The First Time I Died: A Transgender Girl's Lessons in Death

"End? No, the journey doesn't end here."

J.R.R. Tolkien

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I was around three the first time I died. Fortunately, I was witty enough to think my way out of it before it was time for my parents to pick me up from Pre-School. Despite being raised Roman Catholic, I was enrolled in a Protestant Evangelical Pre-School, called "Sunshine." It was there I learned some things about singing, napping, climbing up stairs, and even got my first kiss. The girl had pulled me aside while we were make-believing in the kitchen play set and surprised me with a small peck. I think I spilled my imaginary cup of tea all over the freshly vacuumed carpet. I remember being confused but not upset. I did get confused and upset when I got in trouble for it. The surprise and the adult response was another lesson I received at this Pre-School: openly trusting what people do or say can lead to confusing problems, especially when I have thoughts to the otherwise.

Another confusing problem occurred to me when I was driving home from Pre-School down Park Street, under the canopy of old trees that seemed to be a staple of my hometown, and we were about to cross the tracks to the north side of town. "I don't want Jesus in my heart," I told my mom. She asked me to explain why I say that. "Because I think that would give me a heart attack or something." She laughed. She was confused and asked me to explain. But I was confused too. "The school told me that to be a good person, I need to invite Jesus into my heart," I reported. "But even if he could fit in all those tubes and things, I don't think my blood could get through with a man in my heart." My imagination flashed with all the damage a tiny human could do trying to make a home, sleeping, working, and trying to prepare meals inside a kid's cardiovascular system. I asked her if that meant I was a bad person, because I didn't want a miniature Jesus to give me cardiac arrest. She told me I was a good kid and a bright kid. Then she told me that I could be friends with Jesus even if he didn't live in my heart. I thought that was a sensible compromise.

The sense of doubt in the adults of my Pre-School came in handy when it came time for me to die. They had arranged a trip for us to tour the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. The first half of the trip was okay. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watched a video about Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty was an egg who fell off a wall and broke but he was able to be put back together. I wasn't a huge fan of the film but then again I tend to not appreciate C-rated horror films as this seemed to me to be. After this, the Pre-School teachers broke us up into groups. About five or seven at a time, we would walk through a door into a dark room. As far as I could see, no one was coming out again after they entered. Then it was my group's turn. Our teacher walked us through the door which shut behind us. I could feel the walls which were covered in some sort of dark carpet but otherwise the room was totally dark and quiet. Then our teacher told us, "you are dead. You have died." I immediately began to panic. Death hadn't hurt but I was very sad to not see my mom or my dogs or my siblings or my dad or my house again. I didn't know anyone who had died and so I felt very alone, despite being dead with a bunch of other three and four year olds.

I stood grieving my own death for about a minute before a door on the other side of the room opened, revealing a brightly lit chamber. Walking through the dark hallway into the light, I was surrounded by a bunch of other dead kids, all standing in a high room painted with bright blue sky and clouds. There was a railing, presumably to keep us from falling back to earth. I wanted to see if I could see Wheaton and maybe my home below us, so I went over to the railing. Looking down, I saw a mirror reflecting my face back at me. Scanning along the other side of the railing, I took in the effect of the mirrors reflecting the lights and the sky to make it seem as though they went on forever. At this point, I deduced that I probably was not dead. 

I think I began to cry. My teacher tried to comfort me by saying something about how we are in heaven, pointing to all the walls and lights. I did not have the presence of mind to tell her how this was a pretty boring looking heaven. I was too busy crying and holding my arms across my body. She then told me that I really wasn't dead, it was just a museum. I wanted to tell her that I had figured that out on my own and that I wasn't crying because I thought I was dead (that experience had mostly come with a sense of guilt at abandoning my family) but rather because of how enraged I was that I had been lied to again. As in the case of the the girl who kissed me while we were playing in the toy kitchen, make-believe is fine and good but you should explain the game to the people you're playing with before you start or make significant changes. I wasn't ready to be some girl's wife, girlfriend, or whatever she thought I was in her imagination. Likewise, while these adults were eager to get Jesus into my heart or get me into Jesus's sky palace, I wish the Jesus they were presenting to me was less eager to see me dead. That said, as the Humpty Dumpty film had already warned me, these adults seemed to like horror films way more than I do. All I wanted was to vacuum the rug, make some imaginary tea and take a nap without being assaulted or killed by my playmates. Is that so hard?

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Grabbing Good Food with Gabby: A Gastronomic Memoir (Pt 1)

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
J.R.R. Tolkien

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Over the years I have lived in multiple states, often at the same time, and visited others regularly. With all this moving about, it is important to have a few places that are familiar to provide a level of comfort and familiarity. Adding to this, I am a fairly routine-oriented person. Once I find a place that I like, I tend to go there on the regular. This does not mean that I go to the same place everyday. Instead, I am more ritualistic. As a weekly pattern is established, I tend to go to certain places on certain days or on certain occasions. Indeed, I usually will order the same item or rotate between a few favorite items after a trial period of sampling multiple different choices has passed. As such, I have amassed a list of favorite places to eat in particular cities as well as a list of corresponding menu items.

If there is any pedagogical value to this list, beyond educating on my own particular tastes, it is that these eateries are part of a larger strategy of safety for a transgender woman traversing a wide range of places with a wide range of potential dangers. In short, this list of locations represents a few trans friendly locations that I have found to eat. Furthermore, many places I visit go through an initial adjustment phase as they register the trans customer who has shown up to eat. Likely a high number of these locations may have never consciously fed a trans person previously. The advantage of going to the same location regularly is that the staff and fellow diners become accustomed to the trans woman who visits on a given day and orders a given food. This process of getting to know me has an added benefit: familiarity breeds affection. In a new city or a city that I am visiting, I may not have many safe places that I can go if I am being harassed. Because eating is essential for life, the first and most consistent safe spaces I tend to locate are places that I eat. In the best case scenarios, I make friends with the staff. Even if friendships are not formed, by becoming a "regular" there is a sense that if I began to be harassed at one of my usual haunts, the staff who knew me would be more likely to come to my defense. All that said, comfort food is called comfort food for a reason. Sometimes after a day of interactions with transphobic people, it feels good to order a plate of some self-care.

Beyond personal habit and survival, this list includes numerous locations that housed dates with my partner, lunch-dates with friends, or other memories on the road and with family. Going through this list was a fun way to share a few short memories about food, about special places, and the people I've met along the way. I hope you enjoy reading and if you are ever in town, I hope you enjoy a meal as well!

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Old Port Sandwich Shop

Portland, Maine

BLT Sandwich, Wasabi Chips, Diet Coke

Living in Maine was awful lonely. Setting aside how far Maine was from my friends and colleagues in the major cities, the circumstances of our arrival in the state made it very difficult to make friends. The town and position that my now spouse held made it dangerous for my partner and I to be seen as such. This was a town and congregation that was evidently uncomfortable with female pastors. We were told before we arrived that a queer female pastor would not be hired or held in the job. Remember, churches are not like other professions. You can be fired for being gay and it was not long before such a campaign of suspicious persons began putting pressure on us to go. Within these contexts, my presence in the home and raising the child was hard enough to explain. True friendship requires honesty and such honesty in our town could spell financial ruin for the family. All this totaled together to equal a lack of friends or places I could comfortably relax in our town. After several months, the alienation became too much and I began a weekly venture up to Portland, Maine where I had heard of a queer women owned comic book store. Thus began my weekly trip, taking several hours, to and from Portland every Wednesday.

