(aka Bike) Part 605 by Angharad |
 |
Karen paused while eating her omelette, “So who is supervising the care of this new girl?”
“Ah, there’s the rub,” said Sam, misquoting Hamlet.
“What is?” asked Karen.
“We saw Dr Fliss Edwards, or Trish was seeing her. I went along once and she assaulted me.”
“You’re joking,” said Karen looking embarrassed. “You’re not joking are you?”
“No, she was a monster and frightened me let alone little Trish.”
“Am I correct in believing you might want me to take on your foster child?”
“Could be,” said Sam, chewing a piece of gammon. When he ordered it, he smirked at my raised eyebrows. He then told me it was kosher pig.
“Is this true, Cathy? Is this more of your manipulations?”
“No, Karen, this is one of mine,” Sam deflected the attention away from me. I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about her, she seemed a bit anti-TG. Did she know about me? Was I going to tell her? No chance–besides, I’m female now, not transsexual.
“Sam, all you had to do was ask or refer to me.”
“I wanted you to meet Cathy, and for her to feel happy before I made the referral.”
“Oh, so I’m under examination, am I?”
“No, of course not, but let’s face it, Cathy had an awful experience with Fliss, so I thought if she met you, she’d have much more confidence in bringing Trish to see you.”
I could feel my hands sweating, so what Sam was feeling, I hated to think. I continued to eat my tuna salad, but I wasn’t really hungry. “I came to see Dr Edwards because I’ve enrolled Trish in a school. She’s five on Saturday and will be starting after Easter.”
“You’ve certainly upped the ante here, was this a way of testing her resolve? Don’t tell me, it’s in a girls’ convent?”
“It is as it happens, partly because it was the only school who seemed to have any spaces, and when I explained our little dilemma, the headmistress had had experience of it before and so accepted her.”
“But you’re not religious?”
“No, I’m a scientist.”
“Of course. So who is paying for her education?”
“I am, though I fail to see what relevance this has.”
“So you love this child enough to spend thousands a year on her schooling?”
“Yes, what is so strange about that?”
“I find you too good to be true, in some ways.”
“I’m finding you very unsympathetic for a supposed child care specialist,” I threw back at her.
“I knew there was more than just saintliness inside there,” she practically purred. “So why are you encouraging a boy to be a girl?”
I felt more than a little cross. “Karen, I swear I am not encouraging Trish to do anything than be herself, whoever that self is. I don’t see her as a boy pretending to be a girl, I see her as a girl with a plumbing problem.”
“Is this denial?”
“No, it’s a different perspective. She looks acts and seems to think like a girl. So, as they say, if it looks like a girl, talks like a girl, walks like a girl and thinks like a girl, it probably is a girl. That this girl has a minor anatomical defect, doesn’t stop me from experiencing her as she wants me to, as a girl.”
“So she is manipulating you? She is clever.”
“Stop playing shrinks for moment, and just listen. This child is a girl, believe me, if you cut her in half, she’d have girl written in pink letters through her, like a stick of rock.”
“So has she been checked out for wrongful assignment at birth?”
“I don’t know, you have access to her notes, I don’t.”
“We ran some basic tests, didn’t find anything,” added Sam.
“You think this is classic GID?” she asked Sam.
“Yes.”
“Even though it’s relatively rare?”
“Yes,” he nodded for emphasis.
“And you agree with this, Cathy?”
“If GID means gender identity disorder, yes.”
“I must see this charming young lady, could you bring her in tomorrow?”
“I could, but I have some reservations.”
“Oh, what are they?”
“She’s been traumatised once already by some one who had more problems than she does, and who considered themselves fit to treat children. I detect some degree of scepticism in your attitude, if I think she’s in any danger, I won’t bring her.”
“Danger?” Karen blushed, “Forgive me, I’ve given off the wrong signals. I’ve dealt with this twice before. In one case the mother wanted to emasculate her son and make him a girl, partly because she hated her ex, and partly because she preferred girls to boys.
“I had to try and rescue the boy, who as far as I know, is now catching up on his masculinity. In case two, it was GID, and that was a girl to boy case, even more rare than your boy to girl. When I last saw him, he was doing quite well.
“I suppose I wanted to test you out without Trish being present. I believe you are genuine and don’t have any hidden agenda about feminising a boy.”
