Starbroken

Tag: transgender

  • There Are Four Lights

    There Are Four Lights

    (And a recipe for mushroom turnovers)

    (Click here to skip to the recipe for my great-grandma’s mushroom turnovers.)

    So I’ve been thinking about Trump’s anti-transgender executive orders recently. Specifically, that first one, the one where he purports to define sex in terms that sort every human being into one, and only one, of two distinct and immutable sexes. It’s a template that’s played out more or less the same way in state houses across the country; the language differs from instance to instance, but the concept is the same. “There are only two sexes,” these policies, bills, and orders scream out at us, “and you can’t change yours.”

    They’re wrong, of course. We know full well – because we’ve had a long time and dedicated scientists – that sex is neither binary nor immutable. The people writing these screeds know it, too. If sex were immutable, they wouldn’t have to try so hard to stop people from changing their sex; if it were a natural binary, they wouldn’t have to add carve-outs in all their bills banning sex-altering surgical procedures for children to say “it’s totally okay if the surgery is to take an intersex infant” – though they wouldn’t use that term – “and make their sex binary.” These people aren’t making definitions; they’re making demands.

    To be clear, if you’re not incarcerated, the government can’t physically stop you from changing your sex. It’s an incredibly simple and easy thing to do, physically speaking – something which terrifies right-wing operatives. All you have to do is rub a bit of the right gel on your skin on a regular basis, and you’ll find your sex changing. Some of these gels are unlawful to obtain or possess. Some aren’t. None of them are hard to obtain or possess, if you go looking. Even if the government were to successfully make it illegal to change your sex – an unlikely proposition short of complete Constitutional collapse – they couldn’t physically stop you. But they’re not trying to physically stop you.

    All the terrifying things Musk and his lackeys are doing to the government, all the policies Musk’s number one ventriloquist dummy Trump are trying to enforce, they all boil down to the same principle. These fascist goons want you to ignore reality, ignore truth, ignore learning and research, and pretend the world is what they say it is. From their stances on trans rights to their foreign policy to the way they’re constantly lying about what it is that the college fucking freshmen of DOGE are doing to the payments system of the US fucking Treasury, they want you to ignore the real world and act like you live in the world they want.

    In their world, you’re powerless to do aught but obey. There are two sexes, and one of them is better than the other. No, you’re not allowed to pick which one to be, are you some kind of communist? In their world, the only thing that matters is the power to do violence. From God down to the President down to the cops down to the man of your household down to his submissive, feminine, stay-at-home wife, to their beautiful, white, abused children, the only things that matter are power, submission, and punishment.

    I know because I grew up in that world. Anywhere from a tenth to a full fifth of the American population grows up in that world: the world of evangelical Christianity. I won’t get into the history of evangelicalism here, nor will I get into the specifics of the things evangelicals believe. Because the thing that matters most is their tactics.

    It starts with controlling information. The false reality of the right is jerry-rigged and inconsistent, so if people get even a whiff of the real world, they start to see how the false one’s coming apart at the seams. In evangelical households, this takes many forms. A ban from TV or movies, for example – explicit Christian propaganda excluded, of course. Strict parental controls on any Internet access, not to filter out pornography, but to filter out *science.* An insistence that their children shouldn’t visit the library unsupervised, and that the parents should read every book the child wants to check out, cover to cover, to ensure it doesn’t contain any unauthorized thoughts or ideas.

    Music? Art? Absolutely not. These things bare the depths of a person’s soul; these sorts of evangelicals will avoid any music or art that isn’t explicitly Christian in nature.

    Public schools teach things like evolution, and more insidiously, the idea that government should be secular. And worse, public schools are open to immigrants and queers and black people. No, best to send the kids to a private, Christian school with strict anti-queer policies and tuition fees high enough that most immigrants and people of color are excluded. The attitudes of the staff will be enough to exclude the rest.

    If these sorts of evangelical parents are doing their job right, from birth until college and even afterward, their child will never leave the bubble of false reality that’s been painstakingly held up around them. And these are the tactics that the Musk/Trump administration wants to implement in our society at large, by making their demands in the form of policy statements.

    “There are only two sexes, and you can’t change yours!” “Diversity is racism!” “The government has been persecuting Christians, and we’re going to put a stop to that!” “Canada would be better off as the 51st state!” “We’ll own Gaza!” “The Panama Canal belongs to us!”

    It is the hope of the Musk/Trump administration that if they lie often enough, loudly enough, forcefully enough, if they threaten enough journalists who call them out on their lies, they can build a world where their lies are true. Well, not true true, but close enough for government work.

