On gender: You don't know what you don't know

Two things I generally avoid: Getting into it with transphobes on social media, and using my personal story to prove anything. But for some reason, a comment I saw recently on a friend's social media account made me want to break both those rules. My friend had reposted this viral post about the science behind the complexities of gender, and someone commented:

Not sure why that, of all things, really got me going. But it did. So here's my reply:

Hi. You don't know me. My name is Tamar. As a rule, I don't usually answer comments coming from your perspective, because frankly, it's exhausting. But your specific comment resonated with me in a surprising way. So I figure, what the hell, rules are meant to be broken. I'll say my piece, for whatever it's worth to you or anyone else. So pop some popcorn, pour yourself a libation, put up your feet, here we go.

Twenty-four years ago, I became the mother of twins I presumed were boys, and 18 months later, a child I presumed was a girl. As a teenager, one of the twins came out as a transgender woman. Believe it or not, having been through this makes me understand the thinking behind your question better than you'd imagine. And in a weird way, it makes my better able to empathize with you.

The subtext of your question about birthing babies (everybody knows women have the babies!) is based on a logical fallacy, one that people use all the time: the appeal to self-evident truth. It seems to you crystal clear that certain things are true, in this case, that anatomy = gender. You know what you know. You have no patience for the sophistry of those who would argue otherwise, whom you presume to have ulterior motives.

It may surprise you to learn that I understand your thought process, though not your conclusions, in my very bones. My reasons may have been different than yours, but when my daughter came out, my brain screamed, loudly and insistently: I KNOW WHAT I KNOW. The truth is self-evident.

Like you, I was raised in a world that had so marginalized transgender people that I had never thought deeply about the whole matter. Unlike you, I suspect, I supported the right of trans people to live as the gender they know themselves to be, and I believed them when they proclaimed their true gender (or so I thought). But as it turned out, I held a whole lot of faulty assumptions about what transness was, and who was trans. I knew what I knew. Transness is obvious from childhood; trans kids are deeply depressed and often suicidal; trans girls have always been effeminate. None of this applied to my kid.

My brain was screaming at me because I had dedicated my life to being the best parent to my kids that I could possibly be, and the biggest part of that was to truly and deeply KNOW my kids. And here is this kid telling me she is a girl? How could I not have noticed that? I felt like a terrible failure, a bad parent who had missed something so incredibly important. I will not lie, it took me awhile to get over myself and really listen to her, and to others, and come to understand that our children are unique individuals with complex inner lives that we cannot fully know.

Beyond that, there was the terror. I wanted what every parent wants for their child: love, comfort, confidence, a chance to thrive. And SAFETY. I kept thinking, the world will be so cruel to her. Doesn't she know that? I know that! Everyone knows that! Can't she just...find some safe middle road?

Because I love my child (all my children) with all my heart, the most important thing to me was to treat her with kindness, support, and seriousness. We found all kinds of professional help for all of us, including support groups where we could discuss, really discuss, our innermost thoughts and fears. (Maybe there are some parents out there who adjust to a child's transition easily, but I have yet to meet them.)

The most important thing I've learned is that sometimes, we don't know what we don't know, which is very hard and scary to admit. Our culture, our language, and most importantly, our own feelings and experiences ingrain in us notions of gender that we take to be obviously true. But they are subjective. They are not universal.

So you do not know what you think you know. Your world view tells you that gender, sex, and anatomy are all neatly packaged in one certain way, and that anything else is, at best, a misguided untruth, and at worst, a perversion of nature. But your world view is narrow and false. Your world view is as flawed as those who believed that illness was caused by imbalanced humors or that whales are fish.

You probably think that, if transness were real, it wouldn't have just popped up out of nowhere all of a sudden. That, too, is false. Trans people have always been here, but they have coped with cultural taboos as best they could. And if you think widespread taboos are proof of some natural order, please keep in mind that widespread human beliefs perpetuate all manner of horrors. Slavery. Misogyny. Racism. War. The MCU.