Because these trips were so long and had to be scheduled during school hours so I could still take care of the children, I would usually go to Portland around lunch-time. It was then very early on, if not immediately, that I had stumbled upon a sandwich shop right around the corner of the comic store. I ordered my standard test for any such sandwich shop, a BLT, and sat down to eat while I read my new books. The BLT is a good test of an eatery in my opinion because it is so basic. If the BLT can be done well while also elevating the dish, the place is a winner. Well the food was good, it passed that test. But what kept me coming back was that in the first few visits, I noticed a friend who was much like me. Only later did I discover that they were the owner. Their story is their own and being from another country and another generation, the language we might use were not always the same. Yet to a casual observer stumbling on the shop, as many of the visitors much have been, the scene would have been one of a trans woman sitting down to lunch at an establishment owned and operated by another trans woman. We would sometimes laugh that unlike most other restaurants, in this sandwich shop being trans was the norm and being cisgender was the aberration. And so for years I would go get my comics from a lesbian owned store and then go read them at a trans owned sandwich shop. To this day, I miss seeing my friend each Wednesday.

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Henry VIII Carvery

Kittery, Maine

Henry VIII Sandwich with Horseradish Sauce, Diet Coke

Given hormones and inheritances, cravings can be explained but are nonetheless hard to argue. Likewise, with our fandoms. As a medievalist I hear about all sorts of historical novelties and attractions from locals. Not all of them are medieval (people tend to conflate the medieval with anything pre-19th century) and few of them are especially historically accurate, but I tend to love most of them. I love a good replica sword or a tin suit of armor on the walls or a menu's attempt at "old English" which is really just modern English with some anachronistic grammar in funky fonts. As such, it did not take me long to get directed to Henry VIII Carvery. It is easy to see but also easy to miss, located in a stretch of road between towns in a region and state through which folk tend to drive very fast. This innocuous little yellow building with the historical sounding name is just the sort of place that locals love and that they share with other visitors in the know.

While the novelties are what drew me to the carvery it was the food that kept me craving and returning. Before you even begin eating you get to see the workers cut apart the large pieces of meat (some brined, some seemingly smoked) into chunks or strips to be mixed with various veggies and sauces. Once I took my first bite of the title sandwich, I was hooked. It is an uncommon kind of sandwich both for the high quality of the meat but also the use of horseradish sauce. I brought my partner. I brought our kids. I went their often enough to make good use out of the punch-card which earned me some free food. Even though I did not go to Henry VIII's as often as other places, when I got the craving for one of their sandwiches it was hard for any other foods to do the job. My love brought me Henry VIII's on occasions when I was having cravings, was ill, or when I just needed a pick-me-up. It is worth noting that around this time I had been experiencing hormone replacement therapy as part of my medical transitioning and the affirmation of my gender. Among the noticeable changes were in my appetites and cravings. Olives, which I had hitherto found revolting, I suddenly loved were one such craving. But Henry III's sandwiches were another that hit at the right time and the right place in my stomach. I still get those cravings.

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The Groggy Frogg

Southington, Connecticut

F.U. Hot Wings and Asian Invasion Wings

It all began with me running to the restroom for fear that I was about to vomit. All the while, as I was pushing past the crowds, was that I had just ingested poison. After splashing water on my face, the need to expel what I had just eaten abated. Then I went back for another. This was my first experience of F.U. wings. My family had attended a hot wing contest in town, where various eateries in mid-Connecticut came to show off their various chicken wing experiments in different categories. There were sweet, sugary wings and those that tasted like donuts. Then there were the various kinds of hot wings. The F.U. wings from local bar, the Groggy Frogg, surpassed all of them by leaps and bounds. It was only later that I discovered that they were the brainchild of the husband of my new friend, who was the head cook at the bar. He was a man who took pride in his award winning wings and the wide variety of wings they sold at the Groggy Frogg. Part of this pride was in using no pepper extract in the F.U. sauce. As anyone who make a sport of trying spicy food know all too well, it is quite easy to make painfully spicy food just by adding the chemical extract that makes peppers hot. It is harder, more expensive, and more flavorful to make such sauces using only whole peppers. This harder course is the way the Groggy Frogg went, resulting in a sauce that was awfully painful but also awfully delicious.

Yet it is not because of taste alone that the wings (including some F.U. wings) found their way into my wedding. A year or so before the wedding our younger child had signed up for karate lessons. I would bring them and wait with the other parents during the lesson from a room on the other side of a large window. Often, I would slink back even further to the far side of the hallway closer to the door. I could still see my child but had a degree of distance from the other parents. It is there that I met the best friend I was to make in Connecticut. As she tells the story, I seemed to look at the other parents (all former football players and cheerleaders from the local high school) with the same sense of unease that she did. At that, she knew she wanted to be friends. It was to our greater fortune that our older and younger children were both around the same ages. Even after we moved from Connecticut, my oldest daughter stills keeps in close communication with her oldest. Thus a family friendship began with the whole group getting together for parties or just to hang out during breaks and weekends. It was not long before we found out that her husband was responsible for those F.U. wings and when our wedding came around, we ordered a box load of various wings (Hot, Mild, Asian Invasion, and F.U.) to serve at our rehearsal dinner. For reasons that are not fully explained, my husbutch mixed the F.U. wings together with the regular hot wings. What resulted was a bit of a Russian Roulette where unsuspecting diners would jump up from there seats shouting, "we found another one!" Then they would go rushing from a cup of something to drown the flames. The wings certainly formed memories and the family who made them formed lasting friendships. Indeed, the final meal we had in Connecticut before we moved away was an order of wings from our friends at the Groggy Frogg.

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Panera Bread

Glen Ellyn, Illinois

Sierra Turkey Sandwich and French Onion Soup

At this point it should be evident that not all the places listed are here because they are off the beaten road little hideaways but because they hold some significant meaning in my life story. In general, my family loves Panera Bread and specifically one location (which I am not sure still exists) has a special place in my heart. The Panera Bread on Roosevelt Road in Glen Ellyn, located near the Jewel-Osco grocery store and a former Blockbuster Video, is the place that I would meet once a summer with my good friend Michael and our favorite middle school teacher, Ms. H. While we are older now and we go by first names or simply "friend," my impulse to say Ms. H (name redacted) is still there. Ms. H. is the reason that my friend Michael and I met. We found out later that she moved seats around during our study hall so we would sit next to each other, resulting in us getting to know each other and making friends. This extra care is just part of what made Ms. H. such an intentional and extraordinary teacher. In honor of her and our friendship, from high school and well into our twenties (until I moved to the east coast) we would get together once a summer to catch up on how we were all doing. Often, we would share books and music; Michael is a music fanatic with a sound-mixing degree and Ms. H. was our English teacher - more on this later. This sort of check-in was a wonderful gift from our favorite middle school teacher, as she would offer advice on our growing lives and concerns. I can only hope that we in turn added joy and reward to her life as well.