I blushed, embarrassed and cross, “But Sam told you the child was saying she was a girl before I met her.”
“Yes, so he was; so why were you so insistent to get Cathy to take this unusual child?”
“I told you,” he said, maintaining his stare at her,” we needed to get her mobilised; Cathy had a track record and we knew she would be sympathetic to the child’s other needs.”
“How did you know? Has she done this before?” asked Karen and I felt my stomach flip over.
“Not that I’m aware of, but you get a gut feeling about people and I just knew she would cope.” Sam was protecting me again and blushing furiously.
“You obviously profoundly influenced one of the leading paediatricians in the UK, did you know that, Cathy? Sam here, is the next head of the college of paediatricians. He’ll be nearly as well connected as Lady Cameron and her banker boyfriend.”
“What don’t you like about me, Karen?”
“I don’t dislike you, Cathy, I hardly know you.”
“But you’ve patronised me, and belittled me, accused me of child abuse and suggested I’m more pure than the Virgin Mary. What have I done to deserve it?”
“You do tend to make Mother Theresa look like a fallen woman, but actually I admire you. You’re still hiding something, which Sam knows about and I don’t. I was trying to work out what it was.”
“I have no hidden agenda, other than trying to keep custody of my two foster children. We, my family such as it is, and they have all invested loads of emotion and energy–call it love if you like–and I don’t want to see it fail. That would be catastrophic for all of us. The Camerons, for all their pomp and circumstance, don’t take failure very well. It would destroy Simon, not to mention Tom and myself. What it would do to the girls, who seem settled with us, I hate to think.
“They have both experienced abandonment before–I swore to them, I would never do it to them. They believe me and I will not break my word.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I admire that you’re prepared to put your own career on hold to raise them, very laudable, even more so that you could end up funding their education. Please bring her to see me tomorrow, I’ll get my secretary to call you this afternoon, if that’s okay?”
“I have to visit, Stella and the baby this afternoon.”
“I’ll get her to leave a message with the special care baby unit, I presume that is where the baby is?”
“Yes.”
“Good, that’s sorted. I’m really looking forward to meeting this wonder child.”
“She’s just an ordinary kid.”
“With a little plumbing problem,” said Karen, and I didn’t know if she was mocking me or agreeing with me. Tomorrow was not going to be easy.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos!
Click the Thumbs Up! button below to leave the author a kudos:
And please, remember to comment, too! Thanks.
Comments
You seem to have it covered, I mean ...
Cathy has. And Karen* has, heck, all of them have except the social workers and Fliss.
* What I meant, was that Karen, knowing that Cathy IS a new fosterer for Trish, is feeling her out to make sure that Cathy knows what she is getting into, AND that Cathy is not trying to force Trish down a path she does not want to follow. She has stated she has run into one such case.
I hope I'm right, and if so, expect Karen to mellow dramatically once she is sure of the situation. Note that she is suspicions that Cathy and Sam are hiding something from her, and she would be derelict in her responsibilities if she does not probe until she finds out what it is.
For right now, I think Karen is doing exactly what she should do. Asking questions that might draw anger is a common method of bringing out the truth, instead of a carefully devised alibi.
It’s not given to anyone to have no regrets; only to decide, through the choices we make, which regrets we’ll have,
David Weber – In Fury Born
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
Gammon...
Would be twice treif (non-kosher), since it's from the ham, the hindquarters of an animal, which is dificult and expensive to make kosher because the sciatic nerve and all associated arteries would have to be removed by a butcher trained in this specialised skill, most likely a Jewish butcher, and of course it's from a pig, which is never kosher except as a joke made by Jews who don't keep kosher, much like kosher lobster or crab.
Gammon is a unique word in the UK, referring both to a particular method of curing the meat and to the idea that one has a slice cut from the whole ham, whereas in the USA any slice cut from a ham is still "ham," no matter how thinly one slices it.
Puddin'
-
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
But the fact remains ...
... in a traditional English cooked breakfast, the chicken's involved but the pig's still committed whether it's in the form of bacon, ham or gammon. :)
I don't eat meat at all but not for religious reasons. I'm not quite sure what the point of religious dietary limitations is in the 21st century. Not eating pork in a hot country before effective food preservation was discovered/invented was sensible because it's a dodgy meat but now ...?
