[null, {"document_url": "https://lisainbc.blogspot.com/2013/04/", "unformatted_src": "https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vvem8vOtkOo/UWCCx1kTCgI/AAAAAAAAATA/lBLZMDtOQzc/s320/Pointing-Fingers.png", "src": "https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vvem8vOtkOo/UWCCx1kTCgI/AAAAAAAAATA/lBLZMDtOQzc/s320/Pointing-Fingers.png", "formatted_filename": "Pointing Fingers", "alt_text": "Image"}, null, null, {"document_url": "https://lisainbc.blogspot.com/2013/04/", "unformatted_src": "//lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2f-LAYJgyo4/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/83Ac6uYEs-c/s120-c-pf/photo.jpg", "src": "http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2f-LAYJgyo4/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/83Ac6uYEs-c/s120-c-pf/photo.jpg", "formatted_filename": "photo", "alt_text": "My photo", "rendered_width": 120, "rendered_height": 120}, null]



Pointing Fingers: Out of the Gender Non-Conforming Comfort Zone (an admission)
 Who Made Me Gender-Role Police? The story is titled “About a Boy: Transgender surgery at age sixteen” by Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker Magazine (March 18, 2013). It talks about how many more females are coming out as transgender now than in the past. But as I reflected on the amazing progress trans people have made in recent years, it made me aware of my own subtle bias about gender-role conformity.

Indeed, my doctors tell me that compared to twenty years ago, when it seemed that twice as many males transitioned to females than females to males, today there is equilibrium in the numbers, with as many females as males identifying as transgender. Margaret Talbot says this:
In the past, females who wished to live as males rarely sought surgery, in part because they could “pass” easily enough in public; today, there is a desire for more thorough transformations. The subject of her story is a young transman named Skylar who underwent top surgery at the age of sixteen, a much younger …

 Here is a link to Matthew J. Roth's interview
with my friend Kathy Baldock.

If you want to know the etymology of the words "homosexaul" and "heterosexual" and how they ended up in the Bible, you need to read this great interview!


Equally worth reading are some of the comments. In particular, several by "Tim," which were made in response to "Mark." I've copied and pasted them below:

Comment Stream by Tim:
According to the ancient rabbis, as written in the Talmud, one of the problems in Sodom was heterosexual adultery which is quite different from homosexuality. The example the Rabbis give is Potiphar’s wife enticing Joseph to commit adultery with her in Genesis 39:9.In plainer words, according to ancient Jewish Rabbis, the men of Sodom were having sex with other men’s wives, not with other men. Take a moment to get your mind around that. This testimony from the Talmud is 2000 years old. It’s not somethi… 
As someone who has come to terms with what for years seemed like a paradox and contradiction, if not absurd chaos, I came to realize fairly late in life that much of the identity I had constructed for myself had to be tossed out and I needed to start over.

Yes, I've been around too long to think that I could keep all the details of my life private, though I try. There are a few things you need to know about me which will put what I have to say in perspective and provide a context for this blog.

Most people don’t have a clue of what goes on inside the head of someone who is gender dysphoric; the questioning and the persistent sense that something is wrong and that the gender they identify as does not quite align with their body.

The contradictory aspect of all of this is the absolute sense I always had, all the way from the first memories of this chaos until today, that I am deeply loved and cherished by God. However, this sense of being loved did not stop me from wanting to make sense of who and what I was, always asking the most basic of questions in our human repertoire, “Why this?” and “Why me?”

From childhood I did the only thing that made sense or seemed most logical. But this, of course, was a subjective interpretation, it was using a logic rooted on the social constructs around me: my family, my circle of friends, and the larger social an cultural environment I existed in. My logic was based on what other said, and with respect to me, how they defined me. But inside me there was a different raging conversation going—a debate of sorts—that at times was a screaming match, but it lacked words. Without a nomenclature and vocabulary, it meant that this condition, or whatever it was called, would have to be kept gagged and shackled.

How does one cope or deal with this kind of absurdity? When others are making plans for their future and dreaming of a golden time in their lives, I was ensuring the chains and the locks around this unknown force were holding tight.

It is hard for me to remember much of my childhood because the most vivid and accessible memories are of me envying others being free to be themselves. It’s like I was a spectator of everyone else’s life, but I was behind a chain-linked fence and not part of the action.

What does this have to do with my philosophy of life as a spiritual health practitioner and facilitator? The short answer is that it is the basis of what gives me the sense of being loved and cherished by God, and this—in turn—is what compels me today to want to help others find their voice, if not a language, that will help them begin to make sense of their own chaos.

I no longer have the myopic and egocentric view that I am the only person who struggles to find words for the unspeakable and indefinable in life. I realize that we all have this burning need to flesh out who we are with words that ring true, even if those words are frightening and strange at first before they become marvelous.