    In a particularly poignant episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation, Captain Picard of the Enterprise is captured by the fascist Cardassian regime. His jailers torture him brutally for information, but he doesn’t talk. Eventually, the Cardassian in charge of Picard’s interrogation hits upon a new technique. He shows Picard four bright lights, then tells him there are five. When Picard insists there are only four, the Cardassian tortures him again. This goes on for some time, with the Cardassian offering Picard comfort and safety if he would only agree that there are, in fact, five lights.

    It almost works. Just before Picard breaks and tells his torturer that there are five lights, another Cardassian arrives and sets him free. His crew have come to rescue him. On his way out, weary and broken down, he shouts at his jailer: “There are four lights!”

    When he’s recovering on his own ship, he later admits that by the end, he was starting to be able to see that fifth light.

    The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – signed by almost every country on Earth, America included – states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” If you haven’t ever read the UDHR – and if you’re an American, there’s a decent chance you haven’t – you can find it here, at the United Nations’ website. It’s one of the more inspiring documents I’ve ever read.

    It starts from the premise that all human beings are inherently free and equal, in a way that the United States likes to pretend it did. And it starts from that premise because it’s the truth. To be human is to be free, and to be free is to be equal. If you put human beings under oppression, inequality, or tyranny, it is our nature to rebel and resist. Maybe successfully, maybe not. But rebellion and resistance will happen.

    The Musk/Trump administration wants a world in which people are born to obey or to be obeyed, and they’re willing to pretend very loudly that we all live in that world. Their hope is that if they’re loud enough, they can drown out the most fundamental truth of human society: You’re a human being, damn it. And you were born free, and you were born equal to every other human being on Earth. Your body belongs to you, and you can do with it what you please, providing it harms no one else. You can build friendships with other people, people that are like you and people that aren’t, if you want to. You can create community together with people from all walks of life, from all corners of the Earth, with different languages and ideas and philosophy and music and art and food – and the diversity of perspectives and ideas will make this community better and stronger and more free.

    Your government can form meaningful relationships with other governments, your community can form alliances and friendships with other communities, crossing lines both geographic and linguistic – and this will make your country better, stronger, and more free.

    You can hold a deep, meaningful, powerful faith and hang onto your freedom and rights as a human being at the same time, because these things aren’t opposites. You can let people live in the places they’re from, and you can let them live in the places they want to go. You can help them defend themselves against terror and tyranny, dehumanization and erasure, and everyone involved will be the better for it.

    You can reach out to others with open hands of friendship, not closed hands wrapped around the grip of a gun, and you’ll be better for it.

    Compassion, love, peace, justice, friendship, and yes, freedom – these things aren’t weaknesses. They’re strengths.

    There are four lights.

    The Musk/Trump administration will get louder, more forceful, and more violent about their bullshit. Most media platforms, being owned by billionaire oligarchs, will cave and start pretending that the false reality painted by the right-wing is the real world, and that the siren song of liberty doesn’t beat in every human heart. The government will attempt to paint those of us who believe in freedom, equality, and dignity as crazies. Extremists, perhaps, or radicals.

    It’s not extremist, not radical, not even unusual to see four lights when the regime insists there are five.

    We’re at a turning point in America. As unelected shadow president Elon Musk would put it, a fork in the road. On one path that lies ahead of us, we don’t fight back against right-wing narratives. We try to carve out little niches for ourselves in the society of power and violence they’re trying to build; we fight for our rights, but on the fascists’ terms and on their turf. And we lose.

    On the other path ahead, we start from the bottom up. We start by proclaiming from the rooftops to the streets, by shouting from the mountains to the valleys: We’re human beings, damn it, and we are free. We build our politics and our communities around freedom and equality, we let people choose for themselves what to believe and where to go and what to think and say and do and be. And when would-be tyrants try to keep us from our freedom, we hang onto every last inch of it, with every means at our disposal. We fight tooth and nail, we salt the fields behind us. Because to be human is to be free, and I’ll die before I let anyone take that away from me.

    And I hope to God you’re with me.