At this point it is worth saying that Ms. H. may very well be the reason I got a Ph.D. in Literature. Going into her class, I had been on a road towards the space sciences, a journey I had been set on since 1st grade and which culminated on my summer at Space Camp's Florida location where I had the opportunity to see the international space station before it went into orbit. Alongside this interest in the sciences, however, I had been an active reader and writer. In 3rd grade I wrote a series of mystery short stories which my teacher at the time (Ms. Greer) allowed me to share with the class on numerous occasions. By middle school, I had lost what few friends I had previously and the bullying of the previous years amping up. In this isolation, books became my best friends. Already doing fairly well in school, my pedantry in studying made my classes rather dull as the teachers worked to get the rest of the class caught up. Feeling bored and impatient, I began sneaking books under my desk in class and trying to read while the teachers worked with the other students. Most teachers eventually caught onto what I was doing and not wanting to have my books taken away, I submitted to just being bored. But Ms. H. was different. She not only allowed me to read in class, she would make book recommendations. She told me that as long as I participated and did well in the class work, I did not have to hide the fact I was doing other reading at the same time. I imagine one of the benefits of this was that my hand was not perpetually raised when questions about the readings were asked, which gave room for other students to answer and made me seem to my peers at least a little less pedantic. Well, by the end of the year I had gotten enough non-STEM literature read that I declared I would not longer strive to work at N.A.S.A. and instead become an English Professor. When asked what grade I wanted to teach, I laughed and said college (hence my use of the word "professor") because I held onto the hope that by that age my students would be a bit more devoted to their studies than I knew my middle school peers to be. However pedantic I was as a child, I nonetheless see this at an important pivot point in my professional life and Ms. H., my friend Michael, and Panera play important roles in that story.

Also: the Sierra Turkey sandwich is no longer listed on Panera's menu but if you ask for it directly they will make one for you!

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Egg Harbor Cafe

Wheaton, Illinois

Chroizo Chilaquiles and Side of Cheese Grits

I never got into breakfast. Often, I will miss a morning meal and just power through until lunch. For a long time, I did not understand the appeal of "breakfast for dinner" because breakfast seemed to be the weakest of the meals. This prejudice, however, was partially based on having poor ambassadors for the great nation of breakfast. I rarely eat cereal, occasionally enjoying some Special K or sweet cereals which I regard as a candy-like dessert. In general, I don't like anything sweet in the morning, even fruits. I like eggs but generally only if I am the one cooking them. I like cooking eggs perhaps more than eating them. I especially loath fast-food eggs which generally taste to me like yellow styrofoam. Most of all, I don't eat very many baked pastries. Cakes, donuts, bagels, and breads are not high on my list of meals. Added together, disliking sweet things in the morning, being picky about eggs, unimpressed by cereal, and avoidant of carbs all but demolishes most breakfast options that are usually presented to me. If presented with the choice, I usually would rather skip the food in favor of sleep or work.


Eventually, I did have to admit that I like breakfast if done right. Almost always, this means a slow-paced sit down restaurant with family or friends. Most of all, if I am going out to eat breakfast (not just ordering breakfast for someone else, like for my kids) it is usually with my mom. She likes slow-paced breakfasts too at small chain stores in or around our hometown of Wheaton, Illinois. Her favorite place is Egg Harbor Cafe. Now, there are fancier places for breakfast that have impressed me, giving me some of my favorites: an excellent Biscuits and Gravy, Chicken-Fried-Steak, Smoked Herring or Lox. But few foods beat the moments and memories I share during breakfast with my mom. Each member of the family have an Egg Harbor Mug purchased for them by my mom. That said, the food is pretty good too! My favorite is the Chorizo Chilaquiles with a side of the cheesy grits. They have learned to bring me extra hot sauce as well. In the end, while I would usually prefer sleeping in or getting work done, I will wake up early and wait on the day's writing to get hot chillies and sausage at my mom's favorite breakfast place!

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Half a Million Reasons: Transliterature Passes 500,000 Readers!

"The question we pose to the Other is simple and unanswerable:  ‘who are you?’"

Judith Butler

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This website began back 2011 with an invocation combining a visual poetry piece that I had composed along with a quotation from Judith Butler from Undoing Gender, "The question we pose to the Other is simple and unanswerable: ‘who are you?’  The violent response is the one that does not ask, and does not seek to know. It wants to sure up what it knows, to expunge what threatens it with not-knowing, what forces it to reconsider the presuppositions of its world, their contingency, their malleability. The nonviolent response lives with its unknowingness about the Other in the face of the Other, since sustaining the bond that the question opens is finally more valuable than knowing in advance what holds us in common, as if we already have all the resources we need to know what defines the human, what its future life might be." By this invocation I hoped to establish a thesis and a tone for what I wanted the website to be. Only time and readers can determine whether or not this promise materialized. In my own heart, it was a statement about the vulnerability of public scholarship but also its importance. Such a venture is sure to begin as a voice in a relative wilderness, crying out with some form of "this is who I am" and "who are you?" There were the dangers of turning oneself into a target, into a caricature and then into a sounding board for the worst anxieties or prejudices of others. Indeed, when I first began writing I was given warnings that putting my emerging ideas out into the world might come back to haunt me later when people steal my work or cite it later in my career as proof of some flaw. Yet amidst these tensions, there was hope for contact that might become a correspondence and perhaps then into a community. Years and half a million readers later, I've seen a mix of being targeted by people who regard me as a caricature as well as being contacted by people in search of community. But overall, the question, "who are you," continues to bring a plentitude of blessed contacts, correspondences, and communities.

Over the years, the website has evolved. Transliterature began as a public notebook where I could share many of my thoughts and projects as I worked through them, especially those concerning critical theory. Over time, conference papers and the beginnings of peer reviewed articles began to find their ways onto the site. Indeed, the last few months has been rather sparse in terms of exclusive web content because I've been using my approximately 3 posts a month to advertise for various peer-reviewed publications or public journals and newspapers. Yet even as my writing continues to expand into other necessary areas, I appreciate this forum as a place to share pedagogical tools and resources, announce partnerships, share digital humanities work, run fundraisers for organizations such as the Trans Travel Grant, publicize Calls for Papers, update my CV, announce upcoming events, compose memoirs, and yes, also share my in progress notes. Some of these things have their beginning on Transliterature but other projects begin elsewhere and find there way onto the website. This is an exciting growth and change as Transliterature becomes a quilting point wherein I can thread the various types of work in which I engage.

One of the areas into which I would love to see Transliterature continue to expand is its autobiographical content. As the website closes in on ten years, my life has changed a lot along the way. Importantly, how I view moments and movements in my life have also changed. I am grateful to my readers who have allowed me to make room for sharing these reflections. They helped me and I hope they have done some good for those who are not me. The audience component of a website like Transliterature is a good challenge for anyone who wants to write about their lives because in my experience writing for a public rather than in a private journal reminds me to write in such a way that benefits others and not merely myself. Drafts are often written (but not published) that are written in ways that I needed to write for my own benefit. But before I publish, I feel challenged to revise my memoirs in such a way that it works for others. To my surprise, writing for others usually improves even the portions that I write for myself because the process challenges me to be charitable (even with myself), measured (even with myself), and service-oriented (even with myself). How often I lack such generosity, mercy, and compassion towards myself when I recall things in my own head! Moreover, to my surprise people writ large seem as interested in the memoir pieces as the more academic work. Granted, in the fields of study in which I work and in those models of writing which I emulate, the political often affects the private and the private is often political. I grant that there are some who would prefer more of the one over the other but I am grateful for all those who have come to Transliterature and made space enough for other types of writing and readers. As this area grows, perhaps even into other media such as a book, I thank you for welcoming not only my writing but a bit of me along with it.

500,000 readers marks a point in the history of this website, my career, and my life that gives me pause to be grateful. Thank you to all my readers and advertisers. Thank you to my guest writers and those who have offered valuable feedback. Thank you to those who helped Transliterature grow and to help my work grow beyond it as well. Thank you to all the people who are part of the ongoing story which knits across Transliterature, all the people who likewise heard the question, "who are you?" and offered such rich and valuable responses; some stated and many silent among those half a million hits. This marker belongs most of all to you. Thank you for including me in your asking of this simple but unanswerable question.

