Birthdays

Monday, 31 July 2006 21:00 Last Updated on Saturday, 07 March 2009 22:39 Lisa Jain Thompson

Springfield, Virginia, USA. There are things in heaven and earth more important than being born transsexual.

You know it doesn't make much sense
There ought to be a law against
Anyone who takes offense
At a day in your celebration
'Cause we all know in our minds
That there ought to be a time
That we can set aside
To show just how much we love you
And I'm sure you will agree
It couldn't fit more perfectly
Than to have a world party on the day you came to be

Stevie Wonder -- Birthday

Definitions. Definitions

A birthday celebrates:

the emergence of a new individual from the body of its parent;
the state resulting from being born especially at a particular time or place;
the start or first part of an action;
a coming into existence;
a starting point;
the moment when something or someone comes into being.

Most of us celebrate our birthday. If you are Roman Catholic you might also celebrate the day of your christening or the day you took Holy Orders. Kings mark the day of their anointing.

They are birthdays of sort, times we want to be around friends and families, times of joy and happiness, joining us to the past, giving promise to the future. To be alone and ignored on your birthday is a sad thing, questioning the purpose of your existence.

When I was born, I celebrated my natal birth in August. My parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, the neighbors and their kids, gathered to have cake and ice cream in my backyard. At school, our mothers would provide cupcakes or cookies and we would celebrate each and every birthday as if it were our own. My grandfather celebrated 102 birthdays stretching from his family home in Palermo to the last one in a nursing home in Sacramento as he waited out his time.

When I first began my transition, a decade and more ago when I was still in stealth to friends and family, I chose a second birthdate in October, more to keep track of who I had been from who I was becoming more than everything else.

My family had one date, the traditional one, my new friends another.

Emotionally, people born transsexual can have many birthdates besides the natal one. They can celebrate the moment they accepted themselves as transsexual, the moment they began transition, or the day of their sexual reassignment surgery.

A particularly celebratory date is the one you officially change the gender marker on your driver’s license or government identification. Even more significant is the day, if you are lucky enough to be from an accommodating state, that you are reissued a new birth certificate with your new name and gender. O happy, happy day!

All these dates are days of great delight and satisfaction to a person born transsexual. Each one is worthy of solemn ceremony and festivities.

But which one should be celebrated as your birth day?

<div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">In America, we are constantly reinventing ourselves. We change names like we change jobs, move from city to city, become something other than we were a few months before. If something doesn’t work, we change it. If something is broken, we fix or replace it. More traditional cultures, as they say, are more reluctant to embrace arbitrary changes to without some extended, and possibly heated, discussion.</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">It is understandable that a person born transsexual would feel reborn once she or he has transitioned, once he or she has had her operation, once she or he has made it through all the wickets and completed all that damn official paperwork.</font></div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">
<div> </div>
<div>You feel like a new person and in many ways you are (and many ways you are not, but more of that later).</div></font>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">If the person born transsexual has separated completely from her old life, and finds himself, by the old John Hopkins’s standards, walled off from her family, friends, job and co-workers, what birthdate you celebrate makes little difference from a personal viewpoint. You are lord and governor of an island of one and get to declare your own national holidays on whatever dates you wish.</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">A new birthdate, like the date on a baptismal certificate, symbolizes emergence into a new life, cleansed of your sins and previous transgressions. There is a certain cachet connected with being reborn. A certain super coolness haloes around your new post transition, post operational life. </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">But what if you are not an island unto yourself? What if your family and friends have not abandoned you? What then?</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">My life is a continuum: I was, I am, I will be. I am the same person I was before I paid a surgeon to rearrange my outward body. My soul, if you prefer, is immortal and still mine. I am me, born on 9 August in the middle of the last century of the second millennium of the common era.</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">I had three children before I transitioned; I have three children after I transitioned. In the words of Sister Sledge:</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<h4 align="left">"We Are Family"</h4>
<div align="center"><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"><img style="margin: 5px 10px 5px 5px;" title="A Birthday Bouquet." height="130" alt="A Birthday Bouquet." src="http://ts-policyreview.org/images/stories/HappyBirthdayBasket.jpg" width="150" align="left" border="0" />I am Sicilian by upbringing. If my parents and grandparents, my aunts and uncles were still alive, we would gather to celebrate. If my brother and his family were not a full coast away, I would have them over on my birthday.</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">The decision to stay with my natal birthday is not done lightly and may not be the right decision for you. But my family is more important to me than any symbolic rebirth; my children are more important to me than coolness of my post operative halo.</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">I have changed enough in their lives, celebrating my birthday should not add to any discomfort I may already have caused them. </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">If I were an island unto myself, my birthdate would not matter. Any date I would chose would be correct in a society of one.</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">But I am not an island, none of us are.</font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></div>
<div><font face="Verdana, Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif" size="2">There are things in heaven and earth more important than being born transsexual.</font></div>
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