Article: Trans Jews In the Old Country - Oy Vay!

[Carolyn Marie]

Quite an interesting and entertaining piece. Yes, transfolk have a place in history, whether cis-folk want to admit it or not. Read on,

http://www.forward.com/articles/144546/

Carolyn Marie

[VickySGV]

It makes you think that maybe the folks of history were not quite as ferocious as they are made out today by people who want to base their intolerance on the TRADITION that might not really have happened. Great great grandfather is not around to deny his legendary sternness, and put the lie to something great great grandson won't admit is his own hurtful invention.

[JJ]

With movies and media giving us so much of our view of history we tend to see it as much more black & white than it really was I think.

Even those of so conservative 50s were not the way we think of them. I was an eavesdropper s a child. I liked to hide and listen to adult conversations. My family were town leaders and very respectable people but the things the women discussed when they were in a group alone were never shown on I Love Lucy or any other program from that time. The media shows the best and worst but seldom the reality of the middle. And there was a family with a daughter several years older than I was who wore only boy clothes outside of school and refused to answer to anything but Johnny. Neither she (though I am sure he would be the appropriate pronoun ) nor the parents were treated badly or ostracized. There was a sort of "These things happen. What are you gonna do?" attitude. And this was in a small and very conservative West Texas town.

And a woman who rented one of our rent houses lived with her girlfriend. I liked her but wasn't allowed to visit anymore when I saw them cuddling. I asked too many questions. But these things were accepted-just not made public.

(Off subject my grandparents answer to my trying the same thing was to completely ignore anything about a different name, A razor strap persuaded me that being called my female name was just a reality I had to live with unlike the very lucky other Johnny-her parents spelled it "Johnnie" BTW. )

Johnny