With Friends Like These

by jj skolnik

It is a particularly surreal time to be both trans and an anti-Zionist Jew. It is not an easy time to be anyone, really, but everywhere in public discourse—popular media, social media, public policy—People Like Me are a topic of discussion. The Jerusalem Post calls us “fake Jews,” a line I have heard at pro-Palestinian protests I have attended going back decades.  And, of course, there is the tireless and obsessive cohort insisting that trans people do not know our own minds, and “social contagion,” and not a better understanding of our own selves, is what causes people to transition. 

It should be evident that you can’t kick someone out of their own ethnicity; it should be evident that the social contagion theory has been thoroughly and properly debunked. (The 2023 study on “rapid onset gender dysphoria”  that made a big stir has been retracted for ethics concerns. In addition, its sources were entirely pulled from parental reports on a transphobic website—not exactly an unbiased sample.) Media is still reporting on these things as if they are real.