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Didn't you just love Courtney?
Forget the issue of what kind of Jewish parents give a daughter such a goyishe (Hebrew for gentile; literally meaning “nation,” but signifying non-Jew and often carrying a pejorative connotation when Jews carry out all those secret rituals y’all are so worried about) name like Courtney. I know that Sara, Rebecca and Leah, three of the four matriarchs — the fourth being Rebecca - were already taken in this story, but really, Courtney?
Anyway, don't you just wish you had a sister who was so open and accepting, and willing to go with the flow? And don't you just wish you could share a dressing room with her while you both try on expensive lingerie?
Forget it. She's my sister, not yours. Okay, she's not mine either, but this is fiction, after all.
And what about Leah? While it's certainly true that really observant (orthodox) Jews (which she really isn’t) don't accept either homosexuality or anything TG (just like their really observant Christian and Muslim counterparts), you have to wonder why someone as modern and accomplished as Leah would be so rigid. Don’t you just thing that there has to be something more to it? Maybe it's something about a first child who's a daughter being displaced in her parents affections by a second who's a son. How could she ever compete with him? And now he has the audacity to change genders and compete yet again, but this time as a woman! Who wouldn't be angry? Or maybe. . .
And finally, the whole femdom thing seems to have at last been laid to rest. I find it amazing, and I guess somewhat demoralizing, that so many readers are so conditioned to think that something bad has to happen next in a relationship between a man and a woman once they appear in a TG fiction story that you're willing to read the worst into the simplest descriptions of what's going on.
I know, we covered some of this ground before, but it seems to me some readers have a hard time telling the difference between two people (in this case two married people, who are always carrying on negotiations, which you would know if you’ve ever been married for more than about two weeks) being assertive in trying to get what they need, on the one hand, and cynical manipulation so powerful that one can't resist on the other.
I mean really, who has ever experienced that in real life? And since no one has, why does everyone seem to expect it in TG stories?
Comments
Really!!!
Am not a blonde.
Hugs, Fran
Hugs, Fran
Really?
If so, then please quit throwing it out there for more discussion. Some of us do not care for it. Live with it and quit throwing it out there for more hits...
If in the course of experiments, you see situation A give result B, and after repeating 100 times, you get the same result, would it be right to say that A does not cause B? Utter nonsense, there has been a causal relationship shown, but as a scientist, one knows there are always exceptions to rules (for reasons we do not know at the start, if ever). And as to reading the worst into the situation? We are basing this decision on what information we have available, namely what you, as the author, have written. If it were not writtten in the manner it had been written, there would not be such a fuss over the whole matter. Words do have meaning, and that meaning can show or foreshadow intent.
hmmmm, call me naive, having had a marriage survive through my transition (11 years in 2 months), I think I can say that I do know somwthing about what makes a marriage work. Everyone I know (talking about friends here) has been married and divorced; why? Lack of honesty, lack of trust, dominance games ("I make more money than you, so I am going to make the rules"), lack of respect, etc. I try to avoid these mistakes, but if I get off track, Lisa tells me and I change, if necessary or we work it out; I do the same for her. We have a respect for each other that goes beyond friendship, and we make sacrifices for each other when necessary. The reason any marriage survives is due to respect, plain and simple.
If by "that", you mean femdom, I have seen it in RL, as it happened to someone I knew, before his first marriage failed (his wife eventually ran off with another woman). I do not expect it in TG stories, therefore the generalization that everyone seems to expect it is a fallacious one. I don't expect it in the stories I read, because I try to avoid those stories.
Best of luck with your stories!
Hugs
Diana
Diana, Thanks for engaging
Diana,
Thanks for engaging with me.
You have your experiences and I have mine. In my experience, there are many long-term relationships that have had multiple ups and downs (I'm so angry I could kill him/her). But still, they got past it.
The motivation to write this story, as I described it in one of my blogs, was a videotape I saw of a therapy session with a brand new TS I know after SRS and his wife. He was elated, she was devasted. She had survived him coming out as gay, but his transition killed the whole thing. This, apparently didn't happen to you. Thank goodness.
