In defense of the "stay safe" message...

My alma mater received a credible threat of gun violence for today.  The FBI notified the school that an anonymous shooter threatened a specific campus location at a specific campus time.  In response, the University of Chicago cancelled all services deemed non-essential.  Why they closed student health services as non-essential is a subject for a different post.  The U of C has increased security, including the oh-so-helpful police with visible weapons, and has advised students to stay off and away from campus or stay indoors if they must be on campus because they live there.

Given the situation, many good wishes are being sent to U of Cers and Hyde Parkers, including messages like "thinking of you," "praying for you," "sending love your way," and, of course, the requisite "stay safe."  Amidst the inundation of these posts, some U of Cers are decrying the futility (and therefore perceived insensitivity) of such offerings and directives.

There are legitimate critiques to these mostly formulaic offerings, of course.  Saying "thinking of you" isn't doing anything but communicating worry.  Praying or sending love or good vibes is possibly effective, at least at transforming worry into compassion, but can come off as trite or even offensive.  And the stay safe directive can make it seem like you are responsible for avoiding violence in an uncontrollable situation.  But while possibly not ideal, all these responses communicate that there are people who aren't colocated with you who care.  They say, ultimately, I care whether you live today.  I want you to live today. And I do.  And whether you are a friend I hold dearly, another student trapped in your own home by a terror threat, or the person who thinks bringing a gun to campus will solve your problems, I care whether you live today.  But saying it that way is likely to provoke of intensify your fear of death, which is the last thing I want to do right now.

This is not to argue that if you are afraid then the terrorists win.  Someone threatened to kill you, and fear is a valid and reasonable emotion to experience in a situation like this.  But fear causes the brain to increase irrational responses as well.  It can produce panic and/or a fight-or-flight response.  So while it is ok to be afraid, listening to and acting on your fear could put you in an unnecessarily difficult situation, which I don't want to make for you.

So be annoyed, if you must.  Or exit your social media universe and take today to catch up on your reading, checking updates once in a while, to avoid the trite concern of your powerless friends, acquaintances, and lovers.  But direct your annoyance properly, at the person whose threat caused the situation you're in, and at the systems which led to gun violence seeming like the best solution to end or express their pain.

Here's why I like "stay safe" for these situations.  In all likelihood, you are currently safe.  The word "stay" implies that; it serves as a reminder that in all this chaos, you can start by taking a deep breath and reminding yourself that as of now you are safe.  If you aren't, get help and call 911 if warranted.  There are actions you can take that would decrease your safety such as being on campus where there are armed Chicago police (never mind the internet-based threat), and you don't need to take them.  This is not a day to organize a protest of U of C closing.  People with guns might use them and the number of them on campus has increased because of the threat.  Take affirmative steps for self-care to avoid crossing border from fear to debilitating anxiety.  And distract yourself from your powerlessness over things you cannot control.  Because today, I want you to live.  The world needs you, my favorite thinkers, jokers, rabble-rousers, and curmudgeons.  Learn something new today (crescat scientia, vita excolatur).  And stay safe.

Beyond Mathematical Discovery: What Having a Woman Fields Medalist Really Means

There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics.  And while the Norwegian government has managed to fund a separate prize called the Abel Prize with a similar monetary award and the Israeli government issues a coveted Wolf Prize in the discipline, no mathematical prize means more in mathematics or outside it than the Fields Medal.  The monetary value is only $15,000 Canadian, but the prestige is priceless. This year, for the first time, the Fields Medal, which can be awarded to as many as four people every four years, was awarded to a woman, Maryam Mirzakhani, and awarded to a mathematician from the global south, Artur Avila.  The press is making a big deal of the woman thing and not a big deal about the global south thing, which should not surprise anyone.  The press is also trying to diminish the significance of a woman winning the Fields Medal by stating that no woman has yet won either the Abel or Wolf Prize in mathematics and talking statistics on the sex ratio of Ph.D.s in mathematics.

These prizes are all awarded for mathematical discovery in particular, not pedagogy, compilation of resources, or many of the other things that academic mathematicians do in their work. All but one recipient of the Fields Medal has been an academic.  When you think about mathematical discovery, you think about a bunch of dead white guys having eureka moments in their bath tubs with a crown.  And maybe, if you are the child of mathematicians like me who was the right age in 1994, you think about Andrew Wiles holing himself up in secrecy for seven years to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.  And, if you read the news, you might also think of the one non-academic Fields Medalist Grigori Perelman, who proved the Poincaré conjecture.  Even if you are the child of two mathematicians, you probably don't think about your mother running Maple calculations about complex manifolds while cooking dinner, or a young mathematician taking a break from writing a paper to nurse her child.  And you don't think about how the ability of even a brilliant mathematician to devote the time and energy to amazing discovery and to get the resources she needs is dependent on her gender.  Only 30% of mathematicians are women, and far fewer are tenured faculty at the world's top research institutions.