I have lived through letting go of what I thought I knew -- including having to admit to myself that I didn't know my own kid as completely as I'd assumed. It's so, so hard. (But I have also discovered that the human being she is is the human being she always was, with the same loves, talents, sense of humor, intellect, etc, and she's more open than ever, which is wonderful.) I hope that you are a person capable of empathy and open to reason (including the reason on display in the original post), and that you can acknowledge that you might have much to learn.

Here endeth the lesson.

A Prufrock for the Covid Era, or, How I Spent My Day in Quarantine

Prufrock's Streaming Consciousness
By Tamar Wyschogrod

(With apologies to TS Eliot)

Let us stay then, you and me,

When the waiting room is spread against the screen,

Like a patient seeking telemedicine;

Let us stay, in certain nicely done-up rooms,

The muttering retreats

Of endless days on droning video calls

With coffee mugs and Zinfandel.

Rooms that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question.

Oh, do not ask, “Am I muted?”

Let us sit until we’re rooted.

In the Zoom the women glitch and freeze,

Talking of their NFTs.

The bluish light that rubs its back upon the laptop screens,

The bluish glow that rubs its muzzle on the smartphone screens,

Clicked-on links to fill the emptiness of the evening,

Lingered on Twitter memes and TikTok tunes,

Let fall upon its queue whatever falls from algorithms,

Slipped by the sort order, made a sudden beep,

And, seeing that the battery was dangerously low,

Curled once about the bed, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the bluish light that slides along the line,

Rubbing its back upon the laptop screens;

There will be time, there will be time

To mask your face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to contact and expose,

And time for all the works and days of lungs,

That leave contagious droplets on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred failed inspections,

And for a hundred infections and reinfections,

In restaurants while taking toast and tea.

In the Zoom the women glitch and freeze,

Talking of their NFTs.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to apply a background of my choice,

And a filter to enhance my voice – 

(They will say: “How her face has grown fat!”)

A fancy blouse, some makeup and my cat,

My face composed while on my phone I chat --

(They will say: “Even her cat is fat!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the Twitterverse?

In a minute there is time

For tweets and retweets which a keystroke will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Asynchronous lectures, webinars, livestreams,

I have measured out my life with quarantines;

I know the voices fading as connections fail

Leaving silence shouting from the laptop screen.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all –

The eyes that peer above the mask begging to be seen,

And when I am vaccinated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am jabbed, rejoicing, at the mall,

Then how should I begin

To face the variants that soon come on in waves?

And how should I presume?

And I have known account names, known them all—

Selfies edited with automated care

(Removed are age lines and some graying hair!)

Is it pictures from a trip

That I would like to skip?

Selfies taken in a crowd, no masks in view at all.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched miasmas rising from the lungs

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a valiant Antifa

Marching along the streets of mad cities.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Dulled by TV binges,

Biopics of singers,

Edgy standup comics, blood-soaked fantasy.

Should I, after comedies and spoofs,

Have the strength to make the nation face its truths?

But though I have masked and distanced, vaxed and boosted,

Though I have seen my hair (pandemic grown) resume its natural shade,

I am no influencer – my content’s undisplayed;

I have seen my viral moment pass and flicker,

And I have seen the eternal A.I. flag my post and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the chat, the messenger, the Skype,

Among the pizza boxes, among the endless hype,

Would it have been worthwhile,

To have logged off the webcam with a smile,

To have squeezed the internet into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I’m David Bowie, CGI’d from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” -- 

If one, settling a MyPillow by her head

Should say, “That is not what I meant at all;

OK Boomer, not at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worthwhile,

After the riots and the protests and the insurrections,

After the shootings, after the terror, after the blood that spilled along the floor –

And this, and so much more?--

It is impossible to type just what I mean!

