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The South Korean Diplomat's Wife: Stories of Silk Dresses, Scandals, and Secrets

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Yoon Jeong Kim

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“Is Jack right for you? Is Jack wrong for you? Well, that depends. Who is this Jack we're talking about? Who is this you? What version? At what time? In what place? Which of your many funny reflections is the accurate one? Yesterday you were this person, today you're that person, and tomorrow... who knows? But marriage promises consistency, certainty: you will be loved forever. And the moment we become certain of this is the moment it begins to slip away from us. Our certainty blinds us to how the world changes and changes and changes." "So if nothing is real, if certainty is just an illusion, what do we do? Believe in nothing?" "Believe what you believe, my dear, but believe gently. Believe compassionately. Believe with curiosity. Believe with humility. And don't trust the arrogance of certainty. I mean, my good-ness, Elizabeth, if you want the gods to really laugh at you, then by all means call it your forever home.”

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Book:Wellness
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“Like a man, I am oblivious to the stakes of the diagnosis and to Lynette's rage taking on new proportions. I don't think I would have responded any differently pretransition. I didn't feel like a woman then. In the rare moments I have thought about my female anatomy, it's only to consider how to make it disappear. I yearned for my mother's breast cancer to be the genetic kind so I could have a preventive double mastectomy, and was disappointed when she called me gleefully to tell me it wasn't. I don't anticipate Lynette's rage coming at me, and I make a terrible joke: "Maybe the doctor would do a twofer," I say as we leave the surgeon's office. I would love to get rid of the body parts she is clinging to. I don't have a clue what it feels like to inhabit her body even though in a biology classroom way our bodies still have plenty in common. Binaries mean everything and nothing in these moments. The binary of what remains of our shared women's anatomy still does not allow me to inhabit what Lynette feels like as a woman losing her uterus. The binary that makes me a man in this situation brings a truth home to Lynette's body that we thought we had faced but hadn't.”

MarriageCancerTransgenderTrans ManSilver LiningsStraight TransTrans Men With Cis WivesUterine Cancer
Book:Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition
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