Girlfriends

Last night I was listening to a song by Mana. I closed my eyes and picked out the various parts – two acoustic guitars, keyboard, bass, drums and percussion – hearing how they played off each other and blended into this incredible beauty of sound. I thought of how Kristin and the boys are learning music, and often play together both with Ken, their teacher, and with each other in practice. I thought how much fun it would be to join with them, though I've been resisting for some time now because I just don't have the time to learn music. Then I reflected on the many times I've tried to learn to play an instrument – drums, guitar, banjo, jews harp, harmonica. I never learned any of them, and thinking back, it seems to me the reason is I never played with anyone else. I never got lessons, never played with peers. For me, like everything else, learning music was a solitary experience.

Then I got to thinking about why that might be. Part of it – maybe most of it – is because I never had friends I could share that with. I noticed that my entire life, I could make only the most shallow friendships, because my primary goal in any relationship was to protect myself – to avoid revealing who I really am, to keep my deepest thoughts and desires secret to myself alone.

The overriding reason I wanted to keep myself private was shame.

I was so deeply ashamed of myself for those thoughts, desires, and experiences that reflect who I am. I was ashamed because I saw that my own experience was so different from everyone else's; because I simply could not relate those thoughts, desires, and experiences to the male role models in my life – at least, not in a deep, personal, and gendered way.

While there are many activities in life that are not gendered – woodworking, chess, gardening, the list goes on forever – there are no relationships that are not gendered. I relate differently depending on who I'm relating with, and gender is part of that relation. Even my relationship with myself is gendered. Women relate differently when they are in a women only group vs. mixed company, men do the same. Mostly, I think, people accept these differences for granted, perhaps don't even notice them. For me, they dominated every social experience.

Because I was so deeply ashamed of who I was, I tried to relate to people according to my sex, and because doing so meant I could not relate in a genuinely gendered way, I could not reveal enough of who I was, even with my most intimate friends, to share real intimacy.

In short, I never learned how to be a friend. Others related with me in the fullness of who they are, and I responded with a deep reserve and definite deception. I related with a mask, an assumed persona I'd pieced together to disguise my real self.

As I reflected on my current life, this became very clear, because I am finally learning how to be, and what it means to be, a friend. It's a matter of baby-steps, of stumbling in the dusk. I still don't have the basic skills of friendship down, by any means. However, I am relating in the wholeness of who I am, and that is bringing incredible changes.

I have real women friends now. These are the people most responsible for my new growth. This is the growing richness of my life. Girlfriends. I am finally welcomed into the social role where I belong. No longer am I isolated, an outsider in every social situation, an interloper who feels out of place. I can be myself, and people actually like me.

I cannot relate to you how incredibly beautiful that is, to belong, to be myself, to relate to others as fully human. This is the best thing, for me, about my transition. Women friends. Honesty. Relating fully, no longer isolated and alone, no longer a square peg in a round hole, but real, comfortable. I am just me. I cannot find words to express the sense of wholeness I have found. It is a pearl of great price.

To the extent that my body does not match my gender, it affects how people relate to me. But the need for human, intimate connection is so great and so basic to our humanity, to feeling and expressing love, so essential to our development and survival, that I will change my body as much as I possibly can to achieve that fullness of social connection. I cannot do otherwise. I am amazed that I stayed alive for so long without that intimacy. Kristin is responsible, of course. I was able to forge a relationship, cobbled together out of my deceptive persona and elements of my real self, with her that was sufficiently intimate to survive, and her love sustained me for 15 years. Yet there is no doubt in my mind that if I had not transitioned, I would now be dead. I simply could not survive in that vacuum of my own soul, in that social and personal isolation, much longer.

There are still a lot of aspects of being transgendered that suck. I hate parts of my body. They betray me. They are completely dysfunctional to who I am. Every day, throughout the day, they rear up and show me how still incomplete are my social relations. The pain of them is constant and unremitting. God, how I wish I could change them! But they do not dominate my life. I have hope. I have meaning. I have girlfriends.