But as if an Oculus Rift threw the vid directly on my eyeballs:

Would it have been worthwhile

If one, whose All Lives Matter t-shirt falls,

And turning toward the browser, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

No, I am not Captain America, nor was meant to be;

Am a nameless extra, one that will do

To fill a crowd shot, start a fight or two,

Back up the star; no hero, not super,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Fine for exposition, but no backstory; 

Almost, at times, a blooper.

I’m not here… I’m not here…

I’ve looped a clip I took last year.

Shall I dye my hair orange? Do I dare to eat indoors?

I shall wear Manolo Blahniks and walk upon the floor.

I have heard the people clap for health care heroes. 

I do not think that they will clap for me.

I have seen them surfing nowhere on their phones,

Checking for comments from people never met,

And whatever’s pinged the saved searches they didn’t set.

We have lingered in the matrix of the net

By viral memes we give a thumbs up or thumbs down

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Kornacki Tint My World (from the Election Horror Picture Show)

It was great when it all began

I didn’t care so much about who ran,

I thought that anyone could beat a man,

With glued-on hair and a bright orange tan,

Now the only thing that gives me hope,

Is that New Jersey legalized the dope,

Steve Kornacki tint my world

Cuz he’s the only thing that’s keeping me sane.

We knew results would be coming late

With zen-like patience we would have to wait,

We still need news from just a few more states,

To call a winner and reveal our fate,

Orange man complains the vote is fixed,

And somehow now we’re at November sixth,

Steve Kornacki tint my world

Cuz he’s the only thing that’s keeping me sane.

So much drama!

Help! Obama!

We’ll build, you’ll see,

A post-racial society!

Health care for free,

We’ll listen to Fauci,

End our misery,

Just tell us Biden won!

Vote counts increase,

As more results are released,

There’s so much unease,

About the course we’ll steer,

There’s no decision,

Just hatred and division,

And a thing that clouds our vision,

Trump’s greed is so sincere…

White House Social Media Summit

Seen here for the first time, shocking footage from the recent White House social media summit.

MAGA hat kid vs chanting Native American. I weigh in.

Do I know with certainty why MAGA-hat kid smirked creepily at chanting Native American man? No, I do not. Neither do those who insist that an innocent kid was victimized by social media gone mad and liberal media turned hateful toward white boys. The kid’s motive is known only to him. It is not a fact that can ever be established.

Here’s what I do know:

1. Donald Trump panders to racists. Not only don’t people who wear MAGA hats mind —  that’s why they wear MAGA hats. They’re the ones to whom he’s pandering. A MAGA hat is a public proclamation of allegiance to a fascist-leaning president who routinely uses “Pocahantas” as an insult and treats Wounded Knee as a joke. To an authoritarian buffoon who whips up fear and support in his base by characterizing Mexicans as violent rapists and urban (read black) America as a pit of crime and depredation. To a corrupt autocrat who rode to power courting white supremacists and who put Breitbart and the alt-right in the White House. To a president who praises foreign dictators and disdains democratic allies. A MAGA hat is a statement, just like a KKK hood is a statement. It speaks volumes. When you are wearing it, you are by definition non-neutral. You are saying something. This is a fact.

2. It’s beyond obnoxious for a Catholic school to send a bunch of teenage boys to protest abortion. If they tell a 14-year-old boy that he is qualified to dictate family-planning morality to adult women, it’s not unreasonable to infer he’s been raised with a sense of privilege that would make him act like an entitled brat when confronted by soapbox extremists and Native American activists. This is inference supported by reason, but not hard fact.

