Finding Nevo

by Nevo Zisin

  I’ve had a difficult relationship with my body as a woman, as a transgender person, as a non-binary person and simply as a human. I was a chubby kid and I was constantly reminded of it. Much of my childhood was inhibited because of insecurities relating to my body. There is nothing inherently wrong with being overweight, but it has taken me a long time to learn that. My understanding of beauty has been poisoned by rigid societal standards, which has not included being fat. People told me I had a pretty face, that if I lost weight I could be beautiful. I was complimented whenever I did lose weight. Whether it was the result of healthy exercise or being ill and not eating for a few days, that didn’t seem to matter, what was important was there was less of me.

  As a woman, I became aware I was entitled to less space than men, and I think this was expressed literally through the policing of my body. I was treated differently depending on my size. When I was bigger, people watched me eat. They monitored what food I chose to consume and what clothing I decided to wear. Once I lost weight, people stopped caring, because I was deemed worthy of privacy again.

  It is not for anyone else to decide what healthy choices are for me. I refuse to be reduced to just a body. I am so much more than size.

  According to my sixteen-year-old self:

  “I think that when you stop obsessing about who you are and what people think of you, you’re free. I mean, I remember I constantly used to walk down the street, and I was very self-conscious about my weight because I used to be bullied about it. And I’d be pulling out my shirt, playing with it, making sure that none of my fat was showing, and it just held me back from so many things because I wouldn’t go on a trampoline; I wouldn’t do things like that. Even though it seems small, it was really significant. I missed out on opportunities because of how insecure I was.”

  There were times when Mum and I were both focused on losing weight and we would compare our weights with each other. It was like some sort of unhealthy, fatphobic competition. We would catch each other out while eating something we had deemed to be banned and would try to push each other in weight loss in all the wrong ways. We weren’t focused on being healthy or happy, we were too distracted by the numbers on the scales. A lot of people commented on our weight loss and it perpetuated the dangerous cycle, because we needed that validation. Whenever I was in a situation when I couldn’t exercise for a while, I would feel immense self-hatred and disconnection from my body. Often the disassociation I had with my body due to gender issues was masked under this deep insecurity about my weight.

  I grew up in a body-negative environment. There’s often this paradox in the Jewish community of feeding your children as much as you can and then shaming them for their weight. That’s what my grandparents did. My grandfather would attempt to buy my love with material goods and sugar, and my grandmother spent a lot of my childhood commenting on my weight. She blamed my mother for me being overweight and would frequently discuss it in front of me.

  I would suffer intense anxiety about buying new clothes. I hated how clothes looked on me and I despised having to stare at myself in the mirror. Once Mum and I went shopping together and we were trying on clothes in the same cubicle. I took my pants off and she looked down at my legs and said, “Wow, your legs have gotten really big. I hadn’t noticed.” I immediately covered them up and left the change room. I still have anxiety when trying on new clothes. This is a big reason why I go to second-hand stores to buy my clothing. The sizing charts do not exist and I can mostly avoid divided “Men’s” and “Women’s” sections.

  Having a personal trainer for a brother was both empowering and debilitating. Sometimes he would police my eating, deciding that it was too much “for my age” or “for a girl”. Even if there was truth to those words, unsolicited policing of my eating resulted in a lot of anxiety and paranoia. This also occurred often with girls at school commenting on the lunches each other were eating. At the same time, my brother helped teach me that I was in charge of my own body. If I wanted to change something, I had the power to. I started training with him and after much blood, sweat and tears I felt stronger than I ever had before, physically and mentally.

  This situation is still such a point of tension. While I want to thank him for teaching me these lessons, I question whether the cost was worth it. I’m sure there could have been ways to inspire me without having to shut down my eating choices or denigrate my appearance.

  I have constantly struggled to have a healthy relationship with exercise. To shift my mind from focusing on losing weight, or even gaining muscle, to exercising for happiness. To have the feeling of accomplishment and the ability to see the lengths to which my body can go and to be reminded that I am alive and well and capable of doing incredible things physically.

  Nevo, age twelve, at their bat mitzvah with their sister (2008)

  Chapter 4: Wrongs of Passage

  In the Jewish religion, when a girl turns twelve and a boy turns thirteen, they are considered Jewish adults and undergo a process of learning for usually a year and then have a coming-of-age ceremony called a bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah, followed by a party. Sometimes this is a spiritual experience, sometimes fun, or sometimes it provides the opportunity to show the rest of the community how much money your family has by holding the most over-the-top party possible.

  I got my first period the week before my bat mitzvah and I saw it as a sign that I was truly becoming a woman. My period made me physically a woman and my bat mitzvah would make me a Jewish woman. I did my bat mitzvah classes with a fairly religious synagogue. Through this synagogue, boys had a ceremony in which they read from the Torah and spent a long time learning the passages they would read, while the girls were not allowed to read from the Torah and, instead, performed a play and recited speeches. This is different in the more reform and modern streams of Judaism.