Before getting to the Fields Medal itself, let me push the other prizes to the side.  The Wolf Prize has only existed since 1978, and it is a lifetime achievement prize.  Its recipients are the authors of your college mathematical textbooks, the provers and conjecturers of Big Theorems, and the founders of new mathematical disciplines.  Among its recipients are many Fields Medalists, and it has no age cap.  This means that the gender bias in its recipients spans not just the last 20 years (assuming start of real mathematical work around age 20) but of the last 50 to 60 - Shiing-Shen Chern received the prize at age 73.  So, when looking at a Wolf Prize awarded in 2014, we need to look at the gender biases in mathematics at least back to 1964.  The Abel Prize has only been in existence since 2001, and despite its 6 million kroner ($1 million US) prize, is not discussed as a goal in mathematics.  Its recipients are mainly winners of the other two prizes, and I think it is still working to establish itself as a legitimate prize, and picking winners helps in that.  It is worth noting that my mother's thesis advisor, Isadore Singer, shared the prize with Sir Michael Atiyah in 2004 for the Atiyah-Singer Theorem, which won a Fields Medal for Atiyah but not for Singer, as singer was too old to win the prize at the time.  Similarly there is no age cut off for the Abel Prize, which is also in the process of making up for its years of not existing.  It is therefore not surprising that it has not yet been awarded to any women.

Now for the Fields Medal, which is awarded for outstanding discoveries by young mathematicians.  For young mathematicians to succeed in quests for discovery, they need to be in the right environment and have support and the time to make their discoveries.  This includes being in a research environment full of other talented mathematicians, usually ones in your own field, and having the support to do independent and collaborative research as well as teach.  Additionally, being able to make mathematical discoveries is not usually a matter of Eureka moments but of extensive contemplation and research, something which taking the time to bear and raise children, even if not taking time off from academic teaching responsibilities, can severely hamper women's progress in mathematicians.  While plenty of men mathematicians spend time raising children and caring for their families, they also have the option of having children later in life (which they do) and passing off care responsibilities to their partners in ways that are not acceptable for women.  The consistent gender imbalance of faculty at elite institutions makes it even harder for women to get the resources they need to overcome these challenges.  Top young women mathematicians are often given excellent positions at 2nd tier schools who are interested in attracting young mathematicians to keep and expanding which fields they have faculty in.  They take these jobs because tenure is hard to come by and they are then set for life.  But it makes incredible discovery harder.

I am hopeful with these latest Fields Medalists.  The inclusion of a mathematician from the global south means that meaningful mathematical educational structures are developing there.  The award going to a woman under 40 at a top American institution means that we are on the way to fixing the gender disparity in mathematics.  If she can now get the support she needs at Stanford, others will be able to as well, and more women will want to become mathematicians.  Programs will have to be more attentive to specific needs and concerns of women.  And maybe fifty years from now, the Fields Medal, the Abel Prize, and the Wolf Prize in mathematics will all be able to be given to amazing mathematicians of many genders on a regular basis.

Stop Questioning My Gender Identity: On Piers Morgan, Janet Mock, and the trans narrative

Twice a week, on average, my Twitter feed erupts in some sort of controversy.  Like many activists, only "one side" of the issue appears in my feed, as I've constructed my twitterverse to be full of people whose thoughts, opinions, and interests are in concert with mine.  I have plenty of avenues to read the thoughts of people I respect that I disagree with, so I don't bother cluttering my twitter feed with homophobic, antichoice, conservative, transphobic, racist, procensorship, or interventionist sorts unless I also happen to be friends with them.  To be exposed to the opinions of people with whom I disagree, I need only read the newspaper, and if I want to be inundated with them, I can watch FOX News.  My twitterverse is therefore a space where I want to hang out: comfortable, welcoming, inviting, interesting, and safer, if not always safe.