Obama’s Stimulus

Somehow I got signed up for this conservative "news" list serve that sends out daily emails. It goes straight to junk mail, of course, but in the process of deleting the old garbage I noticed that one newsletter was commenting that, just two months into office, "Obama's stimulus" had failed. These guys still think that what we need to get out of this mess is more of the policies that got us into it.

Earth to conservatives! It's going to take a hell of a lot more time than two months for Obama and the Democrats to solve the problems Reagan, the Bushes (especially W) and the Republican congress created. We've had 28 years of lassaize faire, fascist economic policy. It's uncertain whether the economy is even salvageable. We'll probably have to raise taxes on the rich a lot to get out of it. We're also in a new situation, and it'll take a period of trial and error to get it right. However, Obama doesn't appear to be an idealist. Unlike his predecessor, if things don't work, he'll probably try something else.

Meanwhile, fasten your seat belts. There's plenty of turbulence ahead. Turbulence that was visible on the horizon when Reagan was in office, and which you've ignored until now – until avoiding or mitigating it is impossible.

But don't blame Obama for the fallout of Republican policies.

Aging and Death

This is the last post on original sin, following up on those before.

"This world is only a stage in some longer journey we do not understand. To fall in love with our physical beauty, wealth, health, or capacity for pleasure is to kid ourselves, because all that will be taken away. … The only thing that gives our choices any deep significance is the fact that none of this will last. Awareness of mortality gives relationships an urgency, makes our choices matter."

I don't think the importance of our choices imposed by mortality is disputable. For me, there's a special poignancy and urgency in those choices, imposed by a body that doesn't reflect my spirit and the hopelessness of attaining one that matches close enough to embrace the fullness of relationships without an operation that will cost nearly $20,000. My choices in the past have precluded the possibility of obtaining the funds necessary. Heading into the simultaneous transitions of adolescence and middle-age, the urgency of mortality imposes an impossible catch-22: how do I prepare for aging and death when I want so badly to live fully, and how do I live fully when I want so badly to die.

There is certainly a part of me that will welcome death, welcome death as a lover, embrace that oblivion and the release from this body that is a prison more cruel than concrete walls. That part is overwhelmed, however, by its twin, the love of life, the urgency – desperation! – to live each day fully, to embrace every moment of every possibility of every relationship I have as a woman. If I could change this body I would do so, I want release from it so badly. Yet I cling to it, precious as it allows me into the grace and beauty of this life in all its complexity, contradiction, and ambiguity. Yet the possibility of the lycanthropic transformation that will enable the greatest extent of my self's manifestation is precluded by a single line item exclusion in my employer's health plan – an exclusion specific to my diagnosis, specific to my personal demographic. Were I to suffer from a different ailment, this treatment would be available. This exclusion is reserved for transgendered people, because, obviously, our medical needs don't matter.

For most people, the urgency of adolescence is self-centered exploration of identity and sexuality and a passage into the responsibilities and privileges of adulthood. For me, the urgency is to delay the onset of old age long enough to explore any aspect of my sexuality at all, and to do it with the full burden of family and parenting. At the same time, that family, those children, are the center of the richness of my life.

And so I face the looming specter of old age and death with bitterness and gratitude, and a crowning conundrum: How do I enter gracefully into that good night?

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Good and Evil

Part 3, or the third penalty, is good and evil: "In a spiritual life everything is morally charged; nothing is neutral. Choosing between good and evil is a daily effort, but taking responsibility for your choices makes you fully alive. … When we intensify our moral awareness, everything becomes a big deal."

On one level, I have a lot of skepticism regarding this. "Good" and "evil" are both evaluations. They are terms of relativity and judgment, vague and indistinct. What makes something good? What makes it evil? A few things are clear, but most – the vast majority – are situational. The same behavior causes harm in one circumstance, healing or help in another. For instance, killing somebody in one case is pure murder, and harms the individual and his family. In another, it saves someone's life and prevents harm. The real question, is what is the reason or motive for the action? What needs are being met or unmet, and to whom do those needs belong? And is there a different way to act, which will meet the needs of everyone involved.