  My dad never wanted me to have a bat mitzvah. He didn’t understand why I felt the need to, particularly through a religious synagogue. It was important to me at the time. I think I needed to learn what I didn’t agree with in order to understand what I did.

  I spent a year learning how to be a good Jewish woman. This learning followed the religious laws, therefore “good” was supplementary for “religious” Jewish woman, which I was never going to be – regardless of gender transition. I was controversial in my class, bringing up issues related to animal rights, respect for other religions and contesting the religion’s condemnation of homosexuality. My teacher and I argued a lot. I didn’t get along with the other girls in the class. They all sat quietly and listened to what we were being taught, while I wanted justification and explanation. “Because God said” wasn’t a good enough reason for me. I got to the end of my year of learning and I was apparently ready to be a good Jewish woman. We had the ceremony, which was followed by Israeli dancing and lots of food.

  A few months later I had my party. My best friends surprised me and organised a white limousine to pick me up with all of them inside. As a twelve year old this was my dream. The party itself was held in an old recording studio decked out with records all over the walls. I had a DJ and had organised some games to play, some of them a mere ploy to create an environment where I could kiss a crush of mine. Sadly, he considered himself too old for the games and sat out. My brother and I had spent a few weeks writing a song specifically for the bat mitzvah and we performed it on stage together. I sang and played trumpet and he played piano. I still remember the lyrics:

  “When I was a little girl I dreamed about what I could be,

  an astronaut, mad scientist, working in a lolly factory

  Now that I’ve grown older and I see what I’ve become,

  No matter what the future brings I know it will be fun …”

  True lyrical genius, I think. It’s a real shame we were never given a record deal for that one!

  Soon after my bat mitzvah, Leila came out to our group as bisexual and I reacted badly. I told her she was confused and looking for attention. To this day, I am
ashamed of myself for reacting that way. I know it affected her.

  As a society we have a lot of biphobia. We instil a fear of anyone who doesn’t fit into a binary understanding of straight or gay. We view it as a transitional point from one to the other and therefore that it’s not valid to identify that way, and it must just be a stage or a way of being greedy. It took me a long time to get out of this mentality. Prompting my defensiveness was that I too felt I maybe wasn’t straight and hated that part of myself. It was deeply hidden. I looked at Leila and couldn’t believe she was accepting of this sexuality variance and had the confidence to come out.

  By the next year, social pressures had settled a bit at high school and I felt more comfortable to be myself. I began thinking more about my own sexuality. I wasn’t involved with any of the boys; they were generally too intimidated by me. I wasn’t typically attractive, at least by the standards held by the boys at my school. I was chubby and had curly hair and I didn’t conform to the traditional beauty norms by straightening my hair or wearing make-up. I wore clothes I liked rather than those boys might find attractive. I felt mostly invisible to them.

  I eventually developed an infatuation with a girl in the same year as me that I barely knew. Aside from my eternal love and attraction to P!nk (which I thought was fairly natural as my friends all had a “person they would go gay for”), I’d never had feelings for a woman and this caught me off guard. I wasn’t necessarily freaked out by the fact I’d feelings for a girl, I was more concerned about the grandeur of them, and feeling quite obsessive. I wrote my first complete song about her.

  I’m not exactly sure how I felt about this discovery. After being biphobic to Leila in her coming out, I didn’t know how much of that I was still carrying. I had grown up in an inclusive household with plenty of exposure to sexual variance so I didn’t address the feelings that much. At times, I told myself it wasn’t a big deal, but I realise now, after having done more unpacking regarding my reaction towards Leila, that maybe I repressed these feelings so I wouldn’t have to face them and deal with them. I did discuss my potential bisexuality with some people. The rather strange event of National Coming Out Day (11 October) prompted me to write this to a friend:

  “Seeing as how it’s National Coming Out Day and all, I wanna fit with the spirit. I think I might be bisexual. I’m not sure and I rlly wont wanna tell ppl or make a big thing but I just wanted to tell you. But I want u to know it doesn’t mean anything. Like doesn’t mean I’m gonna start being attracted to every girl I know. It’s a very rare occasion that I am attracted to a girl our age and it’s never anyone I am friends with so don’t feel uncomfortable around me cos it’s rlly not like that.”

  I was scared. I felt the need to comfort my friend and assure her I wouldn’t be attracted to her but also that I was still partly “normal” and wasn’t a “full lesbian”. I think I was embarrassed. Particularly because the way I viewed bisexual people was that they couldn’t control their sexuality and were constantly on the prowl for anyone. I didn’t want to be like that or seen that way. I needed to ensure people wouldn’t feel threatened by me. She was good about it, and said she thought I was brave.

  Nevo, thirteen (2009)

  When I was fourteen, Mum decided to take me to Israel for a few months to improve my Hebrew before undertaking it as a VCE subject. We would also connect with family and friends as it had been years since our previous visit. We went on an adventure, just the two of us, first staying in San Francisco for a few days with her old leader from Habo. We then went onto New York, which was a mix of trying to keep up with Mum as we strode the streets, conquering as many tourist sites as possible, going to the theatre and eating ridiculous food. There are not many people I know whose ideal travel partner would be their mum, but mine is a walking Time Out magazine. Somehow, even in places she’s never been, she knows the ins and outs and cool areas to go. New York with her was a dream. Then one night, over the phone, my parents discussed getting a divorce. I sat in the bathroom of the hotel room, crying.

