Interesting set of articles in JTA about an Orthodox man in Toronto who decided, this last year, to change his gender -- while remaining in his community and remaining Orthodox:
Mordechai used to be known in his Toronto Orthodox community as Nord, short for Nord the Barbarian, which referred to his girth and hairiness. He now wishes to be called Nicole, and has chosen Neshama, or Soul, as a Hebrew name. Nicole would like to remain part of the community.
“My earliest memory is crying myself to sleep, wishing and hoping and praying to God that I would wake up a girl,” she said. “But I thought all boys must feel like that.”
Growing up and attending boys yeshivas, however, that hope “couldn’t exist, so it got buried” — until right after her honeymoon three years ago.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, it went from 3 or 5 to 1,000,” Nicole said of her gender dysphoria. “I couldn’t function or focus on anything else. It became a very real threat to my life. When I got enough of a handle on it to tell [my wife] a few months later, we cried for hours. We cried a lot for two-and-a-half years.”
They searched for alternatives, including reorientation therapy with a psychiatrist affiliated with a group called Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality.
Last fall, however, Nicole began a trial on hormone therapy. In June, when it became clear that transition was inevitable — and the results of the hormones were becoming apparent — Mordechai gave his wife a get, or Jewish divorce, and started to live life as Nicole.
What has rocked the Toronto community, and is being followed closely in the transsexual community, is that rather than simply disappearing, Nicole has been open about her condition and is the first person to transition “in place” within an Orthodox community.
“Gender dysphoria is not something I chose, and for me transition is about survival, not comfort or happiness,” Nicole said. “I believe that survival is a moral and halachic imperative, and I hoped my family and friends would want the opportunity to be here for me. I know it will take time. And I know some people won’t want to deal with it. But I wasn’t willing to write everybody else off.”
Nicole has a pretty open and honest blog, discussing the transition. An excerpt:
The reason that my transition was and is necessary is because it maintains my ability to keep breathing, not because it would make my life easy or happy. And it has done just that: allowed me to keep breathing, and at the same time it has made my life exceptionally complicated and enormously difficult. And as a result, most if not all of the things that made me happy in the past have been taken from my life. And as I have expressed before, knowing and understanding the confusion, sadness, and pain that has been experienced by many of the people that I love and care about has removed any and all trace of the joy and satisfaction that I wish I could feel about finally experiencing some relief from the pain of my condition...
The differences in people’s reactions have been remarkably individual and have not been based on factors that might have been thought of as being determinative. Ie. Some very religious people have been supportive, while others have been the opposite. Some more secular people have been negative while others have been the opposite. Some people see me as a person, others see me as a blight on decent society and as an unpleasantness, some see me as a tragic figure, while some see me as an inspiration. Some know me as the same person, the same friend, dealing with an uncommon and difficult challenge and transition process, and some question whether they ever really knew me at all and feel a sense of betrayal (although not many of the latter group has spent much time trying to find out if they're right). Some people directly affected by the realities of my transition have been negative and others have been positive, although certainly everyone that has been directly affected has found it challenging, and difficult to satisfy what may seem to be competing priorities, loyalties, etc. So it seems that predicting people’s reactions is a bit of a crapshoot.
More here.
This post was written by Miriam Shaviv