Sometimes, you're in the right and you have to say so.
Sometimes – you have to argue! Because they are in the wrong.
You MAY say that it’s just your point of view versus mine. You may say that you have ‘facts’.
I can and will say the same.
Is there ANY likelihood of finding a position where we can both agree?
I want to wear dresses, skirts and all the pretty things that women wear. Why is this a problem – because a loud and occasionally noisy percentage of men – and women say this is wrong.
Because I’m a man. A man who wears dresses, skirts and lots of things in pretty colours and soft materials. SO unmanly!
I’m a man – not especially proud of my penis – but it’s what I’ve got and I see no especial need for surgical reformation. In very colloquial terms, I have a dangle. I’d like to find an equivalent word for ‘a lady’s front-bottom’ - what a grotesque phrase’. I’ve not adopted any surgical or chemical adaptation – despite some temptation. I've tried wearing a gaff - and it's not comfortable. And keeping clean and sweet the several that are required over a week is ... tedious. My curves are the outcome of occasionally brutal physical coercion and my boobage is a minimal but effective 42C solely by the aid of falsies and fillers.
That’s me folks. Mid-thirties, by age, waist, hip and ordinary chest. Cylindrical. Unfeminine in body, but not in mind.
And I wish to continue – behaving somewhat neutrally and dressing like a woman.
I do not know what sort of ‘god’ it might have been who dictated those hundreds of ‘laws’ in the jewish-christian bible [note the lowercase] . But I am very certain that in the multiple transcriptions, rewrites, translations, amendments and so on – that the word of priest / ruler / authority / man has slipped in a bit often.
By the time, the earnest zealot has cherry-picked their choice of laws to obey and laws with which to attack – there’s not much christianity left. In my view. Not a whole lotta love, eh?
So – some version of this magical text says ‘god abhors the male who wears women’s clothing’. What does he say the priests and their followers should do about it. Not a word. Nothing about scorn, spite, abuse – just nothing. The punishment or whatever is to be left to this god. That's his word. Allegedly.
There’s times I look for a quotable quote … and ‘pop’ one arrives. Not always.
‘There are two sides to every dialogue, but if you accept the other side's terms without demanding equal time for your own, then they control the debate and its outcome.’
‘The bigger the lie, apparently, the more likely the uninformed were to accept it, simply because they couldn't believe any government would tell such an absurd story unless it were true.’
‘Stupidity and Bigotry can be their own worst enemies. This doesn’t stop them being YOUR enemy nor in them being ruthless, vicious and deadly. And once you’re dead – you’re not that effective except as a reminder.’
Having added these, I think I’ll leave them to see of a comment arises. It would be too blunt to quote Goebbels or any recent politician ‘if the lie is big enough and repeated often enough then (for many) it becomes the truth.’ Strange, somehow I’ve just typed all those words even if I added the (for many).
Going back - I’d like it if the general reaction was ‘nothing’. To be able to proceed about my life in my chosen style and that nothing should happen about it. I can cope with disapproval of my selected clothing especially if the colours don’t match.
That’s enough for today.
Just do the necessary skin and hair maintenance, slip into a pretty nighty and nighty-night.
Comments
For the easy question: innies versus outies…
The hard question is why are so many of us foolish bigots. We've now proof that a huge number of americans are either or both. My suspicion is that we have a complicated and mostly unacknowledged caste system, left over from our sexist, racist, fundamentalist beginnings. The only way many of us can feel superior is by identifying and abusing inferiors. (needless to say, the identification process is fatally flawed)
A common suggestion ...
is that most people NEED to feel superior to most of the people they meet. There will be a few acceptable as being 'people like me' but otherwise oh dear. From that point, they can then bully, criticise and all the other ugly behaviours.
and as mentioned before - being T is one of the most visible ways of being publicly different.
You managed to avoid saying 'patriarchy' !
That Bible text . . .
Deuteronomy 22:5 has never made any sense to me. Near as I can tell, men and women pretty much wore the same things 3500 years ago (long, belted tunics, more or less). From a contemporary perspective, they all were wearing dresses. Who could even tell which was which? It’s hard to imagine why anyone would care, much less the Creator of the Universe and Everything In It. Ah, but your tunic, sir, sports a tassel-like fringe that is most unmasculine to mine eyes. Eternal damnation, then. Hard cheese, old boy.
It makes even less sense today, since people got over women wearing jeans, t-shirts, and hoodies ages ago, but the sight of a biological male in a dress stills gets folks clutching their Old Testament and muttering about abominations.
Emma
Just one additional comment…….
In many of the Judeo-Christian religions, it is not uncommon for the priest, rabbi, or other religious leader to still wear what is essentially a dress. They can call it a cassock, or a soutane, or if you prefer, a vestis talaris. It is still basically a dress.
So, to your point, just how is it that it is acceptable for a male religious leader to wear a dress, but it is not acceptable for any other male to wear one? And as you pointed out, what god would make that stupid of a distinction?