    Great-Grandma Lehmann’s Mushroom Turnovers

    Ingredients (makes 25 turnovers)

    • 1/2 cup margarine
    • 8 ounces plain cream cheese
    • 1 1/2 cups flour
    • 1/4 cup water
    • 1/2 pound white button mushrooms, minced
    • 1 large onion, minced
    • 2 tsp chicken stock
    • 3 tbsp butter
    • 1/2 tsp thyme
    • 1 tsp salt
    • 1/4 cup sour cream
    • 2 tablespoons additional flour
    • 2 eggs

    Directions

    1. Mix the margarine, cream cheese, and water together, then add the quarter cup of flour. Mix by hand and form the mixture into a ball. Refrigerate for at least an hour, preferably overnight.
    2. Over medium heat, sautee the mushrooms and the onions in the butter. Add the thyme, salt, sour cream, chicken stock, and the 2 tablespoons of additional flour. Mix well.
    3. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
    4. Crack the eggs into a small mixing bowl and whisk them until they’re a nice smooth, consistent liquid.
    5. Take the ball of dough you made in step 1 and roll it out flat. Cut it into circles about two and a half inches in diameter. Place a teaspoon of the filling you made in step 2 into the middle of each of the circles of dough, then fold the dough circle over the filling to make a half-moon shape. Press the edges together with a fork to seal them.
    6. Arrange the turnovers you made in step 5 on a standard baking sheet; use a sheet of parchment paper to keep them from sticking to the baking sheet. Poke holes in the turnovers to let steam escape, and with a basting brush, give them a light coating of the beaten eggs from step 4.
    7. Bake the turnovers for 12 to 15 minutes, until they’re a nice golden brown.
    8. Enjoy!

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  • I’m Not Just Like You; You’re Just Like Me

    (and a tofu banh mi you can be proud of)

    (Because I’m not an asshole, you can click here to go straight to the recipe.)

    It’s the best of times; it’s the worst of times.

    For trans people, I mean. We’re in this crucial cultural moment where trans people’s existence is well and truly out of the bag, where in some places, transitioning is easier and arguably safer than it’s ever been before. And in other places, we’re being repressed.

    At the same time as trans people are finding their way onto the silver screen and into the halls of Congress, laws are being proposed and passed all over the country at a state level (and soon at a national level, with a Republican-led Congress) that aim to erase our existence from public life, force us back into our closets, or worse: “eradicate transgenderism” entirely.

    It won’t work, of course; this particular bit of toothpaste can’t go back into its tube. But that won’t stop transphobes from trying, and it certainly won’t stop them from wreaking incredible collateral damage along the way. The Democratic Party may choose to throw us trans people under their campaign buses, or it may not. It’s too early to tell (even if some results are encouraging).

    Many trans people are trying to defend themselves against this outpouring of hate by doing the same thing they did before. “We’re just like you,” they’ll say. “We’re normal, we can fit in, we promise we’re not weird or gross. We’re not like those trans people. We’re the good ones.” The few cisgender people that do defend us in the media tend to use the same narrative – trans people just want to live our normal American lives.

    They’re wrong.

    Trans people are to normalcy what vampires or Jehovah’s Witnesses are to your home: we can’t enter without permission, and you can revoke your invitation at any time.

    There’s a trick to being invited into normalcy, and it’s one some trans people have down to an art. Just don’t look or act transgender. If a trans person transitions early enough, happens to be good-looking, or has enough money to afford surgical intervention, they can look like a cisgender person. If they train themselves well enough, they can act like a cis person. Mostly.

    Of course, doing that takes a toll on a person. Hiding yourself like that is a source of constant tension, constant stress. Always worrying that your secret will be found out – and boy howdy, are people looking these days. But it can work. A trans person can be invited into normalcy if nobody knows they’re trans.

    For the rest of us, fitting into cisgender society is a precarious proposition. Maybe we’re too tall, or too short. Too fat, too skinny, too curvy, too angular. Maybe our voices are too deep, or too high. Maybe we don’t like the ways we’d have to dress, act, and speak in order to fit in. Or maybe we’re just sick and tired of being tentatively invited into normalcy for the hundredth time only to be thrown back out again.

    The truth is, most of us aren’t just like you. If we were, transphobes wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to stop you from knowing about us. They wouldn’t be banning our stories from library shelves, overriding the consensus of every reputable medical organization to ban trans healthcare, stripping us of our ability to have paperwork with our real name and gender. The Republicans and evangelicals, the right-wingers and TERFs, they’re genuinely convinced that trans people pose a danger.

    And they’re sort of right. We do represent a dangerous truth. Because while we might not be just like you, you’re a hell of a lot more like us than you think.

    The feeling of incongruity and wrongness that – in trans people – is called “gender dysphoria”? You’ve felt it too, I’d wager. Every time a man is bullied for his interests not being “manly enough”, every time a woman looks in the mirror, her standards set by Photoshop and Hollywood, and finds herself ugly, they feel it.