The most recent controversy that popped up on my feed is the controversy over Piers Morgan's initial interview with Janet Mock.  The controversy has been extensively chronicled in the media, so I'll avoid rehashing it at length here.  In short, Janet Mock objected to the way Piers Morgan framed her story as being the story of someone who was formerly a boy and man and became a woman the moment she had vaginoplasty in Thailand.  Janet Mock's fan base got defensive and attacked Piers Morgan, calling him transphobic, and telling him he owed all trans* [sic] people everywhere an apology.  Piers Morgan objected to the criticism, accused Janet Mock of orchestrating abuse of him, and cited an article to justify his framing that she had been a man that Janet Mock did not write herself and critiques in the book, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Indentity, Love & So Much More, which she was on the show to promote.  Morgan painted Mock as someone who was out to destroy his reputation, said that she did not object at the time, and repeated that he is a supporter of transgender rights.  Morgan's painting of the controversy fed into mainstream cultural narrative of transgender women: that they are deceptive, as did his overemphasis on Mock's coming out to her romantic partner, insinuating that if she had chosen not to do so, she would be a liar - a man trying to deceive another man into believing that he is a woman.  I do not believe Morgan meant to feed into this myth, but I also don't believe he did enough to avoid its presumptions.  Because of the controversy, Morgan invited Mock back to the show.  In the second interview, he asked her why he was being villified, what he did that could be interpreted as offensive, and why she did not object initially if she had a problem.  She explained (over and over) that she was assigned male at birth, she never identified as a boy or a man, she did not object initially because she was appreciative of the opportunity and scared about how an objection would be taken, and she reiterated that she did not villify Morgan.  She called him an ally and asserted the importance of him getting it right because of his platform as an ally.  She advised that we follow how trans women identify in order to describe them, rather than projecting our own assumptions on how they must identify or feel.  Morgan could not understand what a trans woman of color could possibly find scary about a straight white man.  The interview had several interruptions, but by the end, Mock seems to have communicated that there is a difference between sex and gender, if not that there was a power dynamic that made her fear of speaking out at the time justified.  While Redefining Realness is primarily about intersectionality, and Mock has stated that she cannot live a single identity, Morgan still reduces her appearance to a coming-out narrative and did not let her talk about the book.  Both interviews seem as though the questions were prepared only from the Marie Claire piece about Mock rather than a read of her book.

If Morgan had stopped after the second interview, it would have been an amazing thing for both of them.  Mock had the opportunity to explain what she found problematic, and Morgan had the opportunity to frame himself as an ally, trying to do his best to be supportive, and trying to understand if and how he failed so as not to repeat the mistakes.  However, then there was a panel, in which Ben Ferguson asserted that Mock was a man and boy and Amy Holmes said that the only reason that Mock appeared on Morgan's show is because she is trans (not, for example, that she had written a book as part of her activism).  While Morgan did a good job containing and reiterating what he had learned in closing the panel, there was no reason to have the panel for him to acknowledge he had learned something new.

Other than his insistence that he is a victim in the situation and his defensive stance, Morgan did exactly what allies should do: he asked questions, he listened, and he learned.  Mock, for her part, did exactly what she should do: she spoke up when she felt able that something an ally had done bothered her, and she patiently explained why while reiterating her understand of him as a supportive person.  As far as apologies are concerned, I don't believe anybody ever owes anybody an apology.  An apology is an expression of remorse for wrongdoing.  If Morgan wishes to apologize to Mock for mischaracterizing her story unintentionally, he is free to do so, and if Morgan wishes to apologize to his viewing public for not treating a guest in the most respectful manner possible, he may do so.  As far as all transfolk everywhere? The fault there lies with society, not with Piers Morgan.  We must give our allies the benefit of the doubt when they misstep.

Back to my Twitter feed: I felt alone, even though I'm not alone.  I identify as a man, but I have not always.  I used to identify as a woman, and I used to identify as girl.  I was never a boy.  Sure, I was a tomboy, and that led to many trying to impose the identity butch on me, but tomboy is a fundamentally girly gender expression.  I owned it.  I was the girl who liked sports. I was the girl who could spit farther than most boys.  I was the gamer, the geek, the stagehand, the techie.  I had Shirley Temple curls past my shoulders, wore mostly flannels and birkenstocks, and took pride at being able to get along with the men better than with other women.   was the kid who wanted to be an astronaut because Sally Ride's story inspired me (and also space is cool).  I still answer the curious question, "I didn't know women wear yarmulkes" with a strategic explanation that outside of Orthodoxy many women choose to.  I joke that it took me so long to come out as a man because I wanted to be Julie Silver whe I grew up. I still do, by the way.  I was raised on feminist literature and feminist ideals, and the women and men in my life emphasized the amazing women in the world.  I still took many of the amazing women in my life, particularly many of my early teachers, for granted. I looked forward to joining their ranks.  My eulogy for my grandpa was about his support of me growing into a strong woman.  Then my identity crashed.  As I learned more and more about the way the lens of gender is constructed, I learned that I my conceptions of my gendered self don't match how femininity has been constructed or how feminine masculinity has been constructed, and "woman" became too uncomfortable a term.  So I stopped using it.  For a while, I tried to be outside the constructed gender binary, but I identified with particular kinds of masculine constructions of gender identity, and I ended up feeling that the box "man" is broad enough to include me.  When I identify as a man, people see me for me, and I can interact without the gender dysphoria I used to have. When I identified as a woman, my masculinity was the most important, visible aspect of my identity.  Now, as an effeminate man, neither my effeminacy nor my masculinity stands out.  I sometimes am read as a butch woman, sometimes as a gay man, sometimes as delightfully androgynous (and therefore genderqueer - another problematic assumption), sometimes as a queer man, and very rarely as a straight man.  When I talk about the times in my life when I identified as a girl or a woman, I use feminine pronouns for myself, and when I talk about times since I stopped identifying that way I use masculine pronouns for myself.  This sometimes shocks the people I'm around; I've been known to make jaws drop when I say I used to be a Girl Scout.  Being socialized to be a girl and become a woman is an important aspect of my identity.  I don't compartmentalize me, and I know that it grants me a queer perspective compared to other men.  When trans activists claimed to speak for me that the language Morgan used would be wrong for any trans person, they were wrong, and they made me feel like my narrative wasn't valid.