  Our time in Israel was both incredible and incredibly rough. I wasn’t sure how to cope with my parents getting a divorce. We lived on a kibbutz (communal farm) in the north, where my mum had lived as an eighteen year old. We tried to create a daily routine. I went to school there, and attempted to integrate with the kids on the kibbutz. Unfortunately, most of the kids at the school were not interested in getting to know me and my Hebrew was not of a standard that made communication easy. Breaks and lunchtime were spent keeping to myself and reading books. However, my Hebrew did improve considerably as I interacted with the people on the kibbutz. I spent time with my mum’s kibbutz family and became close to her best friend who lived there. Her English was limited and she refused to use it with me anyway, so inevitably I got better at speaking and understanding Hebrew. We lived in Israel for around two-and-a-half months.

  When we returned from our adventure, my parents separated. It was something I had expected for a long while and, in fact, often encouraged, but I don’t think I was prepared for the displacement I felt as a result. My mum moved out of our family home and went to live with my grandmother until she found her own place. I had never lived with only my dad and everything was unfamiliar and scary. Even the little things I had come to take for granted, like my mum making my lunches before school or cooking meals, were not things my dad was necessarily familiar with. I felt alone in my own house. There was a tangible emptiness. A darkness set upon the place and I no longer recognised the corridors. The home became a house. I spent a lot of time in my room.

  My siblings were supportive. They remembered the divorce between their mother and my father and they knew I would be having a rough time. I went into a depression and began to see a psychologist. This was probably my first long depression, and it certainly wasn’t my last. Navigating custody and mediation between my parents was challenging – a burden upon me that seemed unfair. I knew things would be better in the long-term but the readjustment took time. The hardest part was that my parents couldn’t entirely support me because they were struggling so much themselves. My family was ripped into two and I wasn’t sure which side I belonged to.

  On my return to Australia I had planned to shave my hair for The World’s Greatest Shave. When I was younger, a close family friend had been diagnosed with leukaemia and it affected me significantly.

  In my community, it was quite unheard of for a young girl to shave her head. I got a lot of comments about it, mostly regarding the fact that I would likely regret it, or I should at least lose some weight first, so my face would look better without hair. I was not concerned about any of these things. Besides, high school was not exactly going to be the peak of my attractiveness, so even if I didn’t look good, I was willing to compromise for a greater cause. I knew this was something I needed to do.

  I organised an event with my friends and family where I could shave my head in front of everyone and make it a community-orientated occasion, and I offered them each the opportunity to cut off one of my plaits. Once my hair was entirely shaved, I felt truly liberated. I felt in control of my appearance and marked the cutting of my hair as entering a new chapter of my life. I shed some of the pain I was feeling and tried to rebuild myself as a new and powerful person. I managed to raise a sizeable amount of money and was proud of myself for organising the entire event on my own. Besides, I think I looked badass with a shaved head!

  There’s something quite incredible about the Jewish community, and I imagine any small community. Once one person finds out about something, so does the entire community. When I shaved my head, rumours started about me being a lesbian. Despite the fact that people knew I had shaved my hair for a cause, apparently the shorter your hair, the more attracted to women you are. A bald head constitutes a lesbian – rather than actually being attracted to women.

  I thought it was amusing and I was excited to be a bald, straight woman, defying stereotypes and embracing my look despite the rumours. And then I rea
lised I was gay.

  There was no light-bulb moment with my sexuality. I didn’t wake up one day a gay woman. It was a growing awareness that came to the front of my consciousness when it was supposed to. I was incredibly lucky to attend a school that was part of the Safe Schools Coalition. We were the first Jewish school in Australia to join the coalition and it contributed significantly to my mental health and wellbeing. The year above me had quite a few LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Agender/Asexual + other identities that may exist in this community) students and they pushed for the school to join and develop a queer support club. I heard of this club at the end of Year Nine when I was fourteen, and went to the first meeting as a “straight supporter”. Or, at least, that’s what I told my mum.

  I lingered in the school corridor while people collected their things and left. I worried they would see me waiting and would know where I was going. I was panicking. I thought about bailing on the meeting. I wasn’t sure why exactly I was going; I just knew I needed to. One of the girls from the group noticed me and asked if I was coming to the meeting. I hesitated and followed her into a classroom with frosted windows, so no one could see in. We sat in a circle and went around introducing ourselves and discussing our sexuality. I explained I thought I may be bisexual, but honestly had no idea. I mentioned my mum had always told me if I grew up to be a lesbian she wouldn’t be surprised. We had a teacher present as a liaison, who helped us to change any school policy that was potentially discriminatory towards the queer and gender non-conforming students. The school later developed a gender-neutral school uniform for anyone who didn’t want to wear either the “male” or “female” uniforms.