3. A bunch of sheltered Kentucky boys from an overwhelmingly white, largely Republican town came to the Big City. They encountered some batshit-crazy soapbox preachers. In New York, we’d have called that Tuesday. Or possibly Wednesday. Or Any Day. In fact, Black Hebrew Israelites were a Times Square staple for ages. We Coastal Elites know fringe nut jobs when we see them. But of course, if you’ve led a sheltered life in a mostly white, Republican Kentucky town, and been weaned on Fox News, you’d probably think this miserable little group of black men represented an entire race bent on destroying you and your whole way of life. Instead of ignoring them (if you haven’t been moved away from them by responsible adults, as should have happened), you’d engage them, and in your adolescent wisdom, you’d think school spirit cheers were a clever, passive-aggressive way to express yourselves while your MAGA hats do the real talking. Fact-based inference again.

4. Since the D.C. event went viral, other information has emerged about Covington Catholic that reflects a school culture that conforms to what one might expect of an elite Catholic boys’ prep school: sports-obsessed, aggressive bro culture. Whatever you think of this video of a basketball game or this photo (Is that kid in blackface? Are they verbally harassing a black player? Or is it just some school tradition of body paint combined with the usual displays of aggression boys are taught to make at sporting events?), it sure puts into perspective what this school considers to be “school spirit.” Fact, some inference.

5. The first time I ever saw someone whom I could readily identify as Native American was in a Wyoming diner in the mid-1970s. A Native American woman ate while her two young children played on the floor under the table, bothering no one. A white waitress approached the woman and yelled at her to “keep her brats quiet or get the hell out.” It was one of the most blatantly racist moments I’ve ever witnessed. It created a prejudice in me. Ever since, I have been disposed to take the word of a Native American over that of a white person in interpreting the racial subtext of an encounter. Of course, in any given encounter, the Native American could be wrong and the white person could be right. A prejudice is not rational. Personal bias. But...

6. MAGA HAT. FACT.

Birthright citizenship, fascism, and Trump

This is about birthright citizenship — how my family was nearly wiped out for the lack of it and was saved by a country that had it. But of course, this is really about Donald Trump and his threat to end birthright citizenship in the United States by executive order. Yes, I know, he can't really do that; it's an election-season stunt. But it's nevertheless important to understand what he is saying, why he is saying it, and to whom it's meant to appeal.

Trump and his followers would have you believe that this is a simple numbers game — that it's about the right of a sovereign nation to protect itself from an overwhelming number of immigrants becoming a burden on society. But what it's really about, now and historically, is not numbers of citizens, but kinds -- as in, keeping out the wrong kinds. If you doubt it, look at the 1898 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established that the 14th amendment should be applied to all people born on American soil: “The Fourteenth Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.”

Justice Horace Gray recognized that the case before the court was aimed at making it possible to withhold American citizenship from non-white people by excluding them from the birthright defined by the 14th Amendment. In fact, the 14th Amendment was a Reconstruction measure guaranteeing citizenship rights in response to to questions about the status of former slaves following the Civil War. Whatever specious arguments are brought against birthright citizenship today, in reality, the attempt to end it is still about giving the state the ability to keep out certain kinds of people. In promising to end it, Trump is telling his followers that he will stop at nothing to keep America white and Christian. The moment we require American-born children of non-citizens to apply for citizenship rather than be automatically granted it, we open the door to denying them citizenship for reasons like “race or color.” Trump’s followers get that, loud and clear.

Which brings me to my own family history.

My father arrived in the United States on July 4, 1939, with his parents and brother, refugees from Nazi Germany. It was a miracle they made it — and the lack of birthright citizenship in Europe played a major role in their harrowing tale. You can hear my father tell the whole story in the video below, but here are the key elements as they pertain to the citizenship question.

My father’s father’s parents were Poles who emigrated to Austria in the 1880s, where my father’s father was born. Since there was no birthright citizenship, my father’s father was a Polish citizen by virtue of parentage. He grew up in Vienna. He spoke German and learned no Polish. As an adult, he moved to Budapest, where he married, and where my father’s brother was born. He, too, was a Polish citizen — no birthright citizenship. Eventually, the family moved to Berlin, where my father was born — also no birthright citizenship.

