shul is not a good fit – that maybe I am not serious about converting because knowing the context of a rabbi/congregant relationship, I couldn’t be ‘honest and open.’ So I told him my assigned-at-birth name (which is not my legal name, by the way.)
“I left the meeting in tears. I left the meeting angry. I left the meeting wondering if he’s now going to look at me and think of my birth name, of who I was and not who I am.
“If it were you, how would you have used that moment to teach him that his question was inappropriate and irrelevant? What resources would you point out to him (Transgender 101) so that he never does that to another trans person?”
I am usually pretty laid back, but this situation makes me angry on so many levels. I see this as not only a personal violation by a person in a position of authority and trust, but as a violation of the trans community – just as when any other LGB”T” or LGB”T”-friendly organization adds the “T” to the end of their letters and thinks that covers it, yet they know nothing about trans issues. What happened to you is the opposite of trans-friendly.
However, I don’t know much about Judaism (or any religion, for that matter), so I don’t know what the “honest and open” expectation actually is. Is everything in your private life subject to the rabbi’s investigation? If you refuse to answer any question he asks about any aspect of your life, are you not being open and honest enough for the shul’s requirements?
I can’t imagine that this is possible, but again, I’m not sure. You probably know better than I do what the “honest and open” thing means, but I would be concerned about what other irrelevant matters he thinks are important enough to harass you about. Continue Reading »
Posted in Advice, Ask Matt, Commentary | Tagged coming out, etiquette, LGBT, transition, transphobia | 45 Comments »