Allies, haters, the indifferent, and trans activists should not discount my story because there are people who have always identified with a gender that does not match the sex they were assigned.  By being open about having been a girl and a woman, I am being true to myself at those times.  By identifying as a man, I let my gender presentation fade into the background, so I get to interact on a level that takes my gender as a given instead of a question.   And isn't that what Janet Mock wants for herself?

Words of Wisdom from the Man I Married

Mr. Boy, dying, has made a number of recommendations to me for life after him.

1. Don't shave with a straight razor. You might be tempted, dandy as you are, but you're too clumsy.
2. You're a MacNeil now.  That means your motto is "To Conquer or To Die."  Conquering is always preferable, and is no longer meant only in a sense of conquering land or people. Spiritual conquering is the ultimate expression, these days.
3. Don't hang out with people who aren't stubborn; you have no capacity to interact with them well.  Stick with Jews and the Irish.
4. Laugh often.
5. You're better at being a good boy than a bad one; it's one of your best qualities.
6. Take time to mourn. Then move on.
7. Read the psalms.
8. No emotion exists that has not been properly captured by the Bard.
9. Being part of an Irish family means you can't ever get rid of them.  Don't try.
10. Add Irish to the list of languages you should learn.
11. Don't spend all your time remembering me, and when you do remember me, remember happy times and Hershey's kisses, not hospitals and vomiting.
12. There is an Indigo Girls song perfect for every occassion.
13. If people ask if you're Scottish, you say "Scots-Irish, by marriage."  Then they won't ask you any questions about your clan heritage.  But learn everything you can anyway.  Theoretically, you could owe fielty to Chief Rory.
14. Love.  Every person, every moment, every thing.
15. Don't try two days at a time. That's a recipe for disaster.
16. I will always love you. I don't know what happens after death (I'd like to think nothing), but if something does - I will still love you.
17. It will still be hard to be sexy while thinking of a red-nosed reindeer. Take comfort in the fact that some things will never change.
18. So I borrowed this one from my priest, but: Most of the time, what you think is a dementor is just a boggart.  And if it's really a dementor, eat chocolate.
19. Dream big; live bigger.  Life is always more amazing than your wildest dreams.
20. Though know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

The Stuff I Find it Hard to Talk About: Shame, Stigma, Privacy, and Calculated Vulnerability

On Saturday, Mr. Boy checked himself into a psychiatric hospital because part of him wanted to kill himself while part of him did not.  He checked himself in voluntarily and without persuasion from any other person.  At some point, he stopped taking his medications, and taking them helps him stay healthy.  He is exactly where he needs to be to get better.

I'm a big proponent of self care.  Steps we take to ensure our health and well-being are both good and necessary, and when the step we have to take to do that is putting ourselves in a situation where we can't harm ourselves, we should not be afraid to do so.  Yet, we are ashamed when we take this step to protect our lives.  We feel like worthless failures for ending up in a position of vulnerability we cannot control.  I have been on Mr. Boy's side of this equation.  When the best thing I could do to survive was ask for help, I felt broken - not because I wanted to die (that felt normal at the time) but because I needed help not to.  The physicality of living is an unconscious process.  When it becomes conscious, we feel broken.  Despite the modern understanding of such brokenness as illness, we feel it as shame.

So Mr. Boy feels ashamed that he "let himself get to the point" of needing to take this step.  I'm grateful that he's taking this step rather than killing himself.  But I'm also ashamed.  I'm ashamed that the strength of his life and our relationship is not enough to give him reasons to live, even as I know that it's not about that, and if it were, any reasons for him to stay alive need to be internal to him.

I find myself talking around Mr. Boy's illness.  My boyfriend, I say, is in the hospital.  They're monitoring him; he'll be ok.  I told my parents he was in the hospital, but refused to answer questions about why or where.  They were supportive of me when I ended up in psych wards, but somehow it feels like my failure that Mr. Boy ended up in one.  I told them he's likely to be in the hospital for a few weeks, which is true, but have not elaborated.

With people I am not quite so close to, I find myself worried about how they'll judge Mr. Boy or me if they find out he has a mental illness.  The stigma surrounding mental illness is real and often unconscious.  I have no way to predict how my friends and coworkers will react.  In addition, there's a part of me that views this as a private matter.  It's something that is nobody else's business.  Most of my friends still do not yet know Mr. Boy, so they have no investment in the situation other than how it affects me.  And I feel like it shouldn't affect me.  Mr. Boy is sick, and is getting medical attention.  There's nothing else to say, and there's nothing to worry about it.

