Gender Play and Hidden Selves
I was young, once, and dumb.
Which is not to say that I’m not, now, of course. I certainly feel it sometimes. Even the young bit: Madison is, what, eight now? Not many eight year olds are smart. I still fumble. I still seem to create those humiliating moments that stick in the memory and make me wince whenever they come up, though they’ve changed in tenor over the years.
But I was young and dumb and desperately trying to figure out what the hell was going on with my identity, this awkward pile of senses and sensations that were causing so much friction in my life.
An aside: “Identity is psychopathological,” my first psychologist said. “You only feel it when there’s friction.”[^younes-interpolation1] I’m not totally sure that I agree — trans joy is as much a thing as trans pain — but, as a statement, it’s true enough, most of the time. Something about the way my life was built such that the smallest things, coarse as sandpaper, would brush up against something integral, and scrape away at its surface, leaving tracks colored cherry.
It’s strange to think back to those early discussions with him, too. That insight hit at such a strange time in my life. It came up in a discussion about my stresses around work. I think I said something like, “I’ve wrapped up my need to be productive as part of my identity.” I had been talking about the burnout I felt looming on the horizon. I had been expecting some discussion of how to tackle the concept of burnout (something I struggle with bad enough that I quit my job in tech to focus on an MFA), but instead, I had that simple phrase thrown at me, and I was left scrabbling after truths.
That wasn’t the only bit of identity I was feeling acutely either, after all, was it? I’d felt that before, back when I first came out as — at the time — gay. I felt it with work and how it was grating at me. I’d felt the way it ground up against me, skinning my elbows and knees, a sort of road rash of the self.
But now I was feeling it in some new, far stranger way, though I couldn’t put my finger on just how, exactly. I was feeling something, but heaven knows what. Something deeper, far more integral.
There must be some way of debriding that scuffed and stripped self-stuff, I thought, so that what you’re left with is some purer version of yourself, something all the more whole for what was there now being gone. There must be some way to pare that cruft away. There had to be, right? If one was to live happily, there had to be.
Years later, one job and one house and one more dog and one more self later, I called him to ask if he would be willing to write a WPATH letter for me so that I could start HRT, and he said, “I don’t think I can. I don’t know enough about it, and you don’t want to know how I feel about it.”[^younes-interpolation2]
I never talked to him again.
It is important to reckon with two interpolations within the text that appear to be later additions, and it would be nice to address these before coming to the text that they interrupt.
The first interpolation is that of a poem that comprises the entirety of chapter 28. The poem takes the form of a Hymn to Wisdom that Alter describes as “a fine poem in its own right, but one that expresses a pious view of wisdom as fear of the Lord that could scarcely be that of Job.” \parencite[458]{alter}
The NOAB, however, suggests an additional interpretation of the Hymn to Wisdom, which is that it may have originally been the conclusion of Elihu’s speech. For evidence, they mention that this topic, the elevation of wisdom, feels familiar to those chapters of Elihu’s, wherein the youngster harps on the topic of wisdom and knowledge at length. Additionally, the editors note the similarity in the final verse of the Hymn, “And he said to humankind, “Truly the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding”” (Job 28:28, NRSV) closely echoes Elihu’s final words as they stand: “Therefore mortals fear him; he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit.” (Job 37:24, NRSV)
The hymn itself is a respectable piece of poetry. It begins in a roundabout way, discussing the acquisition of physical wealth. It describes the ways in which gold and silver are extracted from the earth and copper smelted from ore. It describes paths unseen by beast, ones that require work to acquire. Throughout these few verses (1–11) runs a very clear directionality. From the start, they are heading towards something. They are pointing at something. Verse 12 illuminates: “But wisdom, where is it found, and where is the place of discernment?” (Job 28:12, Alter)
Certainly not beneath the earth! If Qohelet has taught us anything, it is that. Wisdom abides despite toil, despite merriment, despite even riches.
In fact, though many of the same ideas within the hymn are also there in Ecclesiastes, those in the latter tend to be more refined, more fleshed out. This might be due to the later date of composition of the former, but may also be due to the context of the book and the interpolated nature of the hymn. The author of the hymn views wisdom as an ephemeral concept. It is not something that can be held or perceived by man, or, indeed, life itself: “It is hidden from the eye of all living” (Job 28:21, Alter). Even other abstract (though often personified) concepts seem to have difficulty with it: “Perdition and Death have said, “With our own ears we have heard its rumor.”” (Job 28:22, Alter)
Qohelet, on the other hand, has a much more grounded view. He says that wisdom is one of those things that you gain by experiencing, something that abides through all of the ups and downs in your life and is only ever strengthened. This is not to say that he is in any way upbeat, however. Wisdom, folly, riches, merriment, these all will go with you to the grave. They, too, will be meaningless.