I think Karen is being deliberately provocative in order to determine Cathy's commitment to her foster children. Remember GID is generally rare in children and she has only come across 2 cases professionally and one of those appears to have been abuse by the carer so she needs to be as sure as she can be before starting.
Geoff
I pay little, if any, attention to Kashruth...
Other than knowing what it is in some considerable detail, but the liberal apologetics these days (The strictly Orthodox don't apologise, since G-d said it, and presumably meant it) is not the quasi-health-service scientific "explanation," but a philosophical contemplation of the dietary habits of pigs, lobsters, and ravens, archetypical treif animals. All of them feed on carrion, and are thought to be unsuitable for a "nation of priests" and a people set slightly apart.
The word treif itself means "torn," flesh torn by wild animals, which we are forbidden to eat. It's possibly a "fence" around this prohibition that we not only don't eat carrion, but we don't eat animals which themselves eat carrion, and most of the other treif animals are more-or-less impossible to slaughter humanely, and have to be taken by hunters, so the animal would probably die in fear and pain, which would render it treif in any case, unfit for Jewish consumption. Jews as a rule don't much care for hunters, and Nimrod, that great hunter, doesn't have a good reputation. In fact, the name is the rough equivalent to "fool," or "dunderhead" in some circles. This probably stems from antiquity, although the word does appear in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, since Nimrod supposedly presided over the construction of the Tower of Babel, a profoundly foolish act of hubris which led (in legend, at least) to the overthrow of the greatest kingdom on Earth at the time and the scattering of humanity into separate tribes and linguistic groups.
Puddin'
-
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
Kosher ham
I recall an Amateur (Ham) Radio operator who was also a Rabbi who referred to himself as 'The Kosher Ham.'
Anyhow, several years ago, I read a science fiction story where some scientists did some gene splicing that allowed a pig to chew its cud. The purpose for this exercise was to allow the pig to eat rough vegetative matter the way a ruminant (cow, goat, sheep, deer) can.
The scientists had a question and answer session with a bunch of reporters. After it was over, a cameraman asked if the pig was Kosher.
They didn't know, so they asked a Rabbi.
Ray Drouillard
Ruminant pigs
There is one species of pig, called the babirussa, that has a ruminant-type stomach. Rabbis have decided that since the pig is specifically named as non-kosher in one passage of the Talmud, even a ruminant pig cannot meet the dietary laws.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Splitting hairs...
>> "One who walks in a desert and finds an animal whose mouth is damaged [so it is impossible to check whether it has upper incisors and/or canines, which is the way to verify whether it brings up its cud], should look at its hooves: if the hooves are split -- it is clear that the animal is pure, and if they are not -- it is clear that the animal is impure, provided that one is familiar with the pig [whose hooves are split, yet it is impure]."
>>
>> (Tractate Chulin 59a)
The criteria are found in Torah, Leviticus 11, but the discussion goes on in the Talmud. From the above reference, it's clear that, even if the babirussa chews its cud, it has with undamaged mouth prominent incisors and also looks like a pig, so it doesn't demonstrate the two proper signs that the Talmud provides as a fence for the Torah, so the decision was reasonable. When in doubt, the Rabbis usually err on the side of conservatism for this sort of ruling, since there's no real human involvement or danger, no matter what the animal's real status is.
The Torah laws are probably after the fact in any case, as some Stone Age settlements in prehistoric Canaan (the ancient homeland of the Jews) have no pig bones in their middens, so avoiding the flesh of pigs quite probably predates any putative Sinai and Moses.
Puddin'
-
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
Splitting hairs is right.
The pig is specifically named unclean, but it is named so because it doesn't chew its cud. If the named reason goes away, it makes sense that the resultant restriction should go away.
Of course, that's just the Torah, and doesn't include the the more restrictive rules in the Talmud. Since I have never read it (I don't even know where to get a copy,) I can't legitimately comment about it.
Ray Drouillard
(who loves bacon, by the way.)