This story is a fantasy, written from one POV, based on my, not entirely global, but also not entirely inconsequential experiences.
And I'll not write about Femdom again. It's just that those people made me so so mad!
Kelly Ann
ah, those people
I guess I'm one of them then huh? Well, there's femdom and there's FEMDOM. The way you phrased things in places and posted it in sections led many to wonder at Rebeccas motives, me included. YOU know where it's going, we only have what's there. Now it has progressed and we can see some of what you knew all along. I have written a type of femdom story and another that's possible to be thought of as such at first. I discussed some of it with Vicky Tern a very approachable and intelligent person. Basically we agreed the differences weren't that huge. Hers make me uneasy and she understood that. Theres a small discussion on her latest at FM with some decrying 'predictable' and her response, polite and thoughtful.
You are a good writer Kelly and I will read this through as I said I would. If at times I want to slap Sara or Rebecca, or maybe grumble at the author, well that's just perspective. I could tell tales of beurgeoning Kristina just as contrast, then at times it would veer awfully close and I am sure as hell not perfect. But this is yours and it's a mostly good read. Writers prerogative to do what you do and I think you generally do it very well.
Kristina
Orthodoxy
It depends on who you ask. My local (local, not "my") Orthodox Rabbi (who, I must admit, is *Modern* Orthodox) thinks that such things are probably sins, but who's counting? He doesn't spy on people to see who's driving to shul come Shabbes either.
His attitude is that, pretty much, we're all doin' the best we can. I had a long discussion with him once around this issue, and we touched on many points, including the fact that lesbianism isn't really mentioned in Torah at all, other than a rather vague admonition not to act like "Egyptians," which was expounded in the Talmud to include gay marriage and the like, so the Rabbinic "punishments," most of which we have no record of ever being carried out, included beating, mostly for the "sin" of embarrassing one's husband or father, but is pointedly not an "abomination" like male homosexuality.
He was of the opinion that, if acted upon discreetly, lesbianism probably wasn't a sin at all, since community values were being respected, and women have no mitzvah to marry and be fruitful. With men, it's different, but even there the Talmudic explication can ameliorate the Torah harsh judgment. In the first place, there's the two kosher witnesses rule... In the second, there's the advice of one commentator (in the tradition of Hillel) that, if one had n uncontrolable urge to "sin," one should put on dark clothing, travel to a town in which one would be unknown, and do one's sinning where it wouldn't flout the local minhag. Customs change, and what might be a scandal and a disgrace in Brooklyn may be mostly ignored in San Francisco. And then there's the admonition about gossip and slander, so calling any public or private attention to "sinners" is actually a sin, at least in the Jewish tradition. And besides, in most congregations it's hard enough to scrape up a minyan without excluding that nice young man who doesn't seem to have a girlfriend and wears his kippah with a little flair.
Orthodoxy is as Orthodoxy does, and it's never appropriate to pre-judge based on fears and doubts. In Iran, the dreaded Ayatollah Khomeini, the incarnation of US fears and a prime target of US hatred, turns out to be mennsch enough to listen to the pleas of Muslim male-to-female transsexuals and issue a ruling that, not only is it not a sin, but SRS will be performed in state hospitals. Go figure.
Oh, and giving daughters, especially, Hebrew names declined in the diaspora, so many Jewish girls arrrived on the scene without a "Jewish" name until recntly, after 1947 anyway, and Hebrew names are as innovative as Bat Mitvahs in some circles. When I was of the appropriate age, release time Jewish education was pretty much only available for boys and boys were the only ones who left school to traipse off to get themselves prepared for their bar mitzvah.
Cheers...
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
And so, thanks to Courtney
And so, thanks to Courtney (what was I thinking when I named her?), we have a discussion of Jewish points of view on transsexuality and the naming of Jewish daughters.
Bravo!
Ain't this so much better than looking for stories you can read with one hand?