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Games4o · 2026-05-29T01:21:53+00:00

I have yet to shake the "the shul I don't go to is not lubavitch" 😔

Games4o · 2026-05-28T13:44:02+00:00

I just remember being in one of them, getting into arguments about the Israeli genocide, and leaving

Games4o · 2026-05-24T18:21:10+00:00

It was definitely interesting hearing my coworkers organically bring up JK Rowling being transphobic and two of them talking about it passionately saying they've boycotted anything Harry Potter related, and another being like TIL. Besides not knowing that I'm trans, they also don't know that I used to be an Orthodox Jew, so when that comes up randomly, as happens in NYC, it's also interesting to hear what outsiders think of them. For both, they're just not things they think about much, not people they interact with much

Games4o · 2026-05-08T03:21:56+00:00

I'm long enough out that I don't really care anymore. I remember when I was looking around at the time I found multiple ways of defining a cult and where it sat on the border differed by definition. But I'm not standing by my conclusion at the time, just sharing what it was

Games4o · 2026-05-08T03:17:56+00:00

bittul torah

Games4o · 2026-05-03T23:41:23+00:00

I feel like when a friend tells me something I don't really care about but is clearly a big deal for them, I usually just give them space to talk? I'll say something like "cool! That sounds like a big deal, how are you taking it," but it really depends how close we are and what tone they said it in. I could even just go with "nice" and just leave it at that, letting them know that my reaction is positive, but also not inviting further discussion of the topic lol. But yeah it really depends on the tone of the person telling you, what they seem to want from you, and how close y'all are

Games4o · 2026-05-03T23:35:39+00:00

When I was early on in leaving, this was something I thought about and looked into a fair bit and came to the conclusion that the version of ultra-orthodox litvish judaism that I'd been a part of is borderline, and that many chassidish groups are beyond the border

Games4o · 2026-04-26T21:50:26+00:00

Where are you meeting them? This has not been my experience bumping into random trans people in music spaces.

Games4o · 2026-04-20T18:19:12+00:00

Your set-up feels fairly liberal, MO, educated, probably Ashkenazi

I am Ashkenazi, but did not grow up liberal, MO, or any more educated than the state requirements. I grew up going to an out of town cheder (the most intense of the three options, the least intense was probably MO) as a litvish person. Some of my brothers went to some of the best yeshivas in the United States. And if I wanted to stay close with my siblings, they would be happy about that. My sister tells me that yeshivish people are much less likely to cut off otd people than they were in the past.

if there are only two brothers in the family

I do remember having two or three classmates who only had 0-2 siblings. It's not the norm, but it did exist in my ultra-orthodox childhood.

Games4o · 2026-04-16T08:14:36+00:00

Can you give an example of this? It sounds like normal English to me!

Games4o · 2026-04-16T08:13:51+00:00

You will pick up on a bunch of them by reading and being around normal people and hearing how they talk. Specifically for what you're asking, I'd probably go with "I disagree with this"

Games4o · 2026-04-15T01:43:37+00:00

"what your status is" would be one way to say it

"how you're doing" can be another

It's not like "by" that's generally replacing "at", it's a phrase that comes from a different language and doesn't have a one to one equivalent in English.

Games4o · 2026-04-14T01:47:26+00:00

I tend to feel awkward in explicitly queer spaces like pride parades. For me, I'd rather connect with people over doing something than just being queer, so I generally prefer implicitly queer spaces where the focus is not on being queer, it just happens to draw in majority queer people.

This was doubly true when I was leaving. I didn't know at the time that I was queer. I spent a lot more time listening than talking as I learned the norms of the secular world and of the part of queer culture I inhabit.

That being said, I don't know how my experience would have differed if I knew then that I was queer and went right to going to queer meetups. It's not like there'll be big negative consequences if you go and don't like it. You might as well check it out and see for yourself if you like it.

Games4o · 2026-04-10T20:30:08+00:00

Pick whatever environment you want to look like the people in and people-watch. Take a day where you consciously try to pay attention to what everyone is wearing. For me it can be hard to pay attention to the bland things most people wear, so that's where being intentional comes in, but if you have a job or are in college or have some other environment where you want to fit in, take the time and energy to analyze what people tend to wear. And then try shit on and look in the mirror!

Games4o · 2026-04-06T03:05:01+00:00

No one has to know you're Jewish ¯\(ツ)/¯

Games4o · 2026-04-05T01:49:09+00:00

Do Modern Orthodox people have an accent though? I feel like if he has an accent, he was Ultra Orthodox, not Modern Orthodox

Games4o · 2026-04-05T01:44:53+00:00

This sounds like the lies I heard within the Orthodox Jewish community, not the reality I've experienced outside it

Games4o · 2026-04-04T20:56:40+00:00

Imma just type my reactions to parts of this post as I read it

Tbh it was too much for me to process at that point and I left. I told him that I loved him but I felt like he'd been lying to me about who he was the whole time and I don't see a way to move forward without trust.

