I have a complicated relationship with Judaism, at best. I don’t need to get into my whole life experience . . . but (briefly) I really enjoy the cultural aspects of Judaism and appreciate its long history, yet have serious problems with Judaism as a religion and integrating the less-positive parts of Jewish history into the modern functioning of the religion.
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.
Continue reading 'Any experiences with Birthright?'»
Queen Emily of Questioning Transphobia and elsewhere has a great guest post up at Feministe called Why I Hate Filling Out Forms. From the post:
I hate it, every single time. Name, sorted. Then… clunk. Sex – M or F. Sod.
It seems like an easy question, right? For most people it is. For me, it should be an easy question. I live and identify unequivocally as female. I’m not a genderqueer person for whom the very either/or question is wrong. So why the rising sense of panic?
The problem is this, my birth certificate says I am male, my gender presentation is female. They do not match. Until I can afford expensive genital surgery, I cannot change the marker on my birth certificate. No matter what I put, in a cissexist world, I am situated as a liar.
(…snip…)
Now imagine what you do in a Customs line when you enter a country. Imagine you’ve heard from acquaintances who’ve been turned away by the US, or that worst-case-scenario lurking at the back of your head about Homeland Security issuing a memo about “cross-dressed terrorists.” What do you put then? What do you wear then? How do you present?
Imagine how vulnerable you feel. Driving (what if a cop pulls me over). At the bank (what if they think I’m trying to scam my own money). At the doctors. At school. At work. At anywhere they want a piece of ID, anywhere they want you to tick a box that divides humanity into two. Anywhere they want you to fill out a form. Confess, little tranny girl, confess. Tell them what in their minds what you “really” are. Or else. And they’ll get you anyway.
I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing all week, because I’m flying to DC tonight, and Queen Emily’s post sort of sums up what I’ve been worrying about. And, unfortunately, I would say it’s not entirely unreasonable that I’m stressed.
Continue reading 'Stressed about Flying'»
Comments (4) 
Themocracy