The Rhine River

The Transgender Bunny

It turns out that Mili, our new bunny, is not what we thought s/he was. Yes, s/he has that something different that means that s/he is a male.

The evidence started coming in over the last week. Mili reached the stage in which young rabbits become sexually aggressive and territorial. Except Mili was more aggressive and territorial than we expected. To make it short, my feet were receiving a lot of extra loving. Finally, my wife and I decided to re-examine the goods -- Mili is now a boy!

OK, we didn't need to have a matched set of bunnies, a female and a male who were bonded. But Tuivel is sick, and Mili is young and aggressive, and we will have to keep them apart.

The new discovery provoked some conversation about famous transgender figures (we thought about renaming him to reflect the shift in identity):

• Tiresias, the blind Greek prophet twice punished for stumbling across a sacred garden
  
• Hedwig, the East German Chanteuse who left something behind to find love in America
  
• Victor, the cabaret singer with an unusual ability to imitate women
  
• Pat, whose every facet straddles ambiguity
• all of Rossini's heroes
• Rainer Fassbinder, as portrayed in "A Man like Eva"
• A Boy named Sue
• the numerous ancient mystery cults who remade themselves in the image of their g-ds (check out the docs at the Ancient History Sourcebook)
  
• Eon de Beaumont, the French girl, turned male ambassador, turned nun, turned postmortem man
• Who did I miss?
  

We will stick with the name Milie, or something like it, probably referring to her/him as Milagro.

[Added:] Sharon was kind enough to mention two more names: Herculine Barbin , made famous by the French philosopher who loved turtle necks and leather bars, and James Miranda Berry, the colonial physician who had his eyes on the officer's wives. Also, check out Sharon's page on the subject.

posted by Nathanael @ 8:19 AM