Reflections on "He That Once Seemed Invisible" 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.

****

Lawyers Mull US Supreme Court Appeal In Nebraska Gay Marriage Case


(Omaha, Nebraska) Attorneys who lost an appeal of Nebraska's broad ban on any recognition of same-sex relationships say they are still considering whether to appeal the case to the US Supreme Court.

A panel on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in July overturned a lower court ruling that struck down the state's constitutional amendment, ruling that the issue is a matter of state rights and not a violation of the U-S Constitution.
Last month the full court declined to reconsider the ruling.  That leaves 90 days to decide whether to go to the Supreme Court. 

"We haven't made a decision at this point," Lambda Legal attorney Ken Upton tells the Associated Press.  "We have just begun weighing that option."