But it affects me.  I feel like part of me that is in relationship with him is on hiatus because he can't respond to me with a sparkle in his eye.  I feel sad that my dearheart wants to kill himself because I see how valuable he is in the world and it hurts that he doesn't see it.  I feel torn as I place my commitments to my job and my own self care such that I can't go see him every day (the hospital has very limited visiting hours).  I feel shut down as I put my worries over his well-being aside to get through my day.  I feel that my love for him is being strengthened by this experience and grateful to be able to pray about it honestly.  I feel lonely, like no one has ever been through what I've been through even as I reach out to people I know have been in my situation.  I feel distracted from the joys and sorrows of my friends and the world because my thoughts, when not focused on work are focused on him.  I feel amazed that I can care that way about another person.  I feel angry that he has to go through this.  I feel honored that I have become close enough to him that he wants to see me even though he feels broken.  I feel overwhelmed by all of this.  I feel vulnerable, and not the calculated vulnerability that I can use to be an effective organizer, but scared, vulnerable, and squishy (I'm looking to see if anyone has a pointy stick).  I feel like the person I would go to to help me deal with this is absent, but that what I want to be able to do is curl up in his arms and cry.  I feel like I can't express this in my daily interactions.  I find myself directing the shaming anti-sissy rhetoric that my flaming boy disdains at myself.  I tell myself to man up or butch up, that crying is something I need to wait until I'm home alone to do, that it's not ok to feel less than happy or fulfilled, that I need to pretend that everything is fine, and I need to protect myself from the inference that I am weak.

And it's hard to talk about.  Even with the select few people I've reached out to, it's hard to say what I mean.  I don't even know that I've managed to here, but at least I tried.

Because I don't know how to close this with my own words, here are Rainer Maria Rilke's, as translated by Stephen Mitchell:

I am, O Anxious One.  Don't you hear my voice
surging forth with all my earthly feelings
They yearn so high that they have sprouted wings
and whitely fly in circles around your face.
My soul, dressed in silence, rises up
and stands alone before you: can't you see?
Don't you know that my prayer is growing ripe
upon your vision, as upon a tree?

If you are the dreamer, I am what you dream.
But when you want to wake, I am your wish,
and I grow strong with all magnificence
and turn myself into a star's vast silence
above the strange and distant city, Time.

A Prayer for Queer Folk

אב הרחמים, gender-fuck father whose compassion cradles us like a mother cares for a newborn, we appealed to you in our darkest moments of internalizing the pain the world directs at us.  We cried out to you during beatings in alleys, with our heads in toilets, when our partners and friends died of AIDS, and, of course, when we finally let ourselves be free to enjoy the sex we wanted to have.  We asked you to put an end to our suffering, sometimes by ending our own lives.  We created communities of our own to let your love in when the world told us we were hated.

From the depths of the gutters we slept in when we were kicked out of our parents' homes, we called out to you and you answered us with the great expanse of a friendly drag queen's heel and her hand extended to pull us up and sit us down on the nearest bar stool.  You answered us in the still small voice of a goth girl techie who taught us oh those many uses for gaffer's tape.  You comforted us with show tunes, Gloria Gaynor, and the Indigo Girls.  You gave us the strength of each other which led us to have the courage not only to come into our own but to come out to the world.  You marched with us on Christopher Street and Folsom Street.  You cried with us as we lost amazing women to transphobia, and you learned with us as we developed and refined queer theory.

Some of us had faith in You from the beginning, and some of us still don't have faith in You.  Some of us rejected You when others told us You hated us, and some of us only found You when humanity abandoned us.  You are invoked all around us, but we lost hope in Your deliverance.  We lost hope when people made in Your image killed our brother Matthew Shepard and our sister Rita Hester.  Some of us lost faith but all of us lost hope.  We lost hope when we woke up with survivor's guilt when we survived the AIDS crisis.  We lost hope when kids continued to kill themselves even after Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres came out and so many others followed.  We lost hope when Mark Carson was killed in our safehaven of Greenwich Village.  We no longer knew how to call out to You.  The arc of progress seemed grayscale rather than rainbow. We convinced ourselves You weren't listening, that we just had to wait for humanity to catch up to Your justice and love.  And humanity wasn't looking too friendly.

Our Rock and our Redeemer, you sent us allies, who took up the torch we left at the door of the nightclub.  To us, some of them seemed like strange bedfellows.  However, when we cried that the country was burning they saw that it was not being consumed.  They fought when we were tired, and we took strength from them.  We were devastated when the US Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act and when they restricted the ability of employees to claim harassment against their employers, and we got angry at people, but not at You because we lost hope when, despite the illusions of progress, we were not safe in our own neighborhoods.  We called on You to guard our comings and our goings, but You seemed to be asleep on the job as our siblings, especially those of color continue to be attacked for walking down the street.