Too often, the concept of good and evil leads to an abdication of responsibility, not a taking of it.

On another level, the idea that the meaning of life is found in spirituality, that choices are morally charged, and that taking responsibility for those choices is vital in a well-lived and honorable life – that resonates. And the more aware we are of the implications of our choices, even the most minor ones, the better we are equipped both to make choices that serve life, and to take responsibility for our failures. We are also better equipped to deal with the nuances that arise, and to choose the most honorable, and least harmful option when we are faced with situations that cause harm no matter which way we go.

For instance, when I chose to transition, it meant betraying a marriage of 16 years, and it meant taking my sons' father out of their life. It was the hardest choice I ever made, because I could see so clearly the people I was hurting by doing it, and they were the people I loved most in the world. Yet I could also see that choosing not to would hurt them even worse – in fact, that it was hurting them day by day. Kristin suffered my depression and dishonesty. I could not connect with my children very well – I was not emotionally available to them. And I was so damn close to suicide – how much worse that would have hurt them! Making that choice, my boys have two moms who love them and are fully available. I set an example of courage and integrity, to replace my former example of deception and depression. The price was large, and continues to be large, and there are plenty of people willing to condemn my choice from the comfort of their own moral armchairs. That's okay. They know not of what they speak. I met the needs of my family as best as I was able.

So I agree with the meaning behind Gatto's words, but not with his language. I think it's a lot more useful to think in terms of needs and feelings, than in terms of good and evil. Not only does it offer more flexibility when it comes to choosing strategies to meet needs, it also is a better path to embracing the responsibility, beauty, and pathos of life.

Pain

The second penalty of "original sin," as Gatto sees it, is pain. "Pain is a friend, because it forces our attention away from the world and refocuses it squarely on ourselves. Pain of all sorts is the way we learn insight, balance, and self-control. The siren call of "Feel good!" lures us to court desirable sensations and to despise pain as a spoiler of pleasure. Pain, however, is the road to self knowledge."

When I think about the pain in my life, I am convinced that Gatto is right. Pain is a friend. Perhaps not always, and not for all people, but for me, it has been a road to self-knowledge, and it has been a blessing. I used to be afraid of it, and run from it; but I never escaped. Then I turned into it and embraced and felt it fully. I found that not only did I survive, not only did it pass, but now I'm not afraid of it anymore.

Pain is the body's or the mind's signal that there is something wrong in your life, with which one must deal – and heal.

It was psychic pain that taught me to accept and embrace who I am, and enabled me to face a society that often disapproves of my transition, and holds me and it as insane, depraved, and contemptible. It taught me the value of integrity and connection, and enabled my courage. It taught me the value of marriage, and how very much I treasure that potentially happy estate.

Physical pain taught me much, as well. A back injury taught me the limitations of my body. Working through tendonitis taught me endurance and toughness, and inspired creativity. (I was on a boat without access to splints or anything, so I cut up a coat hanger, shaped it to hold my hand immobile, and taped it on with electrical tape. Crude, but it worked. I did, too.) I've learned a lot through pain – how to breathe into it, face it, experience it, relax into it, let it pass through you. If you tense up, it stops and stays inside.

Pain has taught me compassion. That alone makes it worthwhile.

While it's true that pain is not fun, and it's not desirable for its own sake, its effects are often salutary. Like anyone else, I'll do what I can to avoid it. Yet I've found that the best way to avoid it is to face it full on and experience it fully. Somehow, that makes it bearable, and often seems to enable me to go through it and out the other side. It's not fun, but it is a friend.

Work

Continuing my soliloquy on original sin from the last couple of days, I'll talk today about work.

"Work is the only avenue to genuine self-respect. Work develops independence, self-reliance, resourcefulness, and character. Without real work we will inevitably find despair, no matter how much money or power we have. Work … produces spiritual rewards unrelated to the reinforcement schedules of behavioral psychologists, but only if we tackle it gladly, without resentment."