Happy holidays, happy new year, and a new second half-a-million from Transliterature!

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Call Me Gabby: On Deadnames and Changing My Legal Name

"And the angel answering said unto him, 
I am Gabriel...
and am sent to speak unto thee, 
and to shew thee these glad tidings."

Book of Luke 1:19

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The Case Against My Deadname

As I stood in front on the locked courtroom door waiting for my hearing, I read and reread the sign that announced the cases for the next hour. Each case was numbered to indicate the order in which they would be heard once the court was in session. I was number thirteen. But there was two number thirteens. The case of my legal name change appeared twice in different forms. In the first instance, it reported to be the case of Gabrielle Mary-Willow Bychowski. In the second instance it reported to be the case of my deadname. The reason for this was that the court system did not know which one would end up being correct. If the court found in my favor, the first case would be the proper name. If the court found against me, the second case would be the legal one. As I stared looking at the screen, however, it felt like both my identity and my deadname identity were being called to court to contest who had the right to my life. In some ways, this was the last legal gasp of my deadname identity. If I won, that name would have to walk away and leave my life alone. If I lost, the court would legally lock me into a name that no longer felt livable. This conflict gives a sense of the manifold meaning of the word 'deadname' which signifies the name that is no longer alive, or active like how a virus is active. In another sense the deadname signifies the unlivable life, the living death in which too many transgender persons are forced to live for too long. Some never escape their deadname. The deadname identity fights and brings the life of the person to an end. Even in death, the deadname presides over too many transgender persons like a jailor of gender identity over the deceased. Deadnames have power and that is what makes them dangerous. If I won today, I would not totally escape the lingering ghost of my deadname in all areas of mu life but from here on out, the law would be on my side.

When the bailiff unlocked the door, I entered the court as both myself and my deadname. Only one would walk out. As I took my seat behind the divider, I watched as everyone took their places and warmed up for their roles. I had an uncanny flashback to my third grade play when my class had performed February On Trial. In this courtroom drama, the month of February stood accused of not doing its fair share of the annual work. In that play, I was tasked to play the defense attorney, summoning witnesses and delivering stirring rhetoric while my counterpart, the prosecutor pretended to sleep through the whole proceedings. I won the case by presenting overwhelming evidence; although it didn't hurt that I was dating (insofar as third graders 'date') the judge, or rather the girl that was playing the judge. That third grade defense was make believe. This was real. What struck me however was how formulaic and scripted it all was. The judge entered, few stood, they said a few words, we sat down. In short order, cases were called and lawyers jumped up to speak briefly with the judge. Many of the cases did not show. They went down the list, waited for someone to reply, then moved to the next. Quicker than expected, they called number thirteen and I stood. I was asked to approach the judge and be sworn in by raising my hand then affirming I would tell the whole truth and all that. I say "all that" both because we all know what they ask people to say in courts from TV and movies but also because I honestly didn't hear most of what she was asking me to swear. Her lips moved, I nodded, by the pounding in my ears made it hard to hear. This was a bad bad case of stage-fright. But fortunately I trained to deal with stage fright since third grade. I recognized when it was my turn to speak and I said my line, "I do." Then I looked toward the judge and the case began.

The judge confirmed my name and then hammered me with questions. The day before as I was traveling to my hometown for the court case, I was telling my mom how nervous I was and how I wished I had asked the lawyers helping me procure my legal name and gender marker changes what to say when I actually get into the courtroom. What would they ask? What would be a good response? I knew how to manage an audience, a room of students, a conference hall, even church and political crowds. But a judge was a difference audience entirely. This one person had the ability to affect the trajectory of my future for good and ill. I knew their were rules and procedures, like theatre lines and blocking, but I was not master of them. I groaned that it was now too late to call the firm working on my case. Then I remembered, two of my best friends and my brother were all lawyers. One worked for a judge, one taught law, and the other brought cases before the Supreme Court. I had people behind me that would help me find my footing. I promptly called or texted all three of them. In my heart of hearts, I knew I was also just calling to hear their voices and share the moment with them. They each calmed me down in their own ways. They each gave different elements of the same overall advice: be quiet and calm, follow the judge's lead. That's what I did. What I discovered as the judge proceeded through her questioning was that she was reading from a list and signing boxes as she went along. This was more or less scripted. For me, this was more or less going to be unadorned, drama-free high stakes theater to affirm or deny who I was in the eyes of the law.

In the end, once the court confirmed with me that I was assuming a name in order to avoid creditors or the police, the judge had me check the spelling of my name then declared I was who I said I am: Gabrielle Mary-Willow Bychowski. The judge told me how to get official copies of my court order then told me I was done. Looking back to my seat, I saw my mother standing up with a beaming smile. She had been there when the law first determined my name and gender marker. Today, she was witness to the law being corrected and she was holding back tears of excitement. Walking out of the courtroom, my mom asked me how I felt. I told her it was like I had turned a chapter in my life. I had wanted to have and originally gained a court date to legalize my name and gender marker on President Obama's last day in office. It would be a turning point for me and our country. That gets at the intensity of the moment and its repercussions. Yet beyond the significance of this day, it was less like turning a chapter and more like the editors and publishers finally printing the book under the title that author had originally wanted. It felt like the moment in which readers of a book with a gender neutral name find out that J.K. Rowling is a woman. I sometimes wonder how many readers of my work, published under the name M.W. Bychowski, are surprised to realize it was written by a woman and specifically a transgender woman. Now if they checked my legal documents, they will know my name. Now if they check the newspapers and blogs, regardless of what they say about me, they will know my name. Now if they check my wedding certificate, they will know my name beside my beloved's. Now if they one day check my tombstone, future generations will know my name.

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#TransLawHelp

What does it mean to transition my name and gender marker now? The decision to file for legal corrections to my identity documents was years in the making. I haven't used my deadname as my primary identifier in over a decade, yet there is no switch you can flip that will get everyone on board with those updates all at once. Transitioning is not just something the transgender person does but involves all the intersecting communities they are a part. For all intents and purposes, I have been Gabby M.W. Bychowski for some time but not in the eyes of the law. Coming out to my friends, family, and co-workers came first. Getting other things in line, especially medical assistance, came shortly after. This is quick to write and quicker to read but took years of stops and starts. The deadline for  a legal name change had long been either before I was legally married or before I received my doctorate. Both of those eventualities converged in 2016. I knew by early 2017, I would need to file. Then the election happened in November. At this point, it began to be all hands on deck in the transgender community to give one another support enough to get through the next day. Soon it became evident that with shifting government policies and rising tides of anti-transgender legislation, the community had to make preparations for the future tribulations. Before the final state was announced for the election, I had already begun to put into immediate motion procedures for legal name and gender marker changes that had been in holding patterns. The time was now to make sure that we had all the legal documents possible to defend who we are against the coming offenses. When the police pull us aside to check our drivers licenses, when guards at the door to rest rooms ask for proof of our gender, when TSA agents check our passports during a screening, the more of the law we can get on our side the better.