In the 1930s, there were tens of thousands of Jews who were Polish citizens living in Germany. I don’t say Polish Jews, because many of them, like my father’s family, had never been to Poland, spoke no Polish, and had no affinity for that country. After all, they had fled what had been, until the Nazi era, the more virulent anti-Semitism of Poland for the greater tolerance of Germany.

But as Nazism took hold of Germany, Poland anticipated that all those Jews with Polish citizenship would come flooding back from Germany, and they weren’t too keen on the prospect. They announced that they would require any Polish citizen who had been out of the country for an extended period to obtain a special note from a Polish consulate before being admitted to Poland. But Jews couldn’t get that note. Essentially, Polish Jews in Germany were left stateless. Germany, meanwhile, was interested in ridding itself of as many Jews as possible. Deporting Polish Jews seemed like a good place to start.

On October 28, 1938, the SS knocked on the door of my grandparents’ apartment in Berlin, handed my grandfather a deportation order (pictured here), took him away, and put him on a train bound for Poland, a country totally alien to him. The Germans had decided to deport all Polish Jewish men over a certain age, whether the Poles wanted them or not. My father was too young for the deportation. His brother, while old enough, got away with lying to the SS about his age, and was not taken. But my grandfather was given a few minute to pack some belongings, forcibly removed from his home, and deported within hours.

German persecution of the Jews always took place within the framework of its own laws. The Germans prided themselves upon being a nation of laws, as we do. But laws can be made to serve evil ends. The targeted, anti-Semitic deportation of Polish Jews was simply the selective enforcement of a sovereign nation’s right to expel non-citizens, most of whom were Poles simply because birthright citizenship did not exist.

Months earlier, my grandparents had begun a desperate attempt to obtain visas to the United States. Miraculously, they succeeded — but only after my grandfather’s deportation. My grandmother, father, and uncle were in Berlin. Four American visas were at the embassy in Berlin. But my grandfather was stuck in Poland. In order to receive his American visa, he had to appear personally at the embassy in Berlin. Had he not devised a risky scheme to re-enter Germany, rejoin his family, pick up the American visas, and hightail it out of there, it’s likely my grandmother would have elected to join my grandfather in Poland rather than emigrate to America without him. The whole family would probably have perished in the Holocaust. How they managed it is a long story (which my father tells in the video below, if you’re interested), but suffice to say, they did. That’s how it came to pass that my father had his first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July, 80 years ago.

By awarding citizenship based on blood line rather than place of birth, European nations in the 19th and early 20th centuries were preserving their ability to enforce a narrow, exclusive idea of nationality — of who belongs and who does not. It was the perfect tool for fascists. Trump’s backward nationalism is a throwback to that ideology, and it’s no wonder he landed on the issue of birthright citizenship as a means of telegraphing that. Make no mistake: Trump is signaling a promise to preserve white, Christian dominance of the United States. Given his fear-mongering and dog whistles about immigrants, non-Christians, and non-whites, who can doubt it? His rabid base know exactly what he’s getting at -- and they love it.

Would you believe me?

This is about what we remember and what we don’t; what we say and what we don't; whom we believe and whom we don’t. It’s about something that happened to me. It is 100% true, but I could not prove it if my life depended on it. It’s also about Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, and Me Too.

Forty years ago, the summer I was 16, I took a trip from New York to California with my older brother, traveling partway by car with friends and the rest of the way by bus, mostly putting up in cheap motels and campsites along the way. That’s how we came to stay one night at a campground in Monterey, California. I couldn’t tell you the date, or the name of the campground, or its exact location. It was, after all, 40 years ago.

We struck up a conversation with the guy at the neighboring campsite, who was alone. I don’t remember his name. We agreed to pool our food and have dinner together. At the time, it seemed like one of those nice things that happen when camping — helping each other out, being neighborly, sharing. My brother and I contributed Hebrew National hot dogs. I don’t remember what he contributed. We ate together by the fire in our campsite, chatting. When we were done, my brother volunteered to go wash the dishes at the outdoor faucet by the bathrooms.

