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Bennington Group Discusses Spirituality
Kathy Bouton Marks 15 Years at Peace and Justice Store
Reflections on "He That Once Seemed Invisible"
Astragalus from Ancient China or In Your Backyard
Nepali Organizer Visits VT CARES
by Tobias Novak
The “heartsong” in this poem
is my transness, that part of my being where my sex/gender and body/mind
do not match. What do I mean by transness? The answer is twofold.
First, I mean transsexual, or, the
fact that my body and brain chemistry feel completely wrong. My transsexuality
is the feeling that I was “born in the wrong body.” It is
the way my breasts hurt when I notice or think about them; it is the fact
that my body does not feel like my own. It is that I look in the mirror
and see a female body, but underneath I see a male body waiting to crawl
out from underneath.
My transsexuality is what drives me
to start T (testosterone hormone therapy), shots I will inject in myself
weekly or biweekly for the rest of my life to make my brain chemistry
mirror that of a biological male.
It is why I plan on getting top surgery,
or removal of breasts and creation of a male-appearing chest. Bottom surgery
refers to genital surgeries. For FTM’s (female-to-male transsexuals),
bottom surgery is expensive, takes several surgeries to create one set
of genitalia, and does not create a fully functional penis. Its risks
and costs make me want to wait for a better surgery to come along. That’s
only my opinion; many FTM’s get bottom surgery and are happy. My
transsexuality is everything female about me that does not match my male
self-image.
Second, I am transgendered. This is
an umbrella term that covers many types of non-gender-conforming behaviors
and ways of being. Some are: transsexual; transvestite (cross-dressing
for sexual purposes); cross-dresser (dressing as the opposite sex for
fun; drag queens and kings are examples); genderqueer (a broad term that
usually refers to people who dress or act in ways “atypical”
to their birth sex); and two-spirit, like myself. What is a two-spirit?
By certain Native American beliefs, and, in other cultures by other words,
two-spirits are people who have characteristics of both sexes and don’t
identify completely as one sex or the other.
You may ask, how can you be both transsexual
and twospirit?
My answer: I embody characteristics
of both sexes, and I do use the label “man” and the pronoun
“he,” but I am not meant to do this from within a female body.
My female body feels completely wrong to me. I desire to express varied
gender attributes from within a male body while identifying as a man.
This is why I am transitioning, or, changing my sex from male to female.
Transitioning includes T, binding (flattening my chest with a special
“binding shirt”), name change, top surgery (and bottom surgery
if one chooses it), learning to pass as a man (passing refers to society
viewing you as male; people saying, “that person there - that’s
a man”) and wearing male clothing on a daily basis (though I do
plan on wearing drag occasionally once I pass).
I am a transsexual, two-spirited,
transgendered man. This is my heartsong, and without it I would not know
how to find my way home.
Tobias C.D. Novak is a writer, singer-songwriter-pianist and artist,
and is a co-organizer of the Transcending Boundaries conference this October
in Worcester, MA. Tobias recently started a magazine and web community
called MGQM that explores issues of gender, sexuality and other forms
of identity (www.mgqmmagazine.com). He lives in Burlington with his beloved
Bengal cat, Jean-Paul Sartre le Deuxieme.
He That Once
Seemed Invisible
I feel you all the time
Moving through my body, summoning the indescribable
Your infusion smells of heartsong
Shattered melodies, memories reborn
Your presence illuminates my core
as you rush through my blood fierce and free
As the waves cover my bones, I still can swim,
and I am awestruck, amazed, newly aware
You bring me new life
I sit back and feel you in me, allow you in completely,
permit myself to bathe in your essence,
and in this stillness I am liberated, free, reborn
Body and mind unstrung from tangled masses of confusion
What once seemed unmanageable softens beneath my fingers
Unearth me from this watery grave turned womb
Give me new life as I mold you like red-earth clay
from the cliffs of my youth
Magnolia trees stand strong and still above the waters of the Puget Sound,
the sea I claim as home
Gentle winds, blow through me,
down the cliffs, past the rugged edges of the red rocks formed over time
from wild, unrestrained waves crashing into malleable earth
I sit open and still at the water’s edge,
waiting for you to unearth me
Sudden movement
I feel it from beneath the ground
Like the earthquakes I slept through as a child
Only now I am awake,
Feeling your every movement,
And I am not afraid.
For liberation awaits,
and your heartsong holds me close
As the waters crash against the cliffs, I am held safe and free,
your infusion of redefined maleness flowing through my veins
unrestrained, unstoppable, constant
I am he that once seemed invisible
Newly unearthed, standing upright, hands raised to the sky
Your heartsong shines down on me, radiating into my fingers
My small hands drawing down the maleness I have only now accepted,
reveling in an identity that has never felt more real
Your infusion has rebirthed me,
and I am not afraid
For maleness has liberated me, and I will not use it as a weapon
It is a tool to love with, simply a way to Be
Your heartsong has unearthed my Being,
and I am not afraid
I feel you all the time,
he that once seemed invisible
May your infusion hold me close,
and your heartsong give me strength
The journey has just begun
And I am not afraid.
I am he that once seemed invisible,
And I am finally able and ready to be seen.