What made all the difference was that the transgender community was not alone. In the weeks after the election, #TransLawHelp began circulating around Twitter and other social media to connect transgender persons with free legal help. Firms, clinics, law schools, and individual lawyers were volunteering their services to the transgender community pro bono, meaning "for the public good." Some transgender person possess the education in legal procedures or money enough to afford assistance to go it alone. Yet most transgender persons, especially the young and most vulnerable do not have the resources needed to navigate the bureaucrat mazes alone or defend their own cases adequately if and when they are challenged. Personally, in order to fast track some of the changes that remained, I reached out to #TransLawHelp and was put in touch with a local lawyer to help me file the needed documents. The lawyer and her clinic team explained many of the tangled requirements that stood between me and the various agencies and courts I would need to manage. The lawyers guidance was indispensable in better understanding how the law and government functioned and what was the best way to position my cases. All the lawyer's advice and everything the clinic did was free. This was good because everything I did with the courts and agencies here on out would be rather expensive and strained my small budget. A hundred dollars for this and a couple hundred for that added up quickly. The expense would be worth the outcome but all of it might not happened so successfully if it was not for the free legal assistance. More than anything, knowing that I was not going into this alone gave me the emotional resources to push through the cost.

When I was finally given a court date I was ecstatic. I was surprised by how far off the day needed to be, over two months. But I finally knew on what day the law would see me for who I am. But beyond this, I was thrilled that the court date I was given was January 19th. This was the last day in office for President Barack Obama. The day felt a fitting symbol for my liberation from my deadname. The change would be one last good thing from that era. Also, this would mean that whatever the new administration did on its first day, I would be that much more prepared. Unfortunately, this would not work out so smoothly. A few weeks later, as I filed the required announcements of my name change to local newspapers, I received a letter from the courts. What made my chuckle was the name of my judge, whose last name matched the name of my home town. The letter however contain something that took away the laughter. My court date had been changed to the next week. My heart and stomach dropped nearly to the floor. The symbol and the preparation would be gone. I caught myself in time, affirming that it is better late than never, and pushed forward. I pushed back all my related plans and prayed that nothing happened in the first week of the new presidency to make my filing impossible. Fortunately, the separation of State and Federal jurisdiction worked in my favor this one time. And fortunately no move was made in these seven days to stop my from making it to court. In the end, all I lost was some time. The loss of time is not nothing. It meant one more week using IDs with a name that wasn't mine and one more time booking flights with a gender marker that wasn't me. By the time I arrived at the court, I wished I had been able to get back that time I lost and have done this much sooner.

However we arrive at monumental moments in our lives as transgender persons, our transitions all look different and take more time than we wish. No matter how much I desire there was a switch I could have flipped, the processes I had to undergo on the road of transition could not have been done any other way. For all its ups and downs, turns and bends, the road was mine to walk. Other trans persons will find themselves going along different roads. We all start from different places, experience different obstacles, and the environment is changing all the time. Also, we all have different goals and processes in determining what we want. I knew for a long while what my name was but getting the first person to see through the mist of dysphoria to the truth underneath was a goal and a struggle of its own. The legal name change is a big marker in the path but may not affect my heart as much as the first time I was called Gabby. Then there was the first time my family called me Gabby. Being called Gabby by my partner and Momma Gabby by our kids still makes my heart swell. Being called Gabrielle by the court was a big deal but the law and government are not the most important things to me. They determine the circumstance of my life and the lives of those around me. They are battles that need to be fought. But I don't desire approval from the government. I don't desire approval from strangers on the internet. I don't need to hear the opinions of random voters or politicians. I am who I am regardless. Being who I am, having my community behind me, and drawing on the power of coalitions like #TransLawHelp are the real power that move me forward. As our movement presses on, the law and government better get behind us or get out of our way.

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Call me Gabby

Why did I chose the name Gabrielle? I am asked this regularly and I have simple answers, as well as more difficult to articulate answer. The simple (but not less true) version goes like this: I had like the name Gabrielle since I first heard it as a young Catholic girl. At first, I had decided it would be the name of my next pet. Gabrielle was the name of an Arch Angel and the only Angel to appear in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scripture. It remains fairly consistent through different languages. In Latin and Polish, Gabrielle is the same as it is in English. Gabrielle (גַּבְרִיאֵל or Gavri'el) means "God is my strength." In its shortened form, Gabby in English means talkative. Likely this comes from Gabrielle and all angels being messengers. In the Book of Daniel, Gabrielle tells the prophet the meaning of his visions. In the Book of Luke, Gabrielle announced to Mary that should would have a child. In Muslim tradition, Gabrielle is the angel that conversed with Muhammad. Gabrielle is a go between that spans religions and tribes. Gabrielle's strength is in her words. As a child, I was very talkative. As an adult, I am more laconic until you get me on a topic I've done research about then sit down and get comfortable because I can go for a while. As I got older, I decided it would be the name of my first child. The name works regardless of the child's gender. Gabrielle is described in some places as a man, other places as a woman, or as a gender indeterminate being. This was the plan for some time until I decided that I would be too jealous of any pet or child I had with the name Gabrielle. When I presented myself to the world as my authentic self, I would claim the name Gabrielle as my own.

The complicated answer depends more on the revelation of experience and less on clear logical deduction. Gabby is my name. I knew by programming to respond to my name like I knew what to do when someone waved at me. I was alerted to someone speaking at me and wanting my attention. But my deadname never felt like my name. It marked me but did not reflect me. The deadname echoed with what my community assigned me to be. My deadname meant getting good marks and grades in school. My deadname meant marking pages while reading and making pages as I write. My deadname was metalanguage for marks, signs, words in general. My deadname marked anything and nothing. My deadname was a dead or empty sign. That is how I felt.  My deadname was a title for a job I did not want. My deadname was either a vacancy sign or else a generic placeholder awaiting the official title to arrive. My dead middle name was not much better. It meant willpower and choice but not my will or choice. It meant the will of society to determine my gender for me. It was a declaration rather than a question. It said, "you will do and be this," when it should have asked, "what will you do and be?" According to stories from my parents, my deadname was in honor of a doctor my mother knew and my middle deadname was in honor of my grandfather. But these were their names. They were not my names. When I first began to shed them, I found that being called M. was better than being called by my deadname. M. could mean me. M. is a famous transgender woman. In Marvel Comics, M. is a Muslim woman with mutant abilities of super strength, flight, healing, super-intellect and other powers of the mind. M. also matched me with my friend Em. Because we were so often together, folks at work would call us M. and Em. To this day, as a neutral alternative to full names, M. and M.W. still describe me in writing, work, and even among my children who say with the candor of a seven year old, "it is easier to spell!"

When I would come to claim my own name, both of the persons my deadname and middle deadname signified would be still be honored but in a way that was authentic to me. When I went into the courtroom, the middle name I claimed, "Mary-Willow," enfolded the first three letters of my deadname and the first three letters of my middle deadname into the two parts. The middle name also matched my gender neutral academic and writing name, M.W., which I had chosen in honor of all of the other women and men I respected who had done the same; not least of all J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and G.K. Chesterton. As whole names, Mary signified the many Mary's of scripture, the Virgin Mother and Mary Madeline. I would honor my family's history but also my heroes. The name Mary was big enough to contain all their meanings and still most of all mean me. Willow has less human origins and meanings. True, it means the TV character from the show Buffy with whom I most identified. But the name also signified a tree with which I felt a great deal of kinship. Despite my allergies, as a girl I often preferred to be around trees than people. The trees did not treat me like a boy or anyone I wasn't. I could be me with the trees. I would imagine I was playing with the elves among the willows. They would listen and keep my secret. No one asks trees if they know anyones secrets. But they do. Among trees, willows are one of my favorites. Willows have long draping leaves that cover them from sight. I often like to wear my hair like a willow. Willows look sad, like they are crying or mourning over the world. I get that. I feel that. The word "willow" means "a turning." Willows turn in toward their own thoughts and turn to listen. Willows look wise, like their heads are bent in thought and listening. Like I said, willows keep secrets. Willows hide themselves and others, keep them safe. A willow is a wise old woman friend of Pocahontas in the disney animated film. A willow is a grumpy sentient tree in Lord of the Rings. Willows know much and have seen much.

