Christmas is the celebration of a birth. But a Christmas Jesus is a clean baby wrapped up in cloths, not a sticky one emerging from Mary’s body. Why is that? Is it our discomfort with our bodies, and in particular, women’s bodies (trans or cis)? The strangeness of the incarnation, this mixing of divine and human, that we don’t want to recognize? I’m not entirely sure. But I know that this Christmas, I want to see birth. I want to see a woman’s body intermingled with the divine. I want to see a record of the pain that comes before the joy.

The aspects of my identity are fueled by tension and otherness. The battles of tension and otherness shout at each other, debate each other, lie to each other, chase each other. They torment me, define me, limit me.  

They tell me: I am not queer enough. I am not Korean enough. I am not American enough. I am not feminine enough. I have heard it all from society, even from my own community.