Entering the Tribe
Dec. 2nd, 2009 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaTwo 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" Lifstyletm. 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.
"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" Lifstyletm. 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.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 09:20 pm (UTC)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.