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In case it wasn’t already clear, gerium have zero obligation to be deferential to matrilineal folk. Our Jewish experiences belong to us and are as valid and important as yours. We are part of this global community, and you can’t do shit about it. I don’t apologize for my journey.
Anti-gerium antisemitism is ethnic TERFism. The more I take up space as a Jew, the more clear the ideological parallels with transmisogyny-transphobia become to me. And like TERFism, it’s bolstered by antiblackness/misogynoir. We need a word for it.
Here’s the big reason we warn folks about biologizing/racializing marginalized identity: because you then internalize your oppression as a natural state of being. I can’t tell you how many times matrilineals attempt to invalidate me by citing their own negative self-image.
For cis women and matrilineal Jews, misogyny/misogynoir and antisemitism are the base identity. Not femininity, community, Halacha, or fellowship. The lifelong oppression is the reason for being. And if we have no experienced that lifelong oppression, then we are not “real.”
Because I have not experienced lifelong antisemitism—as matrilineals wrongfully assume about gerium like me—then I am not a real Jew. Because a real Jew understands the danger and isolation of an antisemitic world from birth. I was seen as a goy, thus I am still seen as a goy.
That’s the naturalization, the biologization of Jewish versus goyishe identity. If we are born Jewish or born gentile, then we are genetically those identities and will carry them for life. And because our identity is in the blood—the very DNA—it can never be changed.
We have warned humans about the dangers of biological determinism for centuries. And yet humans still biologize social/political difference as genetic, immutable, and innate. And what’s so goofy about this tendency is that there is NOTHING innate about any of these identities.
If you’ve never worn makeup or high heels, how do you know how to put them on? And if you don’t, are you not a woman? If you’ve never davened, given a Shabbat aliyah, been to a seder, or laid tefillin, then how do you know what to do? And are you still Jewish if you don’t know?
But check it—cis/trans men also wear makeup and high heels! And Christians hold sederim and lay tefillin! Do they suddenly change identities when that happens? No! So that tells us that makeup, tefillin, childbirth, or shul attendance do not define our inherent identities.
What about birth and childhood? I was raised as a girl/boy. I got my hair braided/straightened/buzzed/close cut. I was brised/baptized, went to shul/church. And if I don’t have those specific sets of experiences, then I’m not a real woman/man, Jew/Christian, Black/white person.
I was a Black girl who got my hair braided and went to church as a child. I didn’t go to shul, my hair wasn’t buzzed/cut, I never had a bris or a bar/bat mitzvah, and I didn’t learn Hebrew in Sunday School. I can’t be a real Jew because I didn’t have a (white) Jewish childhood.