Our Strength and our Salvation, You nevertheless renewed our resolve as we held Pride Parades, Dyke Marches, and Trans Days of Action in our cities.  You allowed us to broadcast that it can be fun, invigorating, and complicated to be queer, but that coming out of the closet allows a person to be surrounded with complex and jovial folk.  As we lamented that Pride has become a spectacle that straight people come to gawk at and a forum for pandering to gay [sic] constituents, we became grateful that we have the privilege to feel that way.

מודים אנחנו לך, grateful are we for You, in the midst of all of this.  We are grateful for how far we have come.  We are grateful that there is more work to do because we have been struggling so long we don't know how else to live.  We are grateful every time we say the words "I love you," every time we see a rainbow - natural or manmade, every time we pass a single-user gender neutral restroom, every time we recognize what someone wants by a handkerchief, and every time we arrive home safely.  We are grateful for the opportunity to remember how grateful we are.

We pray that we may be cognizant of our gratitude constantly.  Knowing dark hours will still come, we pray that we may recognize the joy of Pride Month 2013 when we are enveloped.  We pray that we remain cognizant of our privilege, and that having more equal rights does not cause us to lose our focus on the marginalized members of society.  Appreciating the support we have been offered, we pray for the will to continue to form chosen families and mentorships as the world accepts our presence in more spaces.  We pray for the ability to show others that difference is positive.  We pray to stay queer.

נברך את מעין חיינו חי העולמים שומעת תפילה

Tzom Qasheh

The Seventeenth of Tammuz is a minor fast day in Jewish tradition which commemorates the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  Being a post-biblical minor fast, I did not observe it from the age of thirteen.  The day starts a three-week mourning period between it and Tisha B'av, the day the Second Temple was destroyed.  Tisha B'av is the saddest day of the Jewish year, and many other national tragedies are also commemorated on that day.  I started observing it at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute, which was one of the first observances that made me more frum than my parents.  However, previous to this year, I had never observed Tzom Tammuz or the three-week period called bein hameitzarim (between the narrow places).

Last year, one of the women I am blessed to call "my rabbi" framed bein hameitzarim as the beginning of the trajectory to the High Holy Days.  We hit a communal rock bottom which allows us to do the spiritual work of t'shuvah and reconcile with God during yamim noraim.  So this year, I decided to try fasting for Tzom Tammuz.  Minor fasts are observed from sunup to sundown, and the timing of Tzom Tammuz made it a fast between about 5:15 AM and 9:15 PM.  But due to poor planning, I ended up accidentally fasting for about 28 hours.  Jewish law permits self-care exemptions to fasting, so I did take my medicine.

I wasn't feeling well the day of Tzom Tammuz and stayed home from work.  I spent a large part of the day, lying down, wishing the pain I was feeling would go away, and not really being able to eat even if I had wanted to.  It felt like the world was breaking, which, I suppose is the point.  When the day was over, a neighbor who is a good friend offered to feed me, which was good, because I wasn't sure if I could stand up for long enough to cook something.

As far as how the three weeks are going, I haven't felt too much in a mournful mood.  Although certain things in my life are not desirable (my significant other is very ill), I feel like the events of the week are those of celebration for the most part.  I don't mean to slight to the damage that repealing part of the Voting Rights Act or the limiting of what constitutes a supervisor for harassment cases does to society.  These are unfortunate losses in the fight for equal dignity.  But the Supreme Court asserted that people in same-sex relationships are human.  I didn't need a court to tell me this, but it sure helps that they did.  I feel grateful and victorious, not mournful and sad.  And the coincidence with Pride celebrations just added to my internalization of the collective effervescence.  Additionally, this year, Canada Day, American Independence Day, and Bastille Day all fall during the Three Weeks.  My love's yahrzeit will fall in the Three Weeks this year, but even that does not make me feel spiritually low.  I feel b'midbar, in the wilderness on the slow and steady march to Freedom Land.  We may not be there yet, but we can see it from the mountain top.  That makes me feel spiritually elevated.  I know that I am on the right path, and my community is too.  But then again, perhaps that was my rabbi's point anyway.

Reform Judaism and Obligation(s)

The Reform Movement in Judaism has wonderful discourse about a variety of topics, and fantastic justified pride in its discourse about some.  Reform Jews are great at discussing ethics, meaning, freedom, choice, and equality.  Reform Judaism has been involved in larger discussions of racism, sexism, and homophobia.  Reform congregations talk a good game about inclusion and welcoming interfaith families, Jews-by-choice, and same-gender couples.  But we do a horrible job about discussing personal and communal religious practice and obligations.