Two Things
The Rabbis of the Talmud were concerned with just such questions, and implemented rules that were in most cases more strict (or at least easier to understand) than those set out in the original texts. They called this "putting a fence around the Torah," technically a gezeirah, derived from the root Gimel-Zayin-Reish, meaning to cut off or to separate. For example, one is not supposed to work on the Sabbath. The Rabbis decided that people shouldn't handle implements that one might use to work, so you can't *legally* pick up a pen, a shovel, or any other working tool, lest the opportunity arise to use it and you respond without thinking. So when they say, "If it looks like a pig, it's a pig.", they mean just that. If you have to dissect the animal to discover whether it's kosher or treif, there was probably a feeling that, once you had the animal nicely cut into steaks and roasts, the temptation to throw it on the fire while you inspected the entrails might overcome punctilious observance.
These sorts of laws are just as real as those directly from Torah, as tradition and community customs play a very large role in Jewish life.
As for the Talmud:
Here's a very small portion of the Soncino translation of the Babylonian Talmud:
http://www.come-and-hear.com/tcontents.html
Here is a bit more, but not nearly au courant:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/
You can find other archives on the Internet, but they tend to be available only in the original language, usually Aramaic and Hebrew, but with significant use of Greek and Persian words then in daily use, but whose meaning is now either hazy or completely obscure.
There are two Talmuds, the Babylonian (more complete and religiously authoritative) and the Jerusalem. The BT comprises in the original some 12,800 pages that look like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Talmud.jpg
A peculiar page design that sets forth a central commentary on a religious issue and then re-comments on it in several forms, some distinguished by a special variety of the Hebrew letters used or by their position on the page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud
Here's a nice interactive exploration of the structure of a generic page in the BT:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudPage.html
Owning a complete set is a large investment. The Soncino translation is on sale just now, only US$679.50, and a serious deterrent to casual reading in bed, since many might object to quite that many books cluttering up the duvet. They do tend to flatten the loft.
http://www.soncino.com/product_info.php/products_id/108
The whole business of books simplified life for jurists considerably, as one had to memorise the Torah and all its commentaries and jurisprudence at one time, but it also made life more difficult, since opinions that may have seemed reasonable in one time and place could no longer be conveniently ignored and then forgotten, since the ghosts of stupid decisions remained, and had to be accounted for in going forward. At least half the Talmud is this sort of reconsideration and amendment, discovering ways in which to ensure that a desired outcome, one conforming to the central idea of *justice* contained in Torah, was newly seen as implicit in Torah.
This process is still going on as Judaism evolves, so we now see (in Progressive Reform circles) specifically gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual synagogues with a long story of affirmation where Torah has at most a few brief sentences of *apparent* condemnation and at least says not a word.
Lesbians, for example, never cross the minds of those (perhaps Moses?) who set down Torah, and were considered by the Rabbis as a relatively unimportant issue that might be scandalous, but nothing more, and the intersexed (also absent from Torah) were discussed at some length, as were eunuchs (a term which may include certain types of transsexuals, as a number of technical terms are used for which we have no current referent. The Code of Hammurabi made provision for "male daughters," who had both the right to marry and to have some inheritance rights, so it seems clear that "third sexes" were widely known in the ancient world and special laws provided to incorporate them into the community in some way), so it wouldn't be particularly odd for the Jews to incorporate parts of this jurisprudence into their own. In any case, in the Talmud, each group "outside the norms" was treated as humanely as possible, with their status determined based on the limited medical knowledge available, but with community roles and respect assured.
It seems obvious that much has been lost of what "everyone knew" in antiquity, probably through deliberate censorship by intervening generations of bluenoses, but the discussion of "eunuchs" who were allowed to marry and receive a dowry (as is normal for a husband) based on their ability to father a child seems to argue that the Jews of the Diaspora were aware of and accommodated men who didn't want to live *as men* but as "eunuchs" (whatever that meant at the time) who may well have lived as women. Josephus, for example, describes "eunuchs" of whom "it is evident that their soul has become effeminate," and who "have transfused that effeminacy to their body also." I daresay he's describing in primitive terms what would today be termed a transsexual.
http://www.shaarzahav.org/
Cheers,
Liobhan
-
Cheers,
Liobhan
Rules, rules and more rules ...
To be honest I never knew much of the Jewish apart from that Nazi-Germany did to them, that they follow the Torah and that it is more a less a book of laws and that the Christian old testament is the Jewish history.