That is, until, one gets to the end of the book. The second half of chapter 12 is, per Alter, likely an interpolation of its own, where an epilogist rounds out the remainder of the book with some sounder, more conventional piety. “The last word, all being heard: fear God and keep His commands, for that is all humankind. Since every deed will God bring to judgment, for every hidden act, be it good or Evil” (Job 12:13-14, Alter) echoes the end of the hymn, which puts it, “Look, fear of the master, that is wisdom, and the shunning of evil is insight.”
Both of these interpolations seem to be taking the raw feelings of the authors of Job and Ecclesiastes and trying to soften them, shaving off all those coarse edges. In Job we have a man striving to be heard by God Himself, and in Ecclesiastes, we have a teacher who is bordering on nihilism, yet both of these editors are trying to fit these texts into the context of a tradition that, while it does include (and even encourage) the capacity to call God to account and to feel that certain sense of nihilism, would still appreciate a somewhat more positive view within its scripture.
And though even this discussion of interpolations may feel like an interpolation itself, here is where it ceases being such: One possible outcome of Job’s travails is that he becomes Qohelet. Can one imagine going through the experiences that Job went through and not coming away with at least a little bit of that nihilism? Your family dies. Your livelihood is stripped away. You sit in the bit of ashes with lesions all over your body, and then God comes down in his whirlwind and fixes it all for you. You look back on all of your piety, you look back on all of your wealth, and suddenly yes, it is all a chasing after the wind.
All the same, I was young, I was dumb, and I was flaking away at the edges of that more fundamental identity. I was making use of the space I had to explore in clumsy, gangly ways. I was building up new versions of myself, one after another, to search for the smallest bit of relief from that friction.
An aside: furry is a notably queer space. It’s a subculture in which you present to others a new version of yourself; not always better, but almost always more earnest. You provide an avatar, a front-stage persona, that everyone simply takes at face value. There is no unwinding, no translation of the front- to the backstage version of you. We commission art and ignore the names on the PayPal invoices. We meet each other at conventions, share rooms with each other, and still never learn each other’s real names. We refer to each other by species, a cute way to reinforce the idea the ostensibly human being in front of us is not what we’re seeing.
There’s no reason that such a space would not attract a queer crowd, yes? Some of it is doubtless the sense of safety that fandom has always provided to gay and lesbian people as well as a place where gender-bending is welcome. Still, in a place where our own original characters are normal (as opposed to a fandom centered on canon, where canonical characters are the norm), where we become those characters, one is primed to play with identity.
So I did.
I was going by Makyo at that point, had been for a few years. Those around me, those within furry spaces at least, saw me as that well-dressed arctic fox, the one in the subtly pinstriped suit based off my old suit from jazz choir. It was the most comfortable performance of masculinity that I could manage: one based off looking good. Not looking masculine, per se, just looking good. Looking nice. A focus on clothes, on looking good with the knowledge of how to look good. There was, in retrospect, a desire for some shallow interpretation of femininity involved in this.
It wasn’t enough, though. I needed something more. More explicit. More integral.
Enter Younes.
The second of these interpolations is the Elihu’s speech — and, indeed, the entire character of Elihu, who is never mentioned outside his own chapters — in chapters 32–37. Alter holds a particularly dim view of Elihu, stating, “At this point, in the original text, the Lord would have spoken out from the whirlwind, but a lapse in judgment by an ancient editor postponed that brilliant consummation for six chapters in which the tedious Elihu is allowed to hold forth.” \parencite[460]{alter} Few seem convinced that the character and his speeches are from the original text. The NOAB, notably bearish on the whole Bible, agrees that this may indeed be the case, though it does so with a sigh and a tone of resignation, adding, “In any case, the Elihu speeches are part of the book we now have”, \parencite[767]{noab} with Greenstein echoing that sigh: “Even if, as most scholars think today, the Elihu chapters were added belatedly, they form part of the biblical book.” \parencite[22]{greenstein}
Mitchell flatly and without fanfare simply removes Elihu entirely, the verses listed in a blob of “glosses, interpolations, verses out of place.” \parencite[131]{mitchell}
Job and his friends have three rounds of arguments, which shall be covered soon, and then, beginning in chapter 32, Elihu is introduced out of nowhere. “So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes.” (Job 32:1, NRSV)
The editors of the NOAB offer additional insight, that Elihu’s speeches may have simply been shuffled out of order (a problem elsewhere in the text) and that his speeches may have originally come after the final of Job’s three friends’ speeches after chapter 27. This both lends credence to the Hymn to Wisdom in chapter 28 being the conclusion of his own speech and ensures that God replies to Job immediately after his final speech rather than after Elihu’s, which would better fit the structure of the book. There is no reason it cannot be both, of course; the two additions could have been both interpolations and inserted out of order through some mix-up or whim in an early editor’s haste.