    The same surgery that right-wing politicians are tripping over themselves to ban for young trans men – mastectomy, the surgical removal of unwanted breasts – is something that’s not all that infrequent in young cis men. In fact, the vast majority of double mastectomy patients under 18 are cis boys.

    Gynecomastia – breast development in males – is hardly the norm, but it’s not uncommon, and many men who develop breasts do end up having medical intervention. It’s only a problem when it’s trans men that want that intervention, though.

    Hormone replacement therapy is incredibly common among cisgender people. Many men report a variety of symptoms, both psychological and physical, when they have low testosterone levels. Postmenopausal women have their own list of symptoms stemming from a lack of estrogen – and you’d be stunned to hear how many of those match my own symptoms precisely, when I’m low on estrogen.

    One of the things that occasionally rends my soul with grief is that I’ll never be able to bear children. My body can’t do it. And some of the people who’ve shared that feeling with me most, who I’ve bonded with over that pain? I’m the only trans person they’ve ever known. A lot of cisgender women who can’t have children for medical reasons feel those feelings.

    Hormones, surgery, not being able to fulfill one of the roles in the American nuclear family as my parents no doubt intended: these things aren’t just trans experiences. They’re not normal experiences, but you don’t have to be trans to have them. Trans people’s problems are your problems too, because you’re just like us.

    I’ve stopped asking to be let across the threshold of normalcy; it’s not a place I’ll ever be able to stay. But I do knock on the door occasionally. Not to be let in, but to invite people out into the weird world I inhabit. There are wonders out here beyond belief, and there’s family, love, and acceptance too. You’d be surprised how much you belong out here in the transgender wildlands, whether you’ve ever questioned your gender or not.

    I’m not just like you. You’re just like me.

    Tofu Banh Mi

    Ingredients:

    • One pound of extra-firm tofu
    • White vinegar (at least 3 cups)
    • Kosher salt
    • Granulated sugar
    • 1 medium-sized cucumber
    • 1 medium-sized carrot
    • Either one daikon (a large Japanese radish) or 4 regular red radishes
    • 3 tablespoons sesame oil
    • 1/2 tablespoon ground ginger
    • 1/2 tablespoon ground garlic
    • 1 cup soy sauce
    • 1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
    • The juice of 1 lime
    • A baguette, as fresh as you can get it
    • Mayonnaise
    • Sriracha sauce
    • 1 bunch cilantro

    Preparation:

    The night before you intend to serve the banh mi, set out a large Ziploc bag and a small mixing bowl. Drain the tofu thoroughly and slice it into approximately 6 slices, about half an inch thick by three and a half wide by two tall. In the Ziploc bag, pour the soy sauce, sesame oil, lime juice, sesame seeds, ground ginger, and ground garlic. Seal the bag and shake it thoroughly until the ingredients emulsify, then place the tofu slices into the bag. Ensure the tofu slices are completely submerged in the mixture, then carefully drain the air out and seal the bag again.

    Take your cucumber, slice off the ends, and slice the cucumber in half lengthwise. Remove the seeds from the center (the best way of doing this is to scoop them gently using your 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon, but do this over your garbage can, as it’s quite messy!), then slice the remaining cucumber flesh lengthwise into strips between 1/8 and 1/4 inch wide. Chop these strips into one inch long “matchsticks”, then cut the carrot and radish (daikon or otherwise) into “matchstick”-like strips of similar size.

    Place these matchsticks into the small mixing bowl, then pour white vinegar into the bowl until the chopped veggies are completely submerged. Add a pinch each of kosher salt and granulated sugar, then stir gently and cover with cling-wrap or a lid.

    Refrigerate both the bag of marinating tofu and the bowl of pickling vegetables overnight.

    When the time comes to prepare your banh mi, slice the baguette in half lengthwise, then cut it into sections about the size of the tofu slices. Arrange the baguette slices on a baking tray.

    Take your tofu slices out of their marinade. Pan-fry them over medium heat, using a neutral oil like canola, until they have a crispy texture on one side, then flip and cook for another minute.

    Place the baking tray full of baguette slices into your oven, then use the broiler to toast them for about 3 minutes.

    When the baguette slices have been toasted, bring the pickled veggies out of the fridge.

    Cover the baguette sections with mayonnaise on both halves, and add sriracha on the half that will become the top half. Place a liberal amount of the pickled veggies onto the bottom baguette half for each sandwich, then add a slice of marinated tofu. Use one or two sprigs of cilantro to garnish, then close the sandwish.

    Serve fresh.

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