What Gatto is speaking of here is not just physical labor or bureaucratic pencil-pushing. Work that creates self-respect has meaning. And that meaning comes from service, challenge, practicality, responsibility, free choice, and genuine self-expression, with simple goals like the common good and enriching life for others, including non-human life forms. Not abstract, but in clear, specific, and immediate ways.

For instance, as a child, my work in school was mostly a drab grey mush of meaninglessness. A few exceptions stand out – using a projection machine to learn to read faster when I was in sixth grade; making boxes in middle school shop class; FFA agronomy judging in tenth grade. Choice was key in every one of these exceptions. Mostly I experienced despair in school, and not all of that was from growing up transgendered in a world that didn't recognize it.

Sadder still, growing up on a ranch, I had natural meaning in work, caring for the animals we raised. Yet because that work was coerced, much of it was not meaningful and I did it poorly. Not all. I found deep meaning in caring for my own horse, and did it willingly. But there, I was doing it out of love, and "tackle[d] it gladly, without resentment.

So choice, or perception of choice, is vital in finding meaning in work. I believe it was one of the ancient Greek sages who said, "Nothing of value to the individual is obtained through coercion."

Today, I'm a bureaucrat, a government pencil-pusher. I suspect many people don't find much meaning in that, but I find the deepest meaning in my work in the service I do for others. This comes from guiding homeowners through the permitting process for building or remodeling their homes, and it comes from using the skills and knowledge I've obtained through years of carpentry work and architectural training and experience to ensure that the structures people build will be safe and durable. Sometimes the limits of the building code frustrate me in those goals, but mostly they provide useful parameters. Even in those moments of frustration, though, meaning can come, because part of my work is to suggest changes to the building code that will better meet the needs of society – that will better support the common good.

I find the tie to "original sin" tenuous, yet if that is the concept of the human condition, it works. Ultimately, it doesn't matter why the human condition is this way. What matters is that it is this way. The routes to meaningful, real work are many, and the meaning is found in our individual choices, in what is important to us as individuals, whether it be self-expression, as in painting the Sistine Chapel, or the practical physical labor of building a house. That there is so much dissatisfaction with work in our society, I believe, is a function of being unable to find the meaning in what we do. I suspect much of that inability is taught in the compulsory school system, where our children spend much of their most formative years doing work that benefits no one, without choice. I suspect it is carried on into our adult lives, and translates into addiction, broken families and marriages, and the unhappiness and despair so many of us find in our work.

The human condition is such that work is, indeed, a four letter word – but one that equates with "love," not "crap." Kahlil Gibran said, "Work is love made visible." If it isn't, there's something wrong.

Original Sin Redux

Yesterday I quoted John Taylor Gatto: “What constitutes a good life is clearly spelled out: self-knowledge, duty, responsibility, compassion, acceptance of loss, preparation for death.” Continuing my discussion from that post, I find it interesting that although Gatto writes in a conservative context when he talks about what constitutes the “good life,” I would call these liberal values. Conservatives feed on television and mindless religion, while liberals meditate and do yoga and dig deep for the Truth. Conservatives drive Hummers and Sequoias and buy slave-labor-made clothes at Walmart, liberals drive Priuses and bicycles and buy from local, independent stores. Conservatives contribute to libertarian think tanks that justify and promote the deregulation that unleashes corporate greed that hurts everyone, liberals contribute to food banks and the homeless. I see lots of old hippies wearing grey hair and wrinkles with pride, and Republican women coloring their hair and trying to look young. On and on.

It’s even worse at the social level. Republicans still refuse to take responsibility for torture, the invasion of Iraq, and the unregulated greed of the CEO’s (who are almost all Republican). They expressed their contempt for life and death by trying to keep Terry Schiavo’s body alive long after her brain had died. They refuse to accept the loss of our place in the world, and our duty to dismantle our empire.

