The “This is Not a Gender Issue,” the first issue of 2006, challenges Jewish institutions to make space for the needs of their membership. The articles cover everything from LGBT struggles within Orthodoxy to the Reform Movement’s recent stance against the Iraq war. True to its claim, the articles deal with far more than gender. The choice is deliberate.
In the 1960s and ’70s, through the era historians call the Second Wave of feminism (as if oceanography can accurately describe historical trends), American Jews with progressive politics were organizing around various civil rights causes, including voter registration with African-American communities, pushing Israel to go back to pre-’67 borders, aiding beleaguered Soviet Jewry, and advocating for women in the rabbinate.
Two generations later, the progressive Jewish agenda has shifted. Today we hear less about racism against non-Jewish minorities, less about world Jewry, and less about issues pertaining to women and gender. Important organizing against the Israeli occupation is prevalent, but how liberatory can a movement be if it overlooks gender dynamics and racial biases within its own ranks? And what is the worth of an American Jewish community that has loosened gender restrictions in some clergies, but leaves most lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Jews compartmentalizing their identities?
While gender and sexuality constructions deserve to be tackled head-on, only so much progress can be made if we do not find the subtle traces of sexism that are seamlessly blended into the landscape of our society and institutions. Woven into classroom dynamics, interpersonal relationships, and the ins and outs of the working world, gender discrimination is alive and well. Nevertheless, a critique of gender remains only one analytical lens that is not useful unless combined with others. The problems of the world we live in, delineated by categories of gender, race, class, and sexuality, are too pressing to withstand the discourse of [insert-category-here]-blindness. Claims to blindness, much like claims to neutrality, tell us more about the claimant’s political consciousness than about the social equality of our larger world.
As Jews move beyond the experience of being an oppressed minority, it becomes easier than ever for us to forget the stranger among and beyond our own circles. So in this age of insidious discrimination, clouded analyses, and political apathy, remember the power of protest and the sweet smell of burning bras. We are social creatures, we exist in communities, and we have the power to make change.