Indeed, Greenstein suggests that this goes even deeper: that much of the text from chapter 24 through chapter 28 may be jumbled due to this process of interpolation. This would include the Elihu interpretation around the Hymn to Wisdom.”I would explain this phenomenon by observing that toward the end of chapter 24 is a later insertion and that a roll of papyrus pages would have had to have been taken apart in order to insert the Elihu discourses, which include, I am convinced, chapter 28.” \parencite[28]{greenstein} In the connection of the Hymn to Wisdom to Elihu, he is of one mind with the NOAB; indeed, in his reordered translation of the Book of Job, the Hymn is placed at the end of Elihu’s speeches. He, however, disagrees with the potential interpolation of Elihu before Job’s final speech, saying, “The motive for inserting Elihu into this point in the dialogues, just preceding the deity’s speeches (chapters 38–41), is apparent. The divine discourses dwell on God’s power and majesty, not on his justice or concern for humanity—which are the elements Job has been seeking.”
All this to say that Elihu presents a departure from the rest of the book.
It is interesting to note the differences in tradition, here. Alter has “because he was right in his own eyes” but offers no note as to why, which is a little disappointing. JPS (“for he considered himself right” (Job 32:1, JPS)) and Greenstein (“since in his own eyes he was right and just” (Job 32:1, Greenstein)) agree. All three of these are Jewish sources.
Christian sources, however, all lean on ‘righteous’, while the HCSB, NIV, and KJV having identical wording for that phrase. This colors the meaning, does it not? Alter, JPS, and Greenstein describe Elihu as being angry because he is declaring himself more right than God, whereas the Christian sources all interpret the text as Job justifying himself rather than God. Interestingly, the 2001 translation of the Septuagint has Elihu upset that Job is “declaring himself righteous before God” (Job 32:2, Septuagint 2001\nocite{septuagint}), a sense of uncolored plainness that is missing from the other translations. In this case, Elihu is seemingly upset at Job for being upset.
Looking back, coming up with a character that looks male, has that plausible deniability of masculinity, yet could engage with femininity on his own terms in more intimate settings was the perfect vessel for exploration. There are many terms for such a bodily configuration, one with both masculine and feminine primary sexual characteristics. Most of them are awful, but the one that many have landed on, purpose-built to be affirming rather than denigrating, is ‘altersex’.
I can’t even seem to write about this without leaning heavily on the clinical. Something this fraught, this embarrassing, is difficult to write about, but it remains integral to the story. How can I possibly put something like this down on paper? How can I possibly admit to something like this, after the fact? How can I– but that’s the me of today writing. That’s the me who went through this whole series of events, who decided to toy with the form she presented to that particular segment of the world, to feel tentatively around the edges of gender and search for the tender spots. I was young, once, remember? And dumb.
And that isn’t to say that I disrespect those for whom this is their own lived identity, or those for whom this is their own lived experience. Plenty who aim for this altersex goal do so because that’s how they see themselves.
I don’t remember if that’s how I saw myself. I just remember I certainly no longer saw myself as Matthew.
The next verse is all over the place in translation. KJV and NIV suggest that Elihu is upset at Job’s friends because they couldn’t find any fault in Job but still condemned him. JPS agrees, but uses ‘merely’ before ‘condemn’ which adds a value judgment. Alter has him upset because Job’s friends couldn’t show Job to be guilty. Though it is difficult to pin down why, Alter posits that Elihu is angry at Job’s friends because they just couldn’t actually find a way to condemn him: “because they had not found an answer that showed Job guilty” (Job 32:3, Alter) (a sentiment echoed in the footnotes for verse 13: “In attributing this statement to the three reprovers, Elihu shows them admitting the failure of their own arguments.” \parencite[548]{alter}), while the NRSV walks the middle path with “because they had found no answer, though they had declared Job to be in the wrong.” (Job 32:3, NRSV)
Weinberger continues to be relevant: “[…] translation is more than a leap from dictionary to dictionary; it is a reimagining of the poem.” \parencite[46]{wangwei}
This is where we leave off, and then this youngster, this whippersnapper, this upstart Elihu picks up.
“I am young in years, and you are aged. Therefore I was awed and feared to speak my mind with you,” (Job 32:6, Alter) he begins, and we are off to the races, or at least some brash exhortations to wisdom. Job’s friends may have left off on their attempts to convince him of some perhaps-guilt, but Elihu does not: “And I attended to you, and, look, Job has no refuter, none to answer his talk among you.” (Job 32:12, Alter) Were it not for the (admittedly quite beautiful) poetic form of Elihu’s speeches, he would be beyond tiresome. He goes on for more than a chapter simply talking about how he is going to answer Job before he actually does so. He is going to talk. He is going to get there eventually. He will speak. Verse after verse of promises.