A few months ago I listened to a radio program about the worlds religions. (Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jewish, Christianity and Islam)
It was quite interesting how similar a lot of them are even the eastern to the western ones. Also that taoism is the only one who does not subjugate women but grants them equal rights and importance.
What I remember about the Jews was that they feel they are still searching where they belong. They consider themselves the folk of the book they did not make a big impression on the Romans for one major reason even though they did have quite a few privileges like being allowed to collect their own religious tax (years way after Jesus).
However people found it very hard to follow all of the over 600 rules (if I remember right). That was what made Christianity so attractive. It was quite similar (one god, shared much with the Jewish) but it had one major advantage.
It was WAY easier to follow!
(If that had not been the case Jewish may have become what Christianity is today.)
From what they said in the program it is more or less impossible to follow all the Jewish rules even for very devoted Jews.
So I wonder whats the point? Some rules are certainly good. They made a lot of what we have today possible in the first place. Without rules/laws modern states and countries would be impossible. But if they become to restrictive they hinder and are not followed anyway.
Then again they also said. While there are not that many Jews and never have been that many, procentually the Jews produced more Nobel price winners than any other peoples world wide.
Any way I eat what I like and what my body allows me to process. I way to lazy to constantly check and worry if I'm allowed to eat a certain food, be it because of religious or for other reasons.
Friendship is like glass,
once broken it can be mented,
but there will always be a crack.
I think Karen is ok
sure she seems annoying to Cathy but she is doing her job right. She is making sure she has all facts right before making any assumptions. I also doubt she will take long to find out Cathy's past for better or worse.
Still I think she will be quite helpfull. Possible to both Trish and Cathy.
Thanks for still writing this wonderfully story.
hugs
Holly
Friendship is like glass,
once broken it can be mented,
but there will always be a crack.
Looks As If Cathy
Has a friend or foe in Karen. She could be a friend of Fliss, or hate Cathy for some reason. Personally, I hope her being a hardass is to protect Trish, not to be a bully.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Somehow, I think
Karen is not a friend of Fliss. Rather, she is doing all she can to ensure that Cathy isn't trying to force a boy into being a girl against his will, as she had already encountered one such case in the course of her practice. The fact that she has treated a female to male TS child and says HE is doing quite well suggests to me that she is open-minded about the subject. And, once she's had a chance to meet and talk with Trish, she's bound to agree that Trish is, in fact, her first male to female TS patient.
Jenny
Daily fix is taken care of!!
Daily fix is taken care of!! You are amazing, did you know that? You, at least since I have read this story, have one up everyday. I am not real sure how you do it, I am betting you have trouble sleeping at night. I think Karen might be the last person in the England who has not seen the dormouse on youtube.
Some people
Are not Internet-obsessive mental cases who have to spend hours following the latest craze or checking out the newest viral video sensation.
Or so I'm told. ;-)
Yuri!
Yuri!
To save the bother of looking...
Here's a bit of news about the endangered dormouse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izPw0bb4V_A
Cathy's video has, unfortunately, been taken down for content problems, as there was evidently too much attention paid to cleavage and not enough to poor Spike.
Puddin'
-
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
Can't get a handle on Karen
She does not seem to be the most tactful kind of person. Also, why should think it weird that Cathy is also judging her also ? Approaching a case with so many prejudices is not a good way to start a therapeutic relationship.
Kim
I like that Cathy
Is protecting her brood like a mother hen. No one is going to hurt her kids if she can stop them and stop them she will. By whatever method is necessary.
Any competent Doctor would
Any competent Doctor would not worry if they were "investigated" by the prospective patient or their parent(s). That just shows excellent judgement on the part of the
parent(s). Too many people wind up with doctors that do not "work" for them, yet they are embarassed by thinking that if they tell the doctor this, they will be laughed at.
J-Lynn
Karen
IMO it is an open book. It will be a lot more interesting how she treats Patricia, which is the real rub. Trish is suffering from parental abuse and bullying, so the good doctor needs to show more tact with her than she has Cathy.
Special dispensation
At the risk of insulting a good friend, can you imagine a Muslim having a nice pork chop, with Sam Rose's attitude. As a child I remember Catholic men who worked hard, being able to eat meat on Fridays.
Karen is a bit of a doubter, who is unaware of how close she is to being flame broiled.
Steady Cathy, steady.
Cefin