A Jewish Obligation to Protect Gender Diversity

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

I’ve always been impatient about inequality. I was a stamps-her-feet, doesn’t-sit-down, never-shuts-up kind of little girl.

Now, I’m a stamps-her-feet, doesn’t-sit-down, never-shuts-up, knows-her-own-power, spends-her-own-privilege queer, polyamorous, feminist Jew and Mama Bear. And I’m roaring against the anti-trans, anti-gender-diversity legislation systemically threatening the queer community right now in the United States.

I have and do and will advocate fiercely for both of the children my wife birthed, and I adopted, and we parent together. And have and do and will advocate fiercely for my chosen family of queers, weirdos, and wilderness-wanderers.

Our society reinforces a gender binary: A system in which two, and only two, options are presented.

When a child is born and a doctor declares, “It’s a girl!” a whole host of assumptions are usually activated. Not only: “This infant human has a vulva, and, we assume,

internal ovaries, uterus, and fallopian tubes!” The statement “It’s a girl!” reaches into the future of this infant: Anatomy is thought to predict a certain gender presentation and reception: pink, frilly clothes, and long hair, and ballet classes. This infant’s sex (female) and gender (feminine) are often assumed to be predictive of her sexual…