The answer, call me Gabby because that means me is complex in its simplicity. In the end, I claimed Gabby as my name because that was my name. When people say Gabby, I don't just look up out of some conditioned response. I look up because Gabby means me. Gabby isn't just a word from the outside, signifying some expectation in the world. Gabby resonates with something inside me. The Bible is full of references to God knowing a persons name before they were spoken into creation. In scripture, God calls someone by their name and they respond, "speak, Lord, your servant is listening." I am Gabby because I am called Gabby. That names calls to me because it connects what is inside me with the world beyond. Gabby is not just a name that makes me more comfortable, it is more accurate. Call me Gabby because that is factually who I am. Call me Gabby because that is legally who I am. Call me Gabby because that is what wakes me up from the slumber of this world and invites me to say to you, "speak, I am listening." And I will be listening. Call me Gabby so I can share with you some of the things I have heard. Call me Gabby so we can learn how to listen. The ability for any of us to claim our own names is a blessing that should not be underestimated. There is an affirmation of self that I have been able to make in changing my legal name that too few are able. Transgender students are not called their names in school or on their report cards. Called by another name, their authority over the details of their own lives are ignored. Deadnaming becomes a way of not seeing the transgender youths. Too often, because their communities refuse to see them, they disappear. We give them strength when we call them by their name. We give them strength when we give them language to deliver their messages. We give them strength when we listen to the revelations they have for us. On this day, I am honored to be able to receive my hearing and long for the day in which I can share the glad tidings of others struggling to be heard. Call me Gabby but don't stop listening for the lives that are yet to be incarnated and yet to be named.

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The Court Date is Set

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Click for more stories from my life

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The Court Case is Won

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Queer Dialectics of the Ark: Resolutions and Reflections of 2016

"I will blot out from the earth 
the human beings I have created"

Genesis 6:7

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The Flood

The end of 2016 has become a sad joke, a figure of a year that wouldn't die and made everyone miserable in its old age. In some ways, this is a variation on the classic trope of New Year's as the old man of the past knocking on the grave, like the wizened figure from the Pardoner's Tale, while the new year arrives freshly pampered like an infant. The eyes of the old are weary and regretting while the eyes of the young are bright and promising. Yet 2016 has the distinction of never being very childish or cheerful, even in its youth. The beginning of the year was marked for many by the death of David Bowie, the musical legend and queer icon. A series of high profile deaths and tragedies followed throughout the year. There began to be a sense that if we could all get through December 31st, we will have made it onto the ark. Of course, this is a false sentiment. The end of the year will not be the end of death. Nor, judging by the trend of politics and social tensions, will there be a future free of tragedy. January 1st is not so very different from the previous day. Yet every year we approach the new year like a new start. That intention and myth is not without worth and effect. There is a method to the continual starts and restarts, even as the old folds into the new. This method is how we match our collective will to the onward force of time and change. By this method we work entropy into progress. By this method we mourn the dead and hope for new life. There is value to that. Indeed, looking back at 2016, this method - which I will identify with dialectical models of writing - seems to pervade the whole year. If it is true that we can die many deaths before the end, this was a year that challenged the continuity of time with frequent breaks, tragedies and traumas that broke down our sense of life and meaning. Each time we face these cataclysms, we were forced to find a way to keep living anyway. Although few want to return to 2016, there is a lesson to learn from it. It is the lesson of in tragedy, a lesson in survival, a lesson in rhetoric.

I sincerely believe that literary criticism and composition can save lives and change the world. I recall sitting on the train to Washington DC to teach the first class of 2016 to a room full of new students. Taking my seat, I turned on my cell-phone and turned it off a minute later. All over social media was the news that on this day, January 10th, David Bowie had died. Almost a year later, I still have difficulty perceiving this as a world without this Star Child in it. On that first day, I was in shock and didn't know how to even begin processing the tragedy. Faced with an introductory class in a few hours, I threw my grief into the lesson by doing what I often do when I am grappling with such pain: searching for meaning within literature. The terrible irony hit me that the one I most wanted to help me get through Bowie's death is Bowie himself. In that spirit, I began this seminar on Transgender and Social Justice with a music video of Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure." This was a providential way to begin the course and the year as a whole. In this song, these trans and queer icons left us a lesson on how to live in the face of death and oppression. What do we do when we hear our friends crying "let me out?" Do we "turn away from it all" or "sit on the fence?" "It doesn't work," they inform us." This is a world without absolute security or places to hide. No matter where you go or how much you try to keep your head down and push on, you will have to recon with the hurt and the cries. You can wall yourself off but eventually the pressure will be too much and the flood will take you. The only way to face the pressure, say David Bowie and Freddy Mercury, is to face it head on with something that can out last tragedy and change the world: love. Yes, they admit, "Love is such an old fashioned word." The word and sentiment have been tried over and over again. The horrors keep on happening. Death keeps coming. But love is a dialectic, they say, "love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night and love dares you change our way of caring about ourselves." Love is not a way to fix death or stop suffering but is a way to face it, fight it, and live amidst it. Love will not silence our opposition but it will give us a counter argument. Love is what must come next.

My favorite method of writing to teach is dialectic argument, a style of writing, narrating, and living that is all about integrating what has happened, what is happening, and what comes next. The structure establishes an argument (thesis), introduces a counter-argument (antithesis), then arrives at a conclusion that continues the argument but takes the counter-argument into account (synthesis). I organize my lesson plans to follow this rhythm. One week will introduce an idea, grounded in one book or one part of a book. The next week we explore a competing idea from the same period, place, or text. The third week we conclude the section by considering how a third text or part of the text attempts to resolve the tension between these ideas. We consider how the synthesis works and how it fails, introducing a nascent thesis and antithesis which usually is the segue into the next section. The paper which comes at the end of the section or the next section likewise is supposed to follow a dialectic and engage in the texts we study. Usually the prompt is not so simple as to generate a rehash of the same thesis, antithesis, synthesis we explored in class but is tight enough to encourage them to use the various points and counter-points we discussed. By asking them to engage with a counter-argument, I hope to teach them compassion for topics they may dislike or an ability to criticize a topic they do enjoy. While books that make us very sad or angry often provoke the sharpest arguments, I try to steer them to critique subjects for which they have some love. Critiques tend to be the most useful and respectful when the critic approaches the text with the sensibility of a friend offering loving advice. When you see some good in the text but want it to be better, to fulfill missed opportunities, and live out its potential, then those who read the argument tend to be more open to the criticism. Also the argument tends to be more measured, nuanced, and specific. Afterwards, by offering our own synthesis of ideas, productive criticism that says "yes and..." or "yes however," we can appreciate how hard it is to resolve these conflicts while also pushing others to generate more goodness.

