Writings

There are 9 parts and the link goes to a search result giving the 9 links.  I had to change the time frame on the search so that they would appear.

Robyn

Introduction

(an excerpt from my currently untitled autobiography-in-progress)

Let’s get this straight right from the beginning.  I’m a transsexual woman.  For whatever reasons I may have had, I changed my sex.  I was born with some male body parts, but I’m much better now.  

Being transsexual is an evolving process.  It takes longer for some people to evolve than others.  In my case it has taken nearly 48 years so far…less than some, more than most. I’m still evolving and I imagine I will continue to do so for the rest of my life.  

Evolution is painful for any individual, so many of us fight it tooth and nail for most of our existence.  If we’re lucky, we realize at some point that we have to stop trying to swim upstream and let the river of life carry us to whatever shore it will.  That’s a frightening prospect because there’s no guarantee that we still won’t drown along the way.  All that is certain is that swimming upstream isn’t a fruitful endeavor.

The vast majority of the people in the societies of the world cannot possibly imagine what would drive someone to change sex.  Waking up in the morning is not an occasion for self-doubt for them as it is for us.  Gender is not a confusing issue for them.  For transpeople gender is the supreme issue.  It colors just about everything in our lives in one way or another.  

Our obsession with gender sets us apart from mainstream societies which consider gender one of the few immutable attributes in a human being.  Tampering with anything which is supposedly immutable is fraught with danger.  In the past few years I have seen signs that societies are beginning to evolve away from the concept of immutability of gender, but as it is with evolution of an individual, evolution is a painful process for a society and unfortunately the pain of a society is generally inflicted on some of its individuals.  

For those few of us who can escape the whirlpool of fear, pain, and danger that we find swirling around us, there is the hope someday of reaching some distant safe shore.  It’s not an easy journey because it involves an investigation and interrogation of one’s self that the vast majority of people would be hard put to withstand.  We must delve into our soul and peel away the layers of deceit we have cloaked it with, forever searching for who we really are.  In the end we are compelled to bare that stark naked soul to the world.  

I’m sure that there are still more layers of my own soul to be peeled away until I get to that nugget that may be in there somewhere.  Or maybe I’ll just keep peeling until I die and never reach it.  I do know, however, that I’ve become a better human being through this process: stronger, braver, kinder, more patient, more understanding, more open to new ideas.  

I hope that through my writing I can help others through their own personal journeys of discovery, especially my transgendered sisters and brothers, but also anyone who has ever had a family member or a friend who was transgendered and anyone else who encounters the compulsion to rip apart their soul as they travel the river of life.

And there is the more traditional introduction, such as this one, excerpted from my introduction for DailyKos, which was entitled From the Heart (9/25/05):

Who am I and why must I speak?

I’ll try to give the short version…while not very short, at least it doesn’t have footnotes.  My name is Robyn Serven.  I have a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Oregon.  I was born in Portland, OR, but grew up living in a small town somewhat to the south and west called Lake Oswego.  I couldn’t afford to live there now, but at the time there was an area of the town called the First Addition where many of the worker-class people lived.  My father was an electrician, a former World War II bombardier, a bigot and a drunk.  This latter condition was the cause of his death.  My mother worked in a laundry owned by her father and wrote articles for the weekly Lake Oswego Review, of which she became a copy editor before she died.  From outward appearances, people probably thought I had a rather normal childhood and adolescence.  If it weren’t for the fact that I spent a goodly portion of those years terrified, I might agree.

I got a scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, but emotional problems on my part lead to a severance in our relationship after a year.  Since it was 1967 and I was no longer in college, was born male, and was a pacifist, I chose what I thought was the better part of valor and left for San Francisco in the summer of ’67. There followed the longest 16 or so months imaginable, which included two trips back and forth across the country, one on the Poor People’s March on Washington, and time spent in the lower east side of NYC, camping on a beach south of Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, and wandering around on the block on Haight Street that seemed only to be there when I was stoned, which was often.  Then Nixon was elected president and Reagan was elected governor of California and many of us figured it was time to disperse: there was no point hanging around where we were easily collectible.

I ended up in Joplin, MO, with a friend who turned out to be pregnant with my child. I had a social background that required that I try to do “the right thing,” so we got married.  Our daughter was born in August of 1969.  In 1971 I was tracked down by the FBI while working at a pizza restaurant in Veneta, OK, and given the choice of pleading guilty to “moved, left no forwarding address,” which was punishable by 5 years in the Oklahoma State penitentiary, or volunteering for the draft.  Given the option of two years with pay vs. five years without, I chose to support my family, figuring that I could always run again if they tried to send me to Vietnam.  

The Army may not have a sense of humor, but they are great with irony: after basic training, I was sent to MP school at Ft. Gordon, GA.  In order to avoid overseas duty, I volunteered for Correctional Specialist School upon completing MP training.  I was permanently stationed at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, KS. It turned out that the Army had been neglecting to pay the prisoners correctly for years and one of my schoolmates in Georgia was picked to be company secretary, so  my mathematics background gained me a slot in the Prisoner Pay section of the Finance Office, so at least I managed not to actually have to work in the prison much.  I was discharged in 1973 as a Spec 5 (Scandanavian heritagealert: if you’re going to do something, do your best job).

I returned to college at first Portland Community College, then Portland State University, and then the University of Oregon, graduating in 1981.  My first employment was at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee for three years, which was followed by 16 years at the University of Central Arkansas, where I earned tenure as the one of the department’s algebraists.  

During my time in Arkansas, my daughter came out as a lesbian, my spouse and I got divorced, and I underwent a sex-change operation. As you might assume, this last item did not go over well with the good citizen’s of Arkansas, so my last 6 years there were not the best of times.  I was, however, selected to be acting chair (for a few months) of the Faulkner County chapter of NOW, a member of Little Rock PFLAG, a member of the board of the Arkansas Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and was a columnist for a time, writing “Outside the Gender Prison” for the Triangle Rising.

In 2000 my partner (I identify as a lesbian) took a job at Seton Hall (which she no longer has) and I quit my job and moved here to New Jersey as well, having pretty much used up excuses for not leaving Arkansas for a friendlier clime. After teaching as an adjunct for a year (math at Montclair State and computer literacy at Bloomfield College), I was invited to apply for a full time position in Computer Information Systems at Bloomfield.  I’ve spent the succeeding years teaching myself how to profess computer programming and as secretary of the faculty governance structure, a member of Women’s Studies faculty and a co-coordinator of the Gay/Non-Gay Alliance. This is my tenure year.

Okay…so that’s much more about me than probably anyone needs or wants to know, but I want to be open about where I am coming from.