Category: Media

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New Syllabi and Article about Feminism and War

Sarah Lazare and I recently published an article raising concerns about the celebratory declarations the media has been making as women take leadership positions in defense industry companies and military and intelligence government agencies. Thanks to Jacobin for republishing it.

In other news, I am teaching Race and Law for the first time this semester, and teaching Gender and Law again and added some new books and articles. I am thinking about pulling together all the reading questions I give the students and posting those with the syllabi as well in case they are of use to other teachers or to reading groups. Look out for those soon!

And here is a picture of my dog Bennie, when he was a puppy, with the dearly departed Shelby.

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How Should We Respond to the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Trans People?

For me, the conversation about the leaked Health and Human Services memo indicating the Administration’s plans to deploy an anti-trans definition of gender across several federal agencies exposes key misunderstandings about trans people, legal systems, and resistance. If you’re interested in my take, you can listen to my interview on the Citations Needed podcast, or read the op-ed I published in Truthout the day after the memo was leaked, which is below. I also want to highly recommend this article by Christoph Hanssmann which helps put the idea of genetically testing gender into perspective, and this article by Gabriel Arkles that argues that anti-trans attacks also harm non-trans women and LGBQ people and knocks down religious liberty justifications for anti-trans reforms. Continue reading “How Should We Respond to the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Trans People?”

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My Latest Writing on Pinkwashing: The Right Wing Is Leveraging Trans Issues to Promote Militarism

I wrote this article on the dangerous ways the right is using trans people to promote right-wing security and military agendas alongside its violent backlash against trans people. Among these tactics is the Israeli government’s “Brand Israel” campaign developed over a decade ago to promote a positive public image of Israel, foment anti-Muslim racism, and distract from Israel’s  brutal occupation of Palestine and apartheid regime. 

Right Leveraging Trans Issues to Promote Militarism

Excerpt: “[T]he use of a thin LGBT inclusion politics to make the Israeli or US military appear progressive is becoming a losing strategy. Resistance to pinkwashing is rising, and each controversy exposes new communities to the critique of this propaganda. A growing number of Jews in the US, especially young people, are becoming critical of Israel. The Movement for Black Lives has made its solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation clear, helping many people in the US see the connections between US and Israeli racism and state violence. Cross-movement organizing between Indigenous people in North America, including Water Protectors, and Palestine liberation activists is helping people see the links between US and Israel as settler-colonialism.”

Read the full article here.