As I wind down from preparing for #Passover, I want to share a politically incorrect musing on a recent development in the American culture war.
Based on my understanding of gender (which I believe is a social performance, unlike biological sex, which I believe is a non-binary chromosomal fact), I don’t personally subscribe to either the theory that someone’s gender is determined by their sex or the theory that someone’s gender performance can be cleanly separated from their accumulated embodied experiences with their biological sex.
Neither theory convinces me.
But first of all, I respect the rights of someone who identifies as trans to perform their gender however they choose, to be safe and secure in their bodily integrity and autonomy, and to be treated with the same dignity befitting any other human being created in the image of God. To me, those are the same rights everyone in a free society should enjoy. It pains me that the rights of people who identify as trans are not respected, and the fearful and specious justifications given for violating their rights are an affront to my God-given reason and compassion.
And second of all, I respect the hell out of anyone defying all the social pressure and seeking to construct their identity on a deeper level than their body, trying to bring their physicality into alignment with their spirit, and/or challenging arbitrary norms that have outlived their purpose and constrain the human impulse to envision new ways of being free. I think these people are at the vanguard of a free, civil society and deserve recognition for the paths they carve, and the freedoms they claim, for the rest of us. A society that targets them for violence has not only lost its moral compass but has chosen slow suicide in the face of ever-oncoming modernity.
Pesah is about freedom.
Autonomy.
Letting go of the masters we place over ourselves and choosing the gift and the responsibility of creating and ordering our lives according to the values we choose, without pressure and violence forcing us to do otherwise.
When we make that choice, we have the opportunity to build a better society for all of us.
A freer society. A more responsible society.
The kind of society you want to raise the next generation in…
…just something to think about at the Haggada reading this year. Let freedom ring.