On God and Gender

I've been meaning to write about this for some time. I've been meaning to, and putting it off, composing endless drafts in my head about this subject that means to much to me, but so much less than it does to others.

Those of you who know me well... You know I've written this six times and deleted it trying to find the right way to describe how I assume you all see me. I can't do it. Not with any real accuracy at least, and it's actually putting up another roadblock here, so let me skip that assumption description and move on.

I do a lot of things that are not traditionally "feminine". A lot of things. Car repair, tinkering with machines, carpentry. ("Having sex with women?" I can hear the peanut gallery chiming in. Yes, but this post is not really so about my sexual preferences.) A few times I've asked people how they'd describe me, or my skill set, and the answer I  get every time is something like "a nexus of capability". "Unconstrained by expectations". Man, I wish I could put this stuff on a resume.

I have spent most of my life cultivating masculinity, enjoying being able to do the tasks that are traditionally assigned to men, retaining knowledge that surprises those who'd take advantage of me (ask me about my muffler repair, ha), doing on my own what I'm expected to need assistance for. Part of it is that I'm a contrarian; anyone who tells me I can't do a thing had best watch out and be prepared to defend their assumptions. The number of men who catcall me is vanishingly small, and a man who I camp with at Burning Man explained that he'd never fight me because I "would break [him] like a twig." (I admit to being flattered, because he's like six feet tall and muscular as hell and I am 99% certain he is wrong.) I wear big boots. I carry a knife. I take as little shit from people as possible while still being within the bounds of pleasant social contract.

I do all of this while inhabiting a female body. Not just female in genotype, not just female-in-name-only, but a downright feminine body. I have ridiculously wide hips. ("Childbearin' hips" as grammie would've said.) I've got... rather large breasts. And despite years of threatening to shave my head, I also have traditionally feminine long hair. I look like a girl, even if I so seldom feel that the words - girl, woman -  that gender - female - captures the fullness of who I really am.

Over the years I've seen friends struggle with queerness, with gender roles, with gender dysphoria, and I've seen so many of them decide that clearly there's been a mistake and they need to transition. I fully support them (even as I mourn the diminishing number of butches - but that's just an aesthetic thing), and I know that feeling that you've been shoved in a vessel that doesn't quite fit the contents. But I've never felt the need to transition, to entirely rewrite the body I'm in, and that previous sentence might give you some clue as to why.

The spiritual system I was raised with borrows heavily from Hindu Buddhism, and believes in things like reincarnation, past lives, karmic debts and balances, higher planes of existence. In the end, my belief is that God is more like a motivating force of the universe, more like gravity, than like the omnipotent sky-friend of the Abrahamic religions. My God is genderless. My God actually doesn't give a shit if you capitalize Its pronouns, or even which ones you use. My God doesn't really have a single consciousness, a single personality with that level of humanity to be insulted. In the beliefs I was raised with, all other gods - the Abrahamic sky-friends, the Greek pantheons, the Pagan gods of dark caves and woods - are subsets, faces or facets, of the God I believe in.

In the world I believe in, the soul is a fragment of God, and as such is genderless. When we enter this plane, we are given the bodies that best serve what's on our karmic "to do" list, be that body male, female, or something in between. Ticking off items on that to do list is how God knows itself; by our experiences we contribute to a vast ocean of cosmic love and compassion. But the experiences are not always pleasant. The things on your to do list are not always "good" experiences and certainly not always fun. And sometimes, I feel, the "to do list" includes experiencing extreme dysphoria. Experiencing the pain and struggle of feeling not at home in your own skin, of feeling pressure from outside to conform, of feeling and surviving the hatred of the fearful, and - hopefully - of having the experience of doing your own thing despite it, in all its pain and glory.

And your choices in how you live provide the experiences that others need, too.

I cannot be angry at God for this body. Am I uncomfortable in my own skin? Yes, undoubtedly, but blessedly infrequently these days. The older I get, the more I realize the strength and wonder of the vessel I'm in, for all the things I would change about it and all the greener grass in other pastures.

Do I sometimes dream of being a man? Yes.
Would I take steps to actually become one? No.

I am satisfied that this vessel too will pass away in death some day, and the next one could be male. Or it may not. I am content with where I am, how I am, who I am, and content with the way I am able to live my life, even if it is not a bed of roses, even if it's not easy.

But I also recognize that I am undoubtedly incredibly fortunate - privileged even - in that contentment. And if you feel that you need to change the vessel you're in, I absolutely support you, and will do whatever I can within reason to help and support you along the way, whatever your choice might be. I only ask that you be patient with me: I am human, humans are creatures of habit, and habits and cultural conditioning are hard to break. And I ask that you respect my choice of presentation (whatever it is), my choice to stick with female pronouns.

And yet...

And yet I cannot stop thinking about him. It's grossly unhealthy and I know it.

The Blessing Moon

The words welled up on my tongue, as they'd been fighting to do for weeks now. And this time I let them; I let them pour, sweet and pure and sad and final, and I sang him off as I'd sung off other men, other loves, other evenings, other lifetimes ago.

The ritual lament. The ritual acknowledgement, the ritual cleansing. May we part in peace.

As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies makin' mane;
And tane ontae the tither did say,
Where shall we gang and dine the day
Where shall we gang and dine the day? 

In behind yon aul fail dyke
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there-o
But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair-o,
His hawk and his hound and his lady fair. 

His hawk is tae the hunting gane,
His hound to fetch the wildfowl hame;
His lady has ta'en anither mate-o
So we may make our dinner sweet-o,
We may make our dinner sweet 

Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane
And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
With many a lock of his golden hair-o
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare-o,
Theek our nest when it grows bare. 

Many a one for him makes mane
But nane shall ken where he is gane;
O'er his white bones when they are bare-o
The wind shall blow for evermare-o,
The wind shall blow for evermare.

Over again

It is a breath, saltwater on the bathroom floor, a half-choked sob, quickly stifled beneath the hum of corporate HVAC. It is a tearing. It is a pop. A cord cut, and suddenly you are adrift, bereft, on the eddies of freedom. He is for you, but he is not for you. He wants to see you he says, but she says he is not seeing you and so she sees no point in maintaining contact with you herself.

It is surprise. It is the lack of surprise. It is the cowardice you told him you didn't see in him. And the sudden wintry clarity of exactly what this must've been.

You realize with that sickening lurch that you'd been chasing him all this time; running after someone who, after the first few sexual rendezvous, could not get more than warmly excited to see you. Laying out banquets of emotional intimacy, generously giving and laying open invitations... to an empty room.

It hurts.

But only faintly.

And that last part scares you, just a little. You feel things so quietly now, everything constrained in bands of hesitation, of silence, of exhaustion. Even the panic, when it comes, comes softly now. The lists work better, the sharp edges of your personal traumas sanded by skilled and expensive therapists, you feel... less. Or perhaps you only recover faster; you invest less emotionally, display less brilliantly, share fewer desires, take what you can but ask for less and less each time.

And life goes on. A week later you've set the date for the next installment of this secondary-cycle; a brand new face to pore over, searching for clues as you sip cocktails and discuss yourselves.