I grew up steeped in Reform Movement formal and informal education.  I learned that Reform Judaism is not bound by halakhah the way Orthodox and Conservative Judaisms are.  I learned that I get to choose my own religious observance level based on intellectual and emotional meaning in particular observance.  I learned that if I don't find a practice meaningful, I don't have to do it.  And I learned that this process is called "choice through knowledge."  This child-friendly naming of something I've since recognized as informed consent is a great slogan and gets people to learn about religious ritual and ideas in a way they would not experience otherwise.  However, this policy unchecked allows for moral relativism in a way that most Reform Jews would abhor.

I believe Reform Judaism as a whole and Reform Jews individually have a concept of right action.  I know I do, and sometimes I do things that are not personally meaningful or fulfilling because they are right or obligated.  And these may not have been things that I have chosen to do for myself through research and trial in previous situation.  And my religion on which I base my actions has no way of talking about that.

I call my parents once a week before Shabbat.  Sometimes, I want to talk to them, but mostly, I feel obligated to tell them once a week that I'm alive and not dead and listen to what's going on in their lives.  I wish them Shabbat Shalom, and I feel yotzei on the mitzvah of honoring my father and mother even when I don't find the practice meaningful or fulfilling.  By a rubric of informed consent, I know that talking to my parents, most of the time, will frustrate me.  But I do it anyway.  And the Reform Jewish framework has no term for this, even though the experience is a common one.

We need to be comfortable talking about obligation and obligations and being obligated even outside of a halakhicly-binding framework.  We cannot resign ourselves to be so morally relativistic we have no ground to stand on.  We need to be able to speak about actions that compel us to do them as well as actions we find compelling, and we need to have a philosophical viewpoint that means something other than hedonism.

Anyway, rant over.

National Coming Out Day

This year, I hadn't even absorbed that the day was happening until it was almost over.  I have so blocked National Coming Out Day from my life and my consciousness that it wasn't until I read the onslaught of Facebook status updates of my friends coming out again.  These cursory reiterations of queerness and other identities are the confident statements of those who hare secure in their understandings of those aspects of themselves.

The most "celebration" I have ever done for National Coming Out Day has been attending the Matthew Shepard Memorial March put together by Chicago's Gay Liberation Network that used to be a much better organization called Chicago Anti-Bashing Network.  There is enough pressure within the queer community to come out without dictating a magic day to be ready.  And there is enough pressure outside and within the queer community to stay in the closet.

As one of my friends from NUJLS would say, coming out is a continual process.  Once you start, you're never done.  There is always someone new to come out to, and identity is complex and changes over time, so there's also always something new or some more nuanced way to come out.

I started thinking about coming out after my love died, and I don't think I told anyone until a year and a half later.  And it wasn't until after my first year of college that I came out to my supportive parents.  If National Coming Out Day had the prominence that it does now, I would have been pressured to come out before I was ready, and I think many people who have started the process of coming out are pressured into declaring their insecure identities to the world before they are ready.

So, if you're reading this and you're considering coming out, know that you are not alone.  You can talk to me or someone else who will maintain your confidentiality while you think your identity through.  Know that even in the closet, you have the support of an amazing network of people who care about you and you are already accepted by the LGBTQ community, or at least the people in it who will matter to you.  We are here for you whatever you decide and whenever you decide.

September 11th

September 11th is my generation's national unifier. My parents' generation remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot, my grandparents' America was defined by World War II, and their parents' by the Great Depression and World War I. My generation won't look back at the Great Recession, or even the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, as the formative experience in the formation of our America. We will forever be changed by the world stopping on one day ten years ago. When we're old, we'll tell the stories of where we were on that day, what we were doing when we heard the news or saw the Twin Towers collapse. And we'll talk about how that day changed the course of America forever. We may then mention, if we remember, what we were doing in May 2011 when Osama bin Laden was killed, and most of us will have forgotten that the Navy Seal team that killed him suffered casualties in Afghanistan shortly after.

But somehow, the emphasis that we place on 9/11 seems out of place. Perhaps it's the appropriation of the phrase "Never forget" as the mantra of "hunting down" the terrorists so they don't attack us again on "our soil." Growing up Jewish while there was an extreme push to get Holocaust survivors to tell their stories before they pass away, "never forget" is associated in my mind with the systematic massacre of 13 million people by the Nazis. And while the loss of life on 9/11 was a great tragedy, it doesn't register to me on the same level as the extermination campaigns of Adolf Hitler.

We are living in a time that we don't understand. The only constant is uncertainty, and we try to make meaning out of things by making analogies to previous things. We compare bin Laden to Hitler, we compare the Great Recession to the Great Depression, and we compare the technological boom with the industrial revolution. But the truth is we are living in the shadow of things past. And for me, the New Yorker cover Art Spiegelman made as a commemoration is still the most moving memorial of the events. So it is fitting that it later became the cover of his book In the Shadow of No Towers.

