Entering the Tribe

[eumelia]

Two interesting and related stories showed themselves to me in my News Reader this week:

"Israel moves toward allowing egg donations among lesbian couples" and "Health Ministry mulls letting gay couples use surrogate mothers".

I have a few friends who are Lesbian mothers, both biological and not. Every one of them that has spoken to me on the issue, told me that with becoming a mother, they feel that they have become more accepted as people and specifically as women.

A good friend of mine is a self-identified Butch Lesbian, as such she's dealt with a whole lot of prejudice, been threatened with violence and has had to force herself to conform to certain gender norms in order to retain her job - now that her hair is longer, she doesn't have to work as hard as she once did.
A couple of years ago she and her partner had a baby and she said that she finally felt that she got a validation of womanhood.
By becoming a mother, she finally became - somewhat - of an insider.

Israel is a hugely and somewhat aggressively, pro-natalist country. We have, what is called, a "demographic issue" - we have to keep the Jewish Majority, otherwise we risk ruination. So goes the ideology.

Same-Sex couples have lots of privileges in Israel, due to common-law partnership agreements that were originally drafted for "un-marriageble" couples (like a Cohen and a Divorcee, or a Bastard who wants to marry anyone), not to mention that all marriages are religious (as in a Jewish person can only marry another Jewish person, a Muslim person can only marry another Muslim person - pardon the gender neutrality, I'm just used to writing that way, obviously it is also a marriage between a man and a woman).

Like most trends, the "Gayby" Boom arrived 15 years after the rest of the world to Israel and over the past half-decade I've seen huge amounts of Queer women become mothers.

Once you're a parent, you gain legitimacy for your existence.

One of the things often hurled at queers as a fault is our "hedonistic" Lifstyle^tm. We're nothing but bodies having sex, of course.
If you have a baby, you're a help to the nation.

Beyond the fact that women, once again, are made to be incubators for future soldiers, I'm not convinced this assimilationist strategy is the way to go - because it is assimilationist. Gays are not going to be accepted via marriage, might as well make babies and be accepted that way!

I mean, beyond the fact that the non-biological parents are going to have to go through the adoption process in any case, I don't think this is going to bring about more acceptance of queers - we're having kids in any case - but it is buying into the nations demographic paranoia.

Comments

[ayalanetzer.livejournal.com]

(I am commenting not on the parenthood, but on what you said on gender).
You know, do to my love of drag, my gender "issues" and so forth, last year I decided I want to make art in which I become a drag queen, in order to feel like a man who's impersonating a woman (which is something I now know, I need for my gender identity, if it makes sense), well I came to my teacher at the time and told her about this idea. I told her about it, even though it wasn't for any specific project, but to myself. Her answer to that was "You want to dress like a man?" So I explained, "No, I want to dress like a man who's dressed like a woman." And then she said: "well, that's not drag."
No, it isn't if I fully feel like a woman. But what if I'm a woman, who doesn't self-indentify as a man, but don't really feel like a woman either.

Well, time passed, she was obviosly wrong. And I know that now even more, because when people see those videos in which I'm in drag, they do see it.

(Okay. so it was sort of off-topic, but I just had to say it.. )

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Gender is hard work, I totally believe in Performance Theory. That we do gender. I think one of the reasons people are generally unhappy with themselves through out their lives is that we cannot perform the way we want to, rather than the way it's expected of us.

I totally get what you're saying about Drag.

And this: No, it isn't if I fully feel like a woman. But what if I'm a woman, who doesn't self-indentify as a man, but don't really feel like a woman either.
Have you thought of and/or considered genderqueer identity?

[ayalanetzer.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I don't feel the need to indentify myself like that. I do feel the need to dress up in dresses, and wigs, and over the top makeup and jewlery to see what it is like, and show other people as well in artistic sort of way, and it is what I do. :)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Gender as art is something I'm totally for :)

[rm.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I no longer want children is that it would cause the assumptions of others to force me to be more of a woman than I am.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I love kids and babies.

I'm also really good at taking care of them.
It's reading stuff like that that makes me want to be a pro forever and not be a womb unto the nation.

I think it's such a shitty strategy for assimilation - they'll deny it of course - but really, the way to gain acceptance here to "be fruitful..."

Blah.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

We're nothing but bodies having sex, of course.
If you have a baby, you're a help to the nation.

Aah yes, if there's anything more sinful than women who take measures to prevent pregnancy when they have sex with men, it's people who can have sex without even the slightest chance of pregnancy. 9_9

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah.
How dare we not be (re)productive members of society!