Gender and the Syntax of Being
 

Gender and the Syntax of Being: Joy Ladin on Identity and Transition
June 20, 2013

"Gender defines us from the moment we’re born. But how is that related to the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves? For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. We explore this question through her story of transition from male to female — in an orthodox Jewish world."
- See more at: http://www.onbeing.org/program/gende....QtRG6z7L.dpuf

I found this podcast to be very interesting and wanted to share it here, in hopes that others may enjoy it as well. I find Joy Ladin to be very interesting both as a person and as a speaker. The podcast is about an hour long but well worth it for anyone regardless of where they may be on the gender spectrum.


"Gender and the Syntax of Being: Joy Ladin on Identity and Transition
Gender defines us from the moment we’re born. But how is that related to the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves? For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. We explore this question through her story of transition from male to female — in an orthodox Jewish world."

For a little background on Joy, this is from her faculty profile at Yeshiva University...
Joy Ladin
David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English

Director, The Beren Writing Center
Education

PhD, Princeton University, 2000
MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1995
BA, Sarah Lawrence College, 1982

Brief Biography

Dr. Joy Ladin is a professor of English and holds the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern. She received her PhD at Princeton, MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and BA from Sarah Lawrence College.
Teaching and Research Interests

She is interested in creative writing, expository writing, creative non-fiction, and American poetry.
Honors and Awards

Dr. Ladin was a finalist for the 2009 Lambda Literary Award. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry and received an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. She was also a Fulbright Scholar.
Selected Publications

Dr. Ladin is the author of five books of poetry, COMING TO LIFE (2010), PSALMS (2010), TRANSMIGRATION (2009), THE BOOK OF ANNA (2006), and ALTERNATIVES TO HISTORY (2003), as well as a critical study, SOLDERING THE ABYSS: EMILY DICKINSON AND MODERN AMERICAN POETRY (2010). Her poems and essays have been widely published.


And now the podcast, enjoy!

http://www.onbeing.org/program/gende.../audio?embed=1

Thanks for sharing this Jesse. I look forward to listening to it as soon as I can.

Breaking the Gender Covenant
 

This quote from another article on Joy Ladin titled "Breaking the Gender Covenant" really struck me:

http://www.onbeing.org/blog/breaking...-covenant/5711

"My transition has not only been from an inauthentic life as a man to an authentic life as a woman. It has also been from a gender covenant based upon physical sex and social convention to a new gender covenant in which gender doesn’t mean being male or female, but being true to others by becoming our truest selves."

This sums up pretty well how I'm feeling about my own transition and my motivations. I'm really tired of living "a lie" and not being my authentic self especially around the people that mean the most to me.