Arch And Square Tower In The Jewish District Of Seville, Andalusia, Spain

Arch and square tower in the Jewish district of Seville, Andalusia, Spain

Spanish vintage postcard

Baphomet, Peloquin, Shuna Sassi, Vasty Moses, Kinski, Frick, Mexico, The Berserker, Kushnir Day, Leroy Gomm, Scorch, and Lude from the Nightbreed (1990)

Jewish Papercutting

That's one way to spread that awareness for sure.

💎 shiny rocks make brain go brrrr ✦ elmwood fluorite [x]

judío por elección (part 3)

(part 1. part 2. part 2.5.)

"I think," I told my wife the other day, "we're gonna have to use the mikvehs for women."

They made a face--a nose-wrinkly sneer, equal parts anger and tired.

"It's about what I expected," I said.

"Yeah," they said, "but still."

One of the reasons my wife and I chose to convert at this moment is because we want children, and we're about to take that step. As adults, we have both been far too smart for church. They were mainstream Protestant, I was Mormon. They stopped attending. I got my baptism revoked (a real thing that really happened, I have the paperwork and everything).

The one community we've had for the past couple of decades has been the LGBTQ community. We both assumed that queers meant it when they talked about protecting queer and trans children, as well as the children of queers and transes. So we ignored all the microaggressions, hints, signs and omens that we weren't welcome. We told people how impossible it was for us to have kids. They'd cluck their tongues and offer sympathy and support, but only so long as our problems were structured in a way they cared about. In a way that theoretically reflected their own oppression.

Our tales of how we couldn't adopt, do IVF, or "simply" have unprotected sex with a total stranger who wanted no parental rights were restructured as being about institutional homo/transphobia. A cautionary tale. Proof that the listener's antinatalism was justified, for see what befalls those foolish fags who actually, ew!, WANT to breed!

"You guys are dinks! That must be nice," said an asexual friend of mine. She had to explain to me what dink meant. I was privately appalled that someone who knew for a fact we desperately wanted children would talk about how great it was that we were double income... no kids.

No kids.

There's nothing you can tell me about human reproduction that I haven't thought of. My wife and I have put more thought into this than any hundred couples you can name. We have both done therapy, research, and soulful self-examination in the name of Not Passing On The Trauma. I was girled as a child, and so I know all the work necessary for being a parent. We've tested each other for years with "What if the kid's a jock? What if they really like Marvel movies? What if they want to go to church?" kind of questions, and all of the answers we give amount to something like this:

Parentage is the only relationship where the other person in the relationship is supposed to move away from you. Always, they're moving away, and that's how you know you've done it right. The child begins inside someone's body, and they end up their own human person, and that's as it should be. If you perceive being a parent as having a relationship with a really cool person, then you're going to have a good relationship with them. If you want an adorable creature to pour all your unmet needs into, get a fish tank.

Anyway. In the last year, my wife and I have started letting folks know we are taking serious steps to have a child. I'm not getting specific on the details online, because my child will deserve to have their privacy and I don't want to divulge their journey as though it's mine.

But slowly, one by one, as they were told of this intent, all the queer and trans folks we know withdrew from our social circle.

"I'll just pick up a trans kid from the adoption agency if I want one." "I've always thought of fostering queer kids." "Why can't you just custom-build a child genetically with IVF?" "Won't you be angry if the child isn't really, y'know, YOURS?"

As though having a child is a matter of indulging my own selfish whims. As though any fostering or adoption agency has ever been open and happy to let queer or trans folks walk right in and customize who they're willing to foster or adopt. These reactions are, to be frank, cruel and brutal, and they center what should be good news on the recipient's own anger at their own parents. I don't mind providing you support, but it's fucked up how my sharing good news keeps turning into other people demanding support.

It leaves my wife and I feeling like maybe this whole Friendship and Community thing is actually one-way.

"Maybe you keep running into people who are toxic or self-centered," one might suggest, "and that's not the whole community!" And... sure, that's possible. It's possible that the dozens of queer and trans folks I've met are not representative of the community to which they belong. But it's also possible that this hypothetical one is demanding that I offer compassion and understanding to folks who completely refuse to offer it in return, who will argue that expecting them to be compassionate or kind makes relationships "transactional" and something-something capitalist pigs.

The only people we've met who were queers and who were also enthusiastic for us to have children are, like us, rural folks who are not exactly Part Of The Community. They don't go to clubs or surf the internet--there's no signal at their house, and anyway, they're too tired after breaking their backs doing farm labor (or being disabled) to drive for two hours to drink with strangers.

Anyhow. This response has thrown a lot of things in relief for me. I don't want to be around people who despise my child in advance, or me for having them, and I don't care if those who despise me are right or left, cishet or in the community. I don't have time for people who hate me.

I want my child to feel welcome among a community, a group who will embrace them and teach them and make them feel like they're a part of a greater story than one I can tell them by myself.

When we told A we would have to skip a Jewish community event because we were getting IVF, he called us almost in tears. He was happy. He talked about how a community without children is dead. He reassured us that while our children won't be born Jewish, given when we'll get dunked, they will be as soon as possible. That our children will be adored and taught to be sephardim from the beginning. And he insisted that he would pay for the bris, if the child needs one.

This guy I've known less than six months did more to make us feel welcome and safe than folks I've known for decades.

But. But.

The Spanish Jewish community has not recovered from the expulsion in 1492. Then, it's estimated that despite multiple massacres wrought by both Muslims and Christians, the Jewish population was at 100,000. Nowadays, it's somewhere between 13,000 to 50,000, depending on how you count. Accordingly, there are, to my knowledge, three mikvehs in the entirety of Spain.

The one we will have to use is operated by an Orthodox community. I am still pre-everything and my wife does not think medical transition will help them. Hence my telling my wife we'll have to use the women's mikveh. And I've come to slowly realize that in all likelihood no one will give me a bris or a substitute shedding of blood.

And... well. I get it. I'm coming into someone else's house. I need to follow their rules. I am not in a position to shop around. It's not like there's a surfeit of choice for either of us.

So I tell myself this is necessary as a sacrifice for the child. And I tell myself I won't ever tell them about this.

But it would be nice if there were a community where I could tell somebody.