Speaking Out

One of the best pieces of speaking up I have ever read was recently on the blog Nerdy Apple Bottom, which you can find linked to on this post. The blogger ends her post with the following:

And again I say to you that bullying is not okay, even if you wrap it in a bow and call it ‘spiritual care.’

I'd like to add one thing: bullying is especially not okay if you wrap it in a bow and call it spiritual care.

Blizzard

Now perhaps my friends will understand that blizzards are dangerous. Cars and possibly still some people are stranded on Lake Shore Dr. But I look at the white out windy conditions and I want to run outside with my love and make snow forts and snow angels. Of course, that too would be dangerous, but it's also impossible.

The Type

I found myself on Friday night frustrated with a young friend of mine for having views of the future. I think I was just bitter that I can no longer be that type of person.

July 12

Ten years ago, I was happy. I was just another happy camper (literally) at OSRUI having a good time in Chalutzim and putting finishing touches on Yom Horim. I spent menuchah and a little time after lights out writing letters to my girlfriend. I guess it's funny that I don't particularly remember July, 12, 2000 as I had no reason to when it happened. Why should a random Wednesday at camp stick out particularly more than any other day, especially when I didn't know that I would want to remember that day.

In fact, the only thing I know to have happened on that day happened 500 miles away from Oconomowoc. And I didn't know until three days later.

Today, on the other hand, I'm a wreck.

My saddest day

I hadn't thought about my experiences on July 15, 2000, in a direct way in a long time. My conversation last night caused me to remember what happened. I was at Chalutzim at OSRUI that year, and I received a letter. At first I thought it was from my beloved, but it was from her parents. I remember the stamp held an image of the American flag. I remember reading how sorry they were that this was the only way to reach me, the only way to tell me, and that "their son" had committed suicide. They had found my love on July 12, dressed in a suit and tie, on the floor. It was too late. They knew that we had been close and considered me like family.

There was no way not to believe them. But I also could not deal with it properly. I wanted to run away from the news. I felt that if I could just get far enough away from that piece of paper doom it would go away. I ran from Chalutzim to Tiferet to search one of my former counselors (I did not feel I could trust the Chalutzim madrichim). I found one of my all-time favorite counselors who asked me what was wrong.

I remember saying, "She's dead. She's dead." I was sobbing by that point.

"I'm sorry. Who was she?"

"My life," I said. I'm not sure if I had ever put it in those terms before, and I'm not sure if he understood what I meant. He helped me calm down a little, and I think I told him then that she was "a good friend" of mine and a little bit more about her.

He helped me calm down, but by the end of the conversation, I was angry at her, and remained so for a long time. How could she have done this to me? (Clearly, she had never really loved me.)

I guess this was the start of my grieving process for her.

A Wish on Christmas (Does that make this a Christmas wish?)

Sometimes, well, truth be told, often, I wish there was an on-off switch for being a token fill-in-the-blank. Most of the time, I am glad to answer questions about my gender identity, dispel myths about various sorts of queers, or discuss (at length) Arab-Israeli conflict. I usually don't mind being the only Midwesterner around, or the only sports fan, or wannabe-theater-geek. I will be patient and explain that, "No, Jews don't believe Jesus was the Messiah," as many times as necessary for someone to understand or at least stop bugging me about it. But sometimes, I just want to be me. I don't want to be Hoosier me, or UofC-educated me, or former-Obama-campaign-intern me, or jobless me, or Jewish me, or queer me, or trans me, or guy me, or dyke me, or even queer-Jew me. I just want to be me. So why does the Token Hat seemed superglued to my head?

What a relief

I find relief when someone puts facts about me together by hirself, saving me from the choice of a lot of explanation or continuing to hide. When I can answer what my name is, and not what my entire life story is or has been until now, I am relieved. And its's always good to hear someone refer to me properly.

NUJLS CONFERENCE 2009

NUJLS (National Union of Jewish LGBTQQI Students) is holding its annual conference this Shabbat (AKA right now) at Penn. So far I've managed to catch up with old friends and meet a few new ones. I am excited for the workshops, which start Saturday afternoon. It is wonderful and necessary to have an organization that empowers (I cannot believe I am using the word) Jewish queer folk to be secure in both their Jewish and their queer identities *at the same time.* NUJLS has certainly benefited my life, in everything from education to confidence, religiousness to my friends. I am glad that I, as a conference organizer, am able to help bring those benefits to other queer Jews.

Also, this year our keynote is Kate Bornstein, which is unbelievably awesome.

My only regret is that not all religions have such groups as this, and young people from those faith traditions suffer because they feel they are alone. One such young person was my beloved, and every NUJLS conference I go to, her life is on my mind (moreso than usual).

Command Day

I'm also a regular nerd.

Square Root Day

The math nerd re-emerges!