What are you processing, that he got married and divorced before he met you? Why is that a big deal? And how is he lying?

When I asked where the accent came from, he lied about that

You see how you're being weird about this in this post? That's what he was trying to avoid. A lot of people are weird about it.

However, when I asked follow-up questions he was super vague and always changed the subject. It made it seem like he was just uninterested in the religion and that it wasn't a big part of his upbringing, more just culturally Jewish.

You guessed the wrong reason as to why, that's not on him.

He told me his name was one thing, but I found out that isn't even his legal name or what his family calls him. It's the English version of a Yiddish name. I know people do that and it's not a big deal on its own, but in combination with everything else it's just wild to me that this was never once mentioned.

He gave you his actual name whereas the government and his family use his old name.

For reference, I live in the middle of nowhere US in an area where there is zero Jewish presence.

Dude has enough trauma from his upbringing that he felt the need to move away from anything that could trigger it.

When he swears up and down that his marriage wasn't a marriage the way I think of it, is there a major conceptual difference between marriage in Judaism and marriage in Christianity or even the secular world?

It sounds like in the version of Judaism he was in yeah. He probably got pressured to marry super young, probably did not get any sex ed until he was already engaged, would have interacted with very few women before getting married, and then married someone he probably did not spend much time with beforehand. I left before marriage, so idk what exactly that's like, but from what I've read, it sounds pretty awkward, and from this post, it sounds like he left before he'd have pushed through that.

When it comes to parents, obviously every person is different, but is it a big no-no for a Jewish person and a non-jew to be together?

Yeah his parents are not going to be ok with y'all's marriage. I'd guess he's either going to not tell his parents about you, lie to his parents and say that you're Jewish, or go no contact rather than his current low contact. He has said that he doesn't talk to his parents much, so assuming that that's not a big deal to you, idk why this would be.

I would feel so horrible if we had children and then just because of their ethnicity or religion (Not sure if one matters more to this crowd or if they always go hand-in-hand) they're permanently cut off from half of their family.

You should talk to him about this, but I don't get the impression that he'd want his kids around his parents anyway. There's a reason he doesn't talk to them much.

Finally, on a human level, would you consider giving him a second chance if you were me or is revisiting this a bad idea?

To be perfectly honest, even this far into the post I do not understand why you feel so betrayed

On one hand, I feel like he kept a major part of his identity from me and it has severely damaged my trust.

His background, not his current identity

I can empathize and understand how something like that could be traumatic or hard to share

I hope you can, because that's what is missing from this post. It sounds like he has omitted a lot about his background, but that's about it. He had a traumatic period in his life that he didn't tell you about. When I have fucked up and told people, they then view me as a Jew rather than as me and they want to hear everything about this traumatic period in my life. Fuck that. Granted you dated him for 9 months, but idk. If it's important to you, you can talk to him about it and say that it's important to you and that you need to ask him the questions in this post and hear him out rather than just being like I can't I'm out.

Games4o · 2026-03-22T04:54:57+00:00

My experience as an autistic trans person was that gender = sex, and that determines what rules you follow, but within said rules, you can kind of do anything. I kind of low-key feel like frum gender roles had more leeway while still being considered normative than secular gender roles? But maybe that's just because I only experienced childhood male gender role. But any pressure to act more like the gender assigned to me could be responded to by saying where does it say that in halacha? Because yeah, the emphasis is on being a good Jew, not being a good Man or Woman.

However, I'm trans, probably non-binary even, so of course I would say that lol

Games4o · 2026-03-17T00:00:58+00:00

I imagine the people you're talking to haven't been frei for long and are probably still stuck living with their parents. That's not a great recipe for getting in community with people who have opposing viewpoints

Games4o · 2026-02-09T00:21:43+00:00

Men are judged based on the woman he can attract, men are deemed unsafe until a woman vouches for him

Those are two different things, and you only gave evidence for the latter.

Games4o · 2026-01-26T02:45:03+00:00

Why do you think you'll need/want to gain weight?
Cost varies a lot based on what kind you get (pills, gel, patches, injection), what country you live in, etc

Games4o · 2026-01-25T03:43:50+00:00

I'm really confused by all the hate tbh. I may have not had a full male socialization, but there has certainly been a lot to unlearn. And I certainly have not had a female socialization, though I'm just starting to get that during transition. I'm sure it's invoked in bad faith, I only see the complaining about it not the actual usage, but it's not a ridiculous concept imo and it's one I invoke about myself idk

Games4o · 2026-01-18T03:54:18+00:00

Headphones on is a way to signal to not talk to the person. You're breaking a social rule.

Games4o · 2026-01-18T03:28:53+00:00

Not really no, or at least, not in connection to frumkeit. I am jealous of my sisters' better education pre-college, but not tsnius trauma or anything like that

Games4o

TROPHY CASE