And then I think that that assessment is simplistic – and that in practice, plenty of liberals share the same foibles. Really bad laws, like “No Child Left Behind” and the Patriot Act and the authorization to invade Iraq, received bipartisan support with the “liberal” side fully as enthusiastic as the conservative. It was the “liberal” justices who sided with the big corporation in saying that a private company could claim “eminent domain” and seize other private property from small owners – a travesty of justice in which it was actually Thomas and Scalia who dissented. Despite the actions and policies of Republicans and the consequences of their personal choices, conservatives do frequently claim those values – and sometimes live them. And liberals often do not live them.

Further, though I find the terms “good” and “evil” to be vague, evaluative, and more harmful than constructive, the basis on which Gatto speaks of them makes sense and translates into more useful and clear terms, such as “harmful” and “constructive.”

So I think the line between liberal and conservative is actually not narrow and clear, but wide and fuzzy – a vast grey area with personal choices that end up the same from either side. The reasoning and motivation may be different, but the values are often identical. The seeming wide gulf between us is a construct of the corporate media, which finds great value in keeping the American people divided, our energy wasted in battling against our neighbors rather than in working together to reestablish social equity and make sure our “leaders” are held accountable.

Perhaps one lesson is that integrity is the same, no matter what the religious or political philosophy behind it. Liberals and conservatives are the same: they either express integrity, wisdom, and compassion in each circumstance, or they don’t. And nobody gets it right – or wrong – every time.

Original Sin?

In his book, "A Different Kind of Teacher," John Taylor Gatto has an essay called, "In Defense of Original Sin." I don't usually buy the notion that somehow we've fallen from grace and are all guilty of sin – I usually disbelieve in sin itself. I tend to see behavior as harmful or fulfilling, rather than sinful, evil, or good. Yet here Gatto has a new way of looking at original sin that I find intriguing.

When Gatto says, "The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives," I think he's getting at the same thing Pete Seeger was saying in the quote directly below the masthead on this blog. I think he's right. Facts are easy, just a Google search away. Truth, responsibility, and wisdom are not so easy, and they get right down the heart of the human condition. Gatto puts this in the context of American Christianity, relating it to original sin. The penalties attending expulsion from the Garden of Eden are work, pain, free will, and death – and each one of these is a burden for every single individual, and the path to fulfillment and a happy life.

Then Gatto breaks these four down. There are all the ways we try to avoid these penalties in our modern, corporate culture – pain pills, denial of aging, lack of morality, work is a nasty four-letter word, and a lot of it is meaningless pencil-pushing. Then there are the meanings he ascribes to these in the concept of original sin.

"On work: Work is the only avenue to genuine self-respect. Work develops independence, self-reliance, resourcefulness, and character. Without real work we will inevitably find despair, no matter how much money or power we have. Work … produces spiritual rewards unrelated to the reinforcement schedules of behavioral psychologists, but only if we tackle it gladly, without resentment."

"On pain: Pain is a friend, because it forces our attention away from the world and refocuses it squarely on ourselves. Pain of all sorts is the way we learn insight, balance, and self-control. The siren call of "Feel good!" lures us to court desirable sensations and to despise pain as a spoiler of pleasure. Pain, however, is the road to self knowledge."

"On good and evil: In a spiritual life everything is morally charged; nothing is neutral. Choosing between good and evil is a daily effort, but taking responsibility for your choices makes you fully alive. … When we intensify our moral awareness, everything becomes a big deal."

"On aging and death: This world is only a stage in some longer journey we do not understand. To fall in love with our physical beauty, wealth, health, or capacity for pleasure is to kid ourselves, because all that will be taken away. … The only thing that gives our choices any deep significance is the fact that none of this will last. Awareness of mortality gives relationships an urgency, makes our choices matter."

And to sum up: "The best lives seem to be full of contemplation, solitude, and self-examination; full of private, personal attempts to engage the riddles of existence, from the cosmic mystery of death to the smaller mystery of exchanging secrets with a cat. … What constitutes a good life is clearly spelled out: self-knowledge, duty, responsibility, compassion, acceptance of loss, preparation for death."

In other words, things we must do for ourselves, which no teacher can do for us.

To be continued…