The last month of Spring classes saw the death of Prince, offering my students one more chance to consider the work of rhetoric before the final paper. Just as he had done in the first class, we watched a landmark performance of Prince: Let's Go Crazy. "Dearly beloved," coos the Artist, "we are gathered here today, to get through this thing called life." A queer icon famous for playing with gender and sexuality in his art and life, Prince knew the great cost of living on through the tragedy of the everyday. Yet his was not a song of despair or stoic perseverance. Prince got through this thing called life by imagining something better than life as it was then bringing others together to share this vision. "Electric word life, it means forever and that's a mighty long time" continues Prince, marking the feeling of excitement and anxiety, purpose and weariness in our enduring existence. "But I'm here to tell you, there's something else," he adds, "the after world." For Prince, the after world is not the same as merely living on through life or death. The after world is "something else" of another kind. "The after world," is what comes next. Imagining such a world is critical in the work of moving from persisting to progressing. Dreaming of, looking for, and working towards "something else" is how we move on after monotony and trauma, beyond life and death. In the wake of Prince's death, we need the promise of "something else" for those of us still trying, "to get through this thing called life." From Bowie and Prince we receive songs and rhythms that progress us forward, a method, a dialectic.  Proceeding through Spring semester 2016 with my Transgender and Social Justice class was full of hardships and each time a new wave hit us I tried to get my students to put it into their reading and writing. Dialectical methodologies are all about introducing something new and different. Dialectics are all about conflicting ideas, persons, and movements. By taking such an approach to literature, we saw how all narrative is in some form of an argument where conflicting forces are attempting to resolve some tension. Taken in this way, our music and literature turns from a flat, self-enclosed object of study into an active agent that seeks to engage in the world. Our stories call us to engage with them with the promise that through them we might find a method to carry on.

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The Ark

The story of Noah's ark is a lesson in God's rhetoric. A study of the Bible, starting with Genesis, reveals a dialectic structure to the narrative of God's people. Beginning with God's Creation of humanity, readers can perceive humanity's fall from grace as a counter-argument, a statement of alterity, that will be synthesized again and again in the later books where God seeks to save and liberate humanity from its mutually-imposed bondage. Yet stories can also be begun from a human perspective. Humanity finds itself created and in a garden not of its own making, generations faced with oppression and tragedy that they did not chose. From a human perspective God can seem to be the antagonist, time and again breaking into our ways of life and interrupting it, causing us to reevaluate and rebuild. A exemplary instance comes in the story of the Flood and Noah's Ark. If we begin with the perspective of humanity, life has been continuing apace when seemingly all of a sudden God brings upon the world a deluge that will wipe out all life on Earth. Working together with God, Noah synthesizes a solution with God's terror, the old world will pass away but a part of it will be preserved on a massive Ark. First, there is a dialectic debate between Noah and God, argument meeting counter-argument, and the Ark is the synthesis. Second, from this argument arises the embodiment of this dialectic: the argument of the world will face the counter-argument of tragedy and death to synthesize a future where the world will continue in an altered form. The effectiveness of this synthesis (however horrific it may be) is that it also answers the dialectic from God's perspective as well. God ordered a just humanity and world, the world fell into injustice, the flood and Ark together will bring about a justified world. This structural overview of the Bible, and the story of Noah's Ark in particular, establishes scripture not only as a mythic dialog but a dialectical argument. Noah's Ark is not merely a prop in a story but an embodiment of rhetoric. If we learn the lesson of Noah's Ark, we can apply this dialectic to our own tragedies.

Many readers and illustrators of the Noah's can't help but focus on the animals. While the humans are our direct stand-ins, our mythic ancestors, the animals in and out of the ark tend to get the focus in medieval liturgical plays and manuscripts drawings. There is something more sympathetic about the animals. They did not cause or deserve the punishment of the Flood, yet their destruction or survival is decided on by divine and human forces not their own. While scripture focuses on humanity, it is difficult to read the animals as inconsequential. The decision to save some of them is one sign of their value. The decision to save more of some kinds of animals and less of others is a sign that the animals do not all have the same value. God instructs Noah, "Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals... and a pair of the animals that are not clean... and seven pairs of the birds of the air also" (Genesis 7:2-3). Despite illustrations and common understandings that the Ark contained two of every animal, it did not. The repetition of the phrase "two by two" perhaps contributed to this misunderstanding. Among the animals, there would be a total of fourteen members of "clean" species and only two members of "not clean" species. This distinction is generally understood as those animals that are good to eat, use in work, and sacrifice in contrast with those who are not. Again, not only do the animals have no word in the argument of who will die and who will be saved, they have no word in determining which groups will have a greater level of security and which will be abandoned. Many marginalized and oppressed people understand that the aid or disregard they possess is often determined by others and often distributed based on who will be most useful to those in power. By identifying as the animals, we enter into a larger debate: who among us are the "clean" ones who will be given a greater degree of life and who among us are considered the "unclean" ones whose existence will be minimally tolerated? Are we the sheep or the snakes?

In the wake of LGBTQI rights activism, more plays and illustrations of Noah's Ark have appeared imagining why there are no unicorns in the world. The unicorns, imagined as gay icons, were not allowed in the ark because when they arrived two by two they were in sets of men and men or woman and woman. Not fitting the compulsory statute for heterosexual breeders, the unicorns were left to die. Many of those who lived and died in the AIDS epidemic may identify with these unicorns, abandoned to perish in a natural tragedy while those in power condemned their deaths as the just vengeance of an angry God. Currently, the transgender community may feel they have missed the boat with suicide rates of near or beyond 50% and a steadily increasing rate of homicide. People of color may likewise understand what it means for those in gated communities to exclude and abandon them, allowing only "the good ones" to enter their safe zone if and when they are useful. In election seasons in the United States it is easy to feel like the Ark is being built for the next four to eight years and the politicians are choosing which groups will get a greater or lesser place in their respective futures with entrance contingent on the groups willingness to be helpful to them. When one of the two Arks (candidates/parties) fails, the other Ark may mock those who do not have a preferential place in their establishment. Indeed, the rhetoric that allows certain Arks to win is on the basis of what groups will be considered "clean" and what "unclean" groups will be left to die or culled then domesticated. Countless candidates have offered dominant groups a larger representation in the Ark while promising to drive marginalized groups (the queers, feminists, Muslim and Jewish populations, immigrants, people of color, people with disabilities) into the flood waters. Every four years or so the dialectic of the Ark is performed on a national stage, incorporating many of the arguments and counter-arguments being lived out every day around sex, transgender, racism, religion, science, and animal rights. For this reason, many of us may have lost faith in the Ark and its promises for a brighter future for some, at the expense of the rest.

For those who survive, who make it onto the proverbial Ark, we may question the great cost and value of this survival. For us unicorns and snakes, we question the justice of living to see a new year when so many of our friends, family, and community members have perished. By the flood, the ruler of the world, "blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth" (Genesis 7:23). Whole communities, arguments, and ways of life have been blotted out. Voices and songs have been silenced as violence choked and drowned them. We have heard their fear, anger, and sadness. Now we hear only the faint echoes in our ears and hearts. What makes us one of those many or few who get to enter into this new future? Are there not those we admire who die? Have we not lost those who might have done more for the world than we? We may think of many who are cleaner, more useful, and deserving of life than us, yet they are among those we lose as we continue on living. The future is ours but it should have been theirs. Or at least a great portion of the future should have been theirs. Because theirs would have been a better future, a brighter future, a future needing fewer floods and with bigger more inclusive arks. Who are we that survive? What will we do with this unfair gift and debt? Who am I to stand here in the place of transgender siblings who died by the terror of suicide, abandonment, and murder? Who am I to walk away from my encounters with police when my black counter-parts are wheeled away to the morgue? Where is the justice in the Ark? Where is the goodness in the choice and choosers? Those who have passed will not live to account the value of their deaths or see justice in this world. Nor might we ever understand our own survival or see the end of the story. The fullness of time is not ours but we will live to see many different kinds futures. The dialectic will continue. New counter-arguments and new syntheses. We will not see the end of the argument but by being a part of the debate we can shape who the conversation carries forward the meaning of the past. We can teach the world to revalue those who were not chosen for any Ark. We can tell stories that revalue their deaths. We can enter their arguments back into discussion. By taking the Ark as a rhetoric lesson, we can learn how to live out the dialectic the future needs and our history demands.