As soon as he was gone, the demeanor of our new “friend” changed completely. I don’t remember what he said, or if he said anything. I just remember that he shoved me across the picnic table, pinned my arms above my head, and smashed his mouth against mine. I remember the feeling of the hard wooden table under my back. I remember our teeth clicking together. I remember being scared. Kicking and squirming, I managed to get out from under him and flee. I ran to the bathrooms and found my brother. I told him what had happened.

I don’t remember my brother’s exact words, but I know he was angry and wanted to confront the man. I told him not to. I didn’t want to make a scene. I told him to just stick with me and not leave me alone. We returned to our campsite. The guy was nowhere to be seen. Presumably, he had retreated to his tent. We got into ours and went to sleep. The next morning, when we got up, he and his tent were gone. There was no sign he’d ever been there. We ate breakfast, broke camp, and continued on our way.

It never occurred to me to report the incident to the authorities. I wouldn't have wanted to disrupt our trip, let alone my life, but I probably didn't even consider that. I simply didn’t think one reported such an event — a near miss. I didn’t think a crime had been committed. It would have been like calling the cops to say that a car whose license number you didn’t get had almost hit you on the highway, but you’d swerved and avoided the collision. It would have been reporting a non-event.

I never mentioned the incident to my brother again. It would have just made him uncomfortable, and anyway, what would have been the point? Nothing had happened.

Except something had. It didn’t damage me in a profound way. I didn’t become phobic, suffer PTSD, or develop an anxiety disorder. But I became much more cautious about being alone with strange men in isolated places. Like all New York girls, I had been raised with the usual warnings: Don’t walk alone at night; don’t get off the subway at the wrong stop; carry your keys sticking through your fingers; don’t walk too close to the buildings where someone can pull you into an alley or doorway; don’t hitchhike; don’t make eye contact; don’t wear revealing clothes; don’t go into bars alone; don’t go to the wrong neighborhood; always carry cab fare; boys only want one thing. So even though I was the sort of person who liked adventure and risk-taking, I took this experience as a check on my reckless nature -- a lesson in sensible precautions. I followed all of the self-defense advice. I cultivated a tough “Do not fuck with me” face, which I wore around the city, especially in the subway. I showed no fear, believing that to show fear was to make oneself vulnerable.

As time went on, I frequently thought about what might have happened if I hadn't gotten away, about what I had narrowly escaped, my understanding of the event increasing as I learned more about the world. Still, I didn’t tell anyone about it. It made me uncomfortable to think about. I probably mentioned it to no one for at least 20 years; the only person I recall specifically telling, even then, was my husband. But it was only recently that I came to think of it explicitly as what it was: an escape from an attempted rape.

When I began writing this, I messaged my brother, asking, “The summer we traveled cross-country, we spent a night at a campground in Monterey. Do you remember anything about that?” His reply: “I certainly remember Monterey but I don’t remember a campground.” And why should he? I’m sure that, at the time, he would have seen the incident much as I did: a close call, a non-event. Since it didn’t happen to him personally, with the accompanying fear and adrenaline, it didn’t impress itself on his memory. And I never mentioned it again. So today, he doesn’t remember it. To him, it never happened. I understand that. I can only imagine how many incidents people have told me about that were significant to them, but that I’ve forgotten completely.

To review: I don’t know the name of my attacker. I don’t know the exact location, other than a campground in the vicinity of Monterey, California. I don’t know the date, other than the summer of 1978. I don’t know details like the time or the weather. I can’t describe the man beyond a vague sense of his height, build, and age. The only corroborating witness I can name doesn’t remember the event. But it happened. As surely as I am alive, it happened.

And if I DID know who that guy was, and if that guy were nominated to the Supreme Court, or ran for president? I’d do whatever I could to make sure people knew what he did that night in 1978.

Would you believe me?