Writing our Own Story
Reflections on a trip through history, and books that deepened my experience profoundly
If you’ve been around for a little while, you know I just got back from vacation. I haven’t talked much about this trip here, but in the early days of pride month it feels appropriate.
To celebrate my wife’s graduation from medical school this past May, we embarked on a 10-day river cruise focusing on Jewish heritage and history in Hungary, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic. It was led by the same rabbi that officiated my wedding a few years ago, and we were joined by our parents, some dear friends, and a number of new friends as well.
As a transgender Jew, I’m sure you can imagine there was a lot on my mind during the trip. I carried significant heaviness with me—holding the pain of the erasure of my people in the horrors of the holocaust, and the exhaustion of the attacks on the trans community in the present and future at the hands of Christian Nationalists.
At the same time, we were surrounded by testaments to resilience and community. Homes that hid Jews from the Nazis. Beautiful synagogues, lovingly restored by communities a fraction of the size they once were. Testaments and memorials to all who had been lost. Singing the familiar songs of Havdalah on the banks of the Danube river while it began to rain.
We saw paintings and magazines created by the children living in Terezin, a concentration camp we visited. It was beautiful and devastating all at once.
Reading Deeper
With ample time to rest, I also took the opportunity to read as much as I could. Three books, in particular, added so much depth to the things I was experiencing on this trip.
The first was The Lilac People, a recent release by Milo Todd, and there’s something particularly special about reading a book written by a dear friend. Reading this book about the legacy and love of transgender people in Germany before, during, and after the holocaust, while steeping myself in the environment and the history, brought this gorgeous book to a whole new level.
After devouring Lilac People in about 3 days (yes, it was that good), I stopped by the oldest queer bookstore in Vienna and got a copy of the diaries of Lou Sullivan. To borrow a term I learned from Milo, Lou is a cherished (but vastly under-appreciated) trancestor who pushed for incredible progress in transmasculine medicine, acceptance, community, queerness, and support.
There was a profound feeling I kept coming back to throughout this trip. A feeling of awe at the understanding that we have always been here. Seeing so much of my own story—my own hopes and dreams and fears—reflected in the fictional (but highly researched) life of Bertie and the very real life of Lou Sullivan felt like finding my own beating heart in an archeological dig site.
What struck me further about both books was not just the reminder of how long we’ve been here, but the simple portrayal of everyday queer and trans folk looking to understand themselves better, to find home in their bodies, to build community, to feel loved, to leave the world at least a little better than they found it. The legacy and love of creating something for those who came after you to enjoy.
At this point, I picked up a third book: Ordinary Love, by Marie Rutkoski. Penguin Random House was kind enough to send me a free copy, and I was excited to switch gears after finishing Sullivan’s diaries. What I found was a devastatingly beautiful story of finding your way back to queer love, to self worth, and to identity. This book slotted in perfectly with what I’d been feeling during this trip: the simultaneously small and gigantic everyday presence of people like us all around us, all throughout history.
Though this novel isn’t historical fiction, it’s added significant dimension to the history I’ve been carrying around with me. It served as a reminder that we don’t just want to think of History as all the events that were worth writing down. “History” is populated with billions of ordinary people living lives that were profound in their concept and ordinary in their minutia. People learning about themselves, fighting their own battles, finding their own love.
In the face of all that is horrifying, we have continued to find ways to keep living. You must keep living. The only people who expect you to stop living and spend all your time cowering in fear are those seeking to erase you, and I hope you don’t give them that satisfaction.
Looking for Empty Spaces
It would have been easy to spend this trip walking around looking at graveyards, and memorials, and rubble, and see only a people erased. The urge is strong to look at Magnus Hirschfeld and the beautiful work and horrifying destruction of the Institute for Sexual Medicine in Berlin and say “look at what they took from us.”
The urge is strong to look at the world today and say “look at all that is gone.” We are tempted to tell our stories as one of empty spaces over and over again.
But to do so is to allow the erasers not just to tell the story, but to define it. To write themselves as unequivocal victors. It’s true that Magnus Hirschfeld’s work was cut short by Hitler and the Nazis. It’s true that Lou Sullivan was killed far too young by a government refusing to acknowledge or assist with the AIDS epidemic. I cannot undo these things. But I can look at Magnus and Lou and marvel at what is there.
Instead of saying “look at what they took from us” I can say “look at what they built for us”. I can see the ways Lou’s work has shaped healthcare and community. I can see the ways Hirschfeld sought to (and in many ways, succeeded at) shaping and improving international public perception of transgender folks nearly a century ago. I can see the synagogues in Europe lovingly restored and rebuilt by tiny communities hoping to build a reminder that we are still here.
We must honor the empty spaces, especially now during pride. The sacrifices, the stories cut short, those never told beyond a whisper or a dream. The setbacks in our access to care. But we cannot let our stories and our lives by afterthoughts, footnotes, to those empty spaces.
We must look to the past, to the present, and to the future to see what is here. What is being built, what is being changed.
To allow each and every queer elder to be defined by only what they could not achieve, to erase the victories of their hard-fought battles by saying “it’s as bad now as it was then”, is a great disservice to their lives, their work, and their human-ness.
To reduce the entire movement today to loss after loss, shaped only by the policies of christian nationalists trying to sweep us under the rug, does a disservice to the incredible changemakers all around us.
This is the purpose of Good Queer News. The purpose is not to pretend that bad news does not happen, to pretend that history was all sunshine and roses and we are all holding hands and skipping in a circle now. The goal is to remind us that we will outlive their laws, we will outlive their hate. To give us permission to tell our own story as one of joy, of strength, of community, and of victory. It is still a story with setbacks and defeats and frightening monsters, but at least we’re holding the pen.
What does it mean to Hope?
Each morning on our trip, the Rabbi’s wife and the co-leader of the trip would walk us through an intention setting exercise to decide what we wanted to bring with us that day.
On one of the days, she asked us what it meant to hope, to flourish, as a community. Some folks shared small stories, others expressed uncertainty and fear amidst all the heaviness in the world around us.
I shared a sentiment I’ve written about before here. To hope is to live as if tomorrow will come. We schedule a consultation for top surgery. We ask that cute girl out on a first day. We get a new haircut and wonder who we might want to become. We start putting words onto a page that might one day become a gay love story that helps someone feel seen for the first time.
We keep living our lives, finding love, being profoundly and deliciously ordinary and extraordinary simultaneously, and creating changes and legacies that are a gift to those who will come after us.
What did our transcestors and ancestors build for us? What are we building now? How are we allowing ourselves to be humans writing our own stories while we do so?
As we are looking at the empty spaces of today—the missing sponsorships at pride parades, the changes in leadership and legislation—do not let the story of pride month be only one of what’s missing. Who showed up? Who built something new in place of an overly corporate party? Who doubled down on support? Do not just look for what is missing. Look for what we are building.
I didn’t come out of this trip with any big solutions or groundbreaking ideas, but I’ve been dwelling on these reflections for some time now and I thought writing them out might help all of us to make sense of things a little bit more.
With love and strength,
Ben
This is beautiful, Ben. Thanks for sharing your reflections, your book recs, and your inspiration.
Thank you for mentioning Lou!