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The Flag

On Christmas 2016, I received a model of Noah's Ark for my desk. Currently, it is in my office being steered by a little lego figure of me that my partner created. This is a bit of a joke, as she recognizes my office as a bit like my ark where I manage my stress about the world and work with others to get more us through the flood. Like those running around the ark plugging holes, I recall have to explain my simultaneous disappearance from an active public life and the look of barbed intensity when I would be spotted outside the home. During this time, it was all hands on deck in the transgender community. The Trans Lifeline reported an all time high of over 1,000 calls by the end of November. At this time, the usual method of Transliterature changed from meditative pieces on literature to a communications avenue just for getting resources from those who wanted to help and to those who could help.  Back in November, when the future of the United States became covered in the floods of hate and fear, I was utterly uncertain which of us would make it onto the boat. Too many didn't. The Transgender Lifeline is a service whereby the trans community and allies takes care of our most vulnerable. On election night, the lines were almost drowned as hundreds of calls inundated with tragedy. Their voices were among those pleading to Noah to be saved as tides of violence and antagonism were on the rise. Not everyone makes it onto the ark and not everyone survives the past the damage done by the counter-argument. We do what we can. We initiate contingency plans and open our doors to those in need of somewhere to weather the storm but we cannot change the world over night. For some time, we will continue try to stay afloat or swim. We have been in this boat before. In ways, we never left it. Many of us have lived through floods before. Yet this experience at seafaring is no assurance that we will make it through this deluge. Nor is there confidence that we will have a place in the world when the storm recedes. This is where symbols again become important. 

Beyond signs like arks that keep us going, flag are another way that we communicate to one another, assert our arguments, organize, and reclaim the world. My partner and I were standing in our closet-office, discussing the place white supremacy, Neo-Nazis, and the KKK would have in the new world. I see more of the town I live in while I go for jogs. Along the way I see confederate flags raised. There are those who try to reclaim these flags by saying that they represent "southern pride" not slavery or white supremacy.  But you can't reclaim the flag which flew in defense of slavery. You can't erase that. And white supremacy is all about pride for "our (white) people." This is hardly an argument or counter-argument. Arguments can be integrated into a dialectic, add some good. But this is too poisonous. This doesn't play fair. This lies and rewrites history, because history and morality is not behind it. This is how the flood of ignorance works. Ignorance is not only about a lack of knowledge but a willing refusal to acknowledge truth. Ignorance is about ignoring the truth. Hate steers with the gut and clouds the mind. Like a storm and flood it causes trauma, making it hard to determine what is up and what is down. Hate incites desperation when there is enough room on the ark or land for us to share. The confederate flag is not an argument, it is the breakdown of arguments. White supremacy is not a sign of strength but of weakness, the oppressor excusing their actions because they cast themselves as the oppressed. White supremacy is not an argument, it is an ignorant refusal to engage in the facts and reason that define arguments. All it has is storms and floods, flags and hate, gut feelings and swinging arms. In the midst of discussing our concerns in the office, my partner and I concluded, "no, not within these walls. In this home, we follow a better thesis." The decision was made to buy a transgender and gay pride flag, as well as a Black Lives Matter flag.  In the first case, they would be our way of saying to ourselves, this is who we are. In the second case, in this world no one can assume we are not racist, anti-transgender, anti-queer, anti-feminist, antisemitic, anti-Islam, or anti-immigrant. Quiet passivity is not going to make the world a better place.

The flags came out at different times and received different reactions. The first one to be pinned in our front room window was the transgender pride flag, boasting stripes of pink, blue, and white. Most people who drove by probably don't know what it is. That didn't matter right away. The flag was for us and for those who knew what it was. Next came the rainbow LGBTQI pride flag. This one people would recognize but would arouse too much fuss. The last addition to be put up in the flag room (newly named) was our Black Lives Matter (BLM) flag. Our support for the movement was nothing new and we deserve no attention for it. The message is the thing that will be read, not us. And when we do appear in the frame (or window) there is a value in a predominantly white town to see a white family speaking out against racism. More than the two flags that came before it, in this town a BLM flag gets a reaction. We have already been asked by our landlord to take down the flags. He says he refuses to help us or pay to fix his property if we are targeted and attacked. Indeed only a few weeks before we moved into house, there was a rash of swastikas drawn across the town. Others in the town have commented, "how could they [our family] bring that into a nice peaceful town like this?" Peaceful here means white supremacy that denies that it is racist. The Blue Lives Matter banners fly over the town center. Of course black lives and police lives can both matter, by such banners make it clear what side of the debate they are on (if there needs to be sides) and whose lives are more valued here. To say otherwise is to start a fight because the assumption is that white supremacy has won. The flags of white supremacy are all around us in different forms. I have little use for those I consider good people but with a dearth of courage. What good is your goodness if you don't flex it for others? As I have observed, often this unwillingness to be brave comes not from too much fear but too little. Those with the privilege of security have the capacity to go through life without much significant danger. Safety is not an evil itself. But too much safety is a crutch that trains us to unconsciously and compulsively defer to the violent systems that cage the submissive and destroy the defiant. This evil unjust peace is why we will not take down the flags. This turf is not securely colonized, it remains up for debate. The debate is underway. A rainbow rises above the flood and the dialectic continues.

On this new year, I feel like Noah in the Holkham Bible (c.1320), looking out of the ark at the end of the storm and with a bird in each hand. The raven will not return with good news (Genesis 8:6-8). The dove will come back with a sign of hope (Genesis 8:9-13). It is clear that Noah is more hopeful, as he gazes toward the dove in the illustration. But what can I see? What does my figure see from the Ark in my office? What word of hope can I share from this perch? There are times I turn up like Noah's dove, with an olive leaf in my mouth, prophesying a new world if only we can hold on and fight our way there. Other times I feel like Noah's raven, flying off into the dark without any good news to share. I must admit that there were times in 2016 that I did not have much hope to offer those in the Ark. Like the raven, I saw the many lives with their heads below water. The Holkham illustration makes clear the cost of such widespread wrath. More of those who were abandoned by the ark are visible in the image than the privileged few who were included. In the lower right hand corner, we see the raven sitting on the drowned corpse of a horse. It is hard to bring back news of a bright future when so much has been lost and will never return. Indeed, this year that began with the death of the Star Child (turned Black Star) David Bowie ends with the death of Star Wars General and Princess Leia. Our heroes have passed away just as the world ahead looks ever more dismal. Yet the nature of our work on transgender, disability, and medieval literature involves digesting a lot of death with the aspiration of biting onto a nugget of hope I try to function more like a dove than a raven. Where is our olive branch? How do we become like the dove in the bottom left corner, finding new life amidst the desolation?  Let us remember that the first dove Noah sends out finds no dry ground. The dove finds much the same as the raven. Yet the dove returns. Then Noah waits and tries again. The raven despairs. The raven rejects the logic of the ark. The dove keeps trying even when there is no hope in sight. The dove tries, fails, and tried again, like the movement of a dialectic argument. That stubborn persistence and loyalty to each other may be our hope. This is not hope for any particular future. This hope is a rejection of the world that is, an assertion that the flood of hate will not get the final word. Our hope is our flag, a sign that whatever the future holds, we remain and the dialectic continues.

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Read Part 2

Noah's Queer Rainbow: 

Conversations with my Gender Fluid Child

How We Live: Words from a Suicidal Transgender Community

What Can We Do Now for the Transgender Community?

Genres of Embodiment: A Theory of Medieval Transgender Literature

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