The NRSV has the unique wording “See, I open my mouth; the tongue in my mouth speaks.” (Job 33:2, NRSV) In a post-Alien world, this brings to mind some smaller mouth rebuking him. Or, to look at it more seriously, a shallower voice. Perhaps that internal Elihu we all have within us doing its best to convince us that we have, at some point, lacked the wisdom required to have kept us from our current predicament. Perhaps I’m taking up too much space here, though.
Tiresome as he is, and despite the non-sequitur nature of his speeches, his language remains beautiful, and he does at points reinforce the point mentioned in the epigraph: Job questions God as to why it is that his world has become so miserable, and God cannot but reply with an exclamation that this world is far stranger, far worse and far better, than any man, no matter how righteous could hope to understand:
Why do you contend with Him,
\vin if He answers not all of man’s words?
For God speaks in one way
\vin or in two, and no one perceives Him:
In a dream, a night’s vision,
\vin when slumber falls upon men,
\vin \vin in sleep upon their couch
Then He lays bare the ear of men,
\vin and terrifies them with reproof,
to make humankind swerve from its acts(Job 33:13–17, Alter)
This unspoken and unspeakable, unknown and unknowable language is the only way we can possibly move within the world under the guidance of God. Here, however, he falls back into the common theme of Job’s reprovers, that he surely must have done something wrong that he feels the need to call for an advocate before God — an ally rather than an adversary, perhaps — “For a man’s acts He pays him back, and by a person’s path He provides him,” Elihu reasons.
Strangely, Elihu, for all his talk on wisdom, seems to lack the wisdom required to understand the first part of his proposition, that the workings of God are so far beyond human understanding that we cannot know them well enough to call Him to account for his actions. He immediately falls back on the comforting assertion that cause must precede effect. Of course Job is experiencing such hardships! If he is experiencing such effects, then there must be a cause, and that cause must be the most rational one: an offense against God.
We know that it’s much more complex. We have the benefit of the framing device to keep in mind. Elihu speaks of wisdom yet lacks the knowledge. He can claim to have one and yet still not know that he lacks the other.
Indeed, all of Job’s friends seem to be acting outside that knowledge. They seem to be speaking without the wisdom of what is actually happening. “[T]he Accuser’s dirty work has resulted in an epidemic of accusations,” Stephen Mitchell observes in his translation. “Once the archetypal figure disappears, he is absorbed into the poem as if by some principle of the conservation of energy.” \parencite[xvi]{mitchell} Job’s friends accuse and accuse and accuse. After all, surely Job has done something wrong, yes? After all, what need would he have of crying out to God?
What does this say about such a God? That that He is the type to demand an interested faith? “[T]heir god is revealed as a Stalinesque tyrant so pure that he “mistrusts his angels / and heaven stinks in his nose”” Mitchell says. \parencite[xiv]{mitchell}
There are countless ways to approach confusion. Perhaps one dons a cap and cape, sockets a meerschaum pipe into the corner of their mouth, and picks up an oversized magnifying glass to hunt for clues. Perhaps one sits and lets their eyes lose focus, letting their mind wander over the possible solution space to whatever problem that confronts them like some prophet of old. And perhaps one simply freezes, proverbial deer struck dumb by the proverbial headlights.
I’m not quite sure which of these I did. I know that I froze for quite some time. I know that, confronted with this identity-friction, I stood stock still for days and weeks, unable to internalize and unable to let go of this feeling of wrongness.
I also sat and thought and explored the landscape before me: what was it that I was feeling? Was it regret? Remorse? Was I feeling discomfort? Was it mental? Emotional? Spiritual?
I know also that I did my own investigations. Perhaps much of what I was feeling was due to the ways in which I engaged with sex? This would require experimentation. Perhaps much of what I was feeling was due to an estrangement from who I was as Makyo? Perhaps I could create another character.
Enter Younes. Enter Younes and exit Makyo — at least in part.
Enter Younes into so many situations with so many different people. Enter Younes into the lives of JD and Kita. Enter Younes into the home of Whiskey on that text-base role-play setting.
Enter Younes, too, into art. Into drawings of him — him alone and with others — commissioned from artists throughout the fandom.
My day to day life began to revolve around this reflection of some more feminine version of myself. Someone masculine, yes, but not solely masculine. Someone who might easily pass as male, even nude, and yet not solely that.
My interactions with others online in particular were all wrapped up in this new identity of someone somehow more than I was. Every time I would talk with friends — Iridon, perhaps, or MaxRaccoon — this would be acknowledged, silently or not. They would speak to me differently, touch me differently. The vocabulary was different, the hugs were different. And, sure, the sex was different, too. The sex was an acknowledgment of this part of me. More than acknowledgment, it was worshipful. It was fulfilling on an identity level, rather than simply sating the baser needs.