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Yes. Complete agreement.
But ifXX when you are delivering hypocrisy - you might as well be really overt about it.
It's the men avoiding armour apparently ...
that is the 'real' meaning of the words. Reading the whole pack of 'laws' doesn't make that clear.
But - hey-ho - let's leave the bible-folk to their uncomfortable myths as long as they stop forcing stupid anachronistic rules accumulated by man-not-god down our throats.
It's almost interesting that some T-folk -in order to reject their femme-tendencies go over-macho and join the army etc - I'm sure there's a story or two there.
Hmmm
Interesting interpretation, though the verse also calls women wearing men’s attire an abomination. Maybe God didn’t want women in combat? Although, He kinda changed his mind about that with Saint Joan . . . . But I digress. :)
I’m a theist myself — a Christian, even, though I find my interpretations of scripture are invariably at odds with the fundies’. But we live in a society without an established religion, and the idea that people should be forced into “Biblical” lifestyles is flatly contrary to our charter of government.
Emma
Unfortunately, all things are subject to interpretation……
And the person doing the interpreting injects their own opinion into that interpretation - even in our system of government. Hence the issues we are seeing with our own government at this time. Being realistic, it has always been an issue, but it seems much more prevalent recently with the Orange Oompa Loompa and his Supreme Court picks.
Our Constitution was designed to be a “living” document, not something cut in stone. This was a great idea, but the system developed over two centuries ago, and which has served us so well, has some obvious compromises and flaws built into it. A good example being the Electoral College, which was created as a compromise to allow slave states to have additional political influence. Slaves were not counted as people - remember the three-fifths compromise? By adding in the electoral college, slave states would have additional influence in elections - influence they would not have under a popular election since a large portion of their population wasn’t eligible to vote! By basing the electoral college on the number of senators and representatives each state had, the three-fifths compromise came into account as it was used to determine how many representatives each state was allocated in Congress. In that way, the slaves were counted (well, three-fifths of them anyway) even though they couldn’t vote; thus making each white man’s vote in a slave state count for more than those in the non-slave states. Because of this compromise, we have repeatedly had politicians elected into office in spite of the fact they lost the popular vote!
Another good example is the idea that a judge appointed to the court system serves for life. As the average life span is longer now than it was in 1787, we end up with judges in office for much longer terms. The end result being the fact that those interpreting the law in our country are quite often totally out of touch with the majority of the population.
Don’t get me wrong - the United States Constitution is a wonderful document, and I am very, very glad that I was born here. I swore an oath many years ago to defend that self-same document, but that oath was to protect it from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. The greater threat seems to be domestic at this juncture, and those who would try to force the majority of our population back into some pretend ideal they have of society that never really existed are a threat to all of us. We must continue to adapt our government and the law of our land to fit the society we have at this time, and into the future - and stop burying our heads in the sand and remembering some made up idea of how great America was when only white land owners had political power.
Sorry for the rant this morning - I guess I drug out my soap box, and got a little off topic. My point here is that it is the interpretation that is the issue. This is true with the Bible, just as it is with our Constitution. Probably even more so as you have another mysogenistic system which is being used to control those portions of society which differ from the men doing the interpretation. The fact that one line is repeatedly pulled out of context and used against the transgender population, while ignoring the other ridiculous statements it is imbedded with, is a very good example of this.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
In my view every book and every
chapter, verse and word has been translated, interpreted, evaluated, revised, rewritten and even adjusted too often for any significant god-derived validity. Every piece of almost every bible, or equivalent in most other religions, is now the work of man-is-god. I no longer use it as a guide. I am very doubtful of the intent and morals of those who do state that every word is godly and inspired. Bit silly really.
That section has three things
That section has three things. Men not wearing women's clothing (and even then there were differences), not wearing clothing made from more than one kind of fiber, and men not laying with men as with a woman.
All three were aimed at preventing Israelites from participating in the religious ceremonies of the gods worshiped by their neighbors.
Cross-dressing was part of the ceremonies. So was clothing made of mixed fibers. and so was male on male sex.
Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
http://brooke.shadowgard.com/
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
"Lola", the Kinks
small disagreement ...
Personally, the context of v19 does not well fit your statement about 'participating in neighbour's god festivals.'
Lev-19-18 “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
19 “‘Keep my decrees.
“‘Do not mate different kinds of animals.
“‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
“‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
20 “‘If a man sleeps with a female slave who is promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or given her freedom, there must be due punishment.
Here is the key verse from Deuteronomy and its neighbours - to show again that there is little significance in the cnotext.
Deut-22-4 If you see your fellow Israelite’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help the owner get it to its feet.
5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.
6 If you come across a bird’s nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young. 7 You may take the young, but be sure to let the mother go, so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.
The large part of Leviticus and much of Deuteronomy is a mish-mash, sometimes repeating, sometimes contradicting. And some people use it for moral guidance. It's a choice - I suppose.