Expanding on that, slightly, I have moved from being ambivalent to how I feel about Israel to being specifically anti-Israel. To wit, the ends don’t (shouldn’t) justify the means: The (sort of) peaceful (mostly) democratic State of Israel as a beacon of Western Civilization to the rest of the Middle East can’t, to me, excuse its horribly colonialist founding or head-in-the-sand attitude toward the idea of a Palestinian state. (I know things are much more complicated than that, and the obvious fact that Israel does exist today means grumblings over how things came to be this way are somewhat moot. Nevertheless…)

All of which means I’m not sure how I feel about Birthright Israel.

So I have some ideological issues about participating in a program which aims to create a connection to Israel among the world’s youth, and further Jewish identity.

On top of that, I’ll need to get a new passport. I managed to get a drivers license that says ‘F’ but don’t know what documents they check for a passport, or how closely they examine birth certificates if they don’t quite match with licenses . . . And even if they do issue me a passport with ‘F,’ I’m still not excited about going through Israeli security while smuggling a penis.

Ugh.

My friend is trying to push Israel Outdoors, which does seem like a fun organization. I have another friend who went on Birthright through them and really enjoyed it; he said they weren’t at all preachy or acting like they wanted to indoctrinate their participants.

Thinking that honesty is the best policy, I emailed Israel Outdoors about my concerns with traveling and got this reply:

I am not concerned about the rooming issue however you will need to get a new passport since this will create a problem with security at the airport as we had similar issues with many transgender participants in the past.

So maybe it won’t be a big deal. It looks like getting a replacement passport doesn’t require a new birth certificate or anything, according to the State Department. (If I did need a replacement birth certificate, I probably couldn’t manage to go at all. According to Illinois, new birth certificates take 4-5 months. Put that on top of the time it’ll take for a new passport, and I definitely couldn’t get all that done before July or August, which is when I’d be able to travel.)

I need to get a new passport anyway, so I think I’ll definitely do that. But has anyone had experience with a Birthright trip, and want to share their experiences? (Whether or not it relates to issues with documentation.) Likewise, anyone have any experiences traveling abroad as a trans person in general? (Whether or not it has to do with Israel, specifically.) Thanks!

I mentioned last year that I felt really disconnected from the TDOR, and I’m not sure my feelings have changed.

QueenEmily at Questioning Transphobia wrote a post, the drowned and the saved, today in which she said

There was an Italian atheist Jewish writer called Primo Levi who wrote about his experience of Auschwitz, over and over.  In his last book The Drowned and the Saved, he drew up a distinction between “the drowned” (those who died) and “the saved” (those who lived).  He argued that only the drowned could give true and full witness to the horror of the Shoah.

I’m not comparing the murders of trans people to the Shoah directly – the murder of trans people, which horrific, is not institutionally organised towards genocide in quite the same way.  But what I want to point out is the structure of witnessing.  Even Levi, a man who lived through the camp, at the end of his life felt inadequate to witnessing, unable to have fully experienced the violence he wrote about.  Even his proximity was not enough.

She goes on to say that, even with her own experiences of transphobic hatred, it is impossible to properly give witness to those murdered, particularly across cultural or racial lines (most of those murdered this past year where latino or black, and in Central or South America). But that we should try, anyway, because it is our duty and responsibility to the dead.

I agree, but feel even more like I shouldn’t be the one (or one of the ones) charged with this task of remembrance. I haven’t experienced transphobic behavior directed at me, and don’t have close friends who are trans to share in their experiences. I’m worried that my disconnect, my privilege, makes me unable to and unworthy of finding a personal meaning in the TDOR. (See my comment to Bond about antisemitism, where I put my foot in my mouth due to a similar, privileged, disconnect.)

To use a term often linked with how true to their “roots” Jewish people are perceived to be, it makes me feel very assimilated. Something which, on the one hand, I’m obviously happy about – I don’t want to be harassed. Beaten. Raped. Killed. At the same time, such harassment is linked – at least, in my mind – with the “trans experience.”

More broadly, it speaks to my socioeconomic privilege when compared to much of the trans population. Due to my family’s support, my liberal work environment, my kickass friends, I’ve never worried about not being able to pay rent or find a good job due to my status as trans.

Linking back with what Bond and I discussed, concerning antisemitism, I find myself in a similar position of having this horrible thing – transphobia or antisemitism – be removed from my life to the point of being unable to find common ground with my of the respective populations, trans or Jewish. I completely agree with queenemily and others that the TDOR is important and worthwhile, because transphobia and trans-targeted violence are both important issues; I’m not going to escape harassment or violence if someone perceives me as trans, even for all my privilege elsewhere.

But more importantly, the trans community has a responsibility to not sit idly by, but to call  attention to the violence directed at trans men and women. And trans men and women like myself, who feel disconnected from all this transphobia and violence, have a particular responsibility to help remember the dead, because we’re privileged out of luck and chance, not some innate better-ness about us. Even if we can’t do justice to the dead, we owe it to them to keep them from being forgotten.