Why does anyone ever use the phrase, “in her own right”? It means, actually, in keeping with what is right or just, conforming to some principle or that which is due. But it never seems to me that users mean exactly that.

Elinor Burkett, author of Golda, writes, “Golda Meir acted like a man [she peed standing up?] and wanted to be treated like a man. There is no question that she was a very strong, intelligent leader in her own right.” I did not know Golda Meir personally, so I don’t know if she was transgender, but I’d be willing to bet she wanted to be treated as equal to men. And I am pretty sure that qualities of strength and intelligent leadership aren’t limited to men. So how does Burkett mean “in her own right” in this case?

When Barbara Bush died, writer Karen Belz posted a small article online about the former first lady in which she writes, “And while most people know Barbara Bush for her first lady status, many don’t know that she was considered a strong, determined, and witty woman in her own right.” This line suggests, first, that her husband had these qualities, and I am not sure everyone would agree with that, though it isn’t friendly to speak ill of the dead. But why wouldn’t a first lady have these qualities? Why not assume she does until it is proven otherwise? I won’t even say anything about Melania Trump’s intellect or wit, because she is determined that the American public will not know her. So we can certainly say she’s determined, if nothing else.

The BBC, reporting on the militancy of Winnie Mandela’s activism, posted an article that argued, “Mrs [sic] Madikizela-Mandela was a politician in her own right, and opposed her husband’s [Nelson Mandela’s] move to negotiate an end to apartheid, claiming it would lead to a ‘sell-out’ of black people.” Because her husband was a politician, Winnie can’t be one, too, she is one in her own right. To use a term coined by my husband, this is the height of “ensmallening.” One must be able to describe what a woman does without comparing it to the roles of the men around her. To add “in her own right” forces a comparison where none is necessary.

In each of these examples, of course, it is proper or just and in accordance with principles of equality that the women are who they are claimed to be; they do indeed have those qualities, so it could be argued that the phrase is used correctly. But is that what the writers are implying?

Perhaps an example from the life of an average Jo(sephine) would be useful. Many years ago, when I was young and cute and newly engaged, I met some of my husband’s future colleagues at the university where he was teaching. It was a small social group that met for coffee and some talk in the morning. During this first meeting, I was referred to several times as a sort of prize he had won. I was nervous and probably more sensitive than usual. No harm was meant; they were all older than he and happy for him. He wasn’t lonely anymore, and here was this pretty young thing coming to the small town where nothing ever happened. They were trying to be nice, in their older, sexist, unthinking way. The worst culprit was the woman in the group, but her motivation is the subject of some other essay.

My now-husband of close to twenty years was sensitive to what was happening, bless him. Yes, he thought I was a babe, but he also thought I was interesting, funny, articulate, curious about the world—you know, all those qualities that make a person a tolerable spouse. He wanted to stand up for me. “You know,” he said, “Claudia is a writer in her own right.” So then I answered a few questions about writing and whether I was published. I held back until he and I were alone, and then I told him what I thought of the expression he’d used.

First, I pointed out how rarely we hear “in his own right.” If we’re using the phrase properly, there is no reason not to say it with regard to men as well as women. The example I found of its use to describe a man is guilty of the same crime I’ve already described. About his own son, the great musician and poet Leonard Cohen said, “Adam [Cohen] is a great singer-songwriter in his own right.” The comparison implied in the effort to (supposedly) avoid comparison is demeaning. It reduces the subject to something less than adult, and has the effect on its audience of, “aww, isn’t he/she cute? Trying to be just like _________.”

I was reminded of this the other day when my kid was accusing someone of microaggressions. He was wrong; the person was actually guilty of passive-aggressive actions, but it got me thinking about microaggressions and what they are, exactly. However subtle or even unintentional they are, they show discrimination against some already marginalized group, which is why I’d already learned about them with regard to race and ethnicity. I hadn’t yet given thought to the ways in which microaggressions are built right into our language. There are plenty of languages that have sexist constructions, which is why we now have words such as Latinx to address such inequalities. But in English, where we don’t have masculine and feminine nouns, we’ve had to figure other ways to make women not just “other” but less. Every time someone wants to attach “-ette” or “-ess” to the end of a word, women are infantilized. At my kids’ school, the mascot is a dolphin. The girls’ teams? The “Lady Dolphins,” who wear pink jerseys, even though the school colors are blue and white. In 2019.

Even the word “lady,” in certain contexts, places demands on women that don’t fit with the lives most of us live and suggests demure behavior never asked of men. How can “lady” dolphins possibly play volleyball? They’ll ruin their manicures. Growing up, I read books with characters who were ladies’ maids and ladies-in-waiting. Employment for the politely poor. When I was a child, my father always admonished me to act like a young lady; given his upbringing (in England, by people from Poland), that meant that I needed to be quiet, not boisterous; gentle, not rough; polite and never rude—always please, thank you, excuse me and so on—no elbows on the table or reaching across for something, always tip your bowl away from you (except on Passover), no slurping, or any eating sounds, mouth closed while chewing. Hair tidy and out of the face, dresses are always best for family events of any kind. I am grateful for my good manners every time I eat with a slob, but these are manners that men ought to have, too. My brothers got the same table manners lessons, by the way. And women should never be taught these “rules” as the keys to their happiness, or worse yet, the only way to be female.

Female, I understand. But I’m not sure what it means to be a girl or a woman. These days, we understand that it goes beyond whatever equipment our bodies have. Having a vagina doesn’t guarantee that I will feel like a girl or identify as one. When I was quite young, perhaps a tween, I told my mother that I thought my chromosomes weren’t quite right. Instead of the XX girl formula, I was sure mine looked like this: X^x/_y. Why did I think so? Because when I was little, I liked Matchbox cars and GI Joe dolls. I didn’t like wearing dresses (maybe because I was made to), I was hairy, I liked playing rough with my brothers. I have three older brothers, no sisters, and a mother who had no interest in teaching me girly stuff. As little and shy and anxious as I was, I also pushed myself to be what I imagined was a kind of a daredevil on the playground. I was crazily proud of my accomplishments on the swing set. I never doubted that I was a girl; I suppose I felt that I was not a traditional or “girly” girl. And I never have been.

I love pretty things. I like to put on some makeup, and I like to get dressed up for special occasions. But when I am all dolled up, I don’t feel like me, and I don’t feel comfortable; I spend the time thinking about how great it will feel to go home and slip into some sweatpants.

My older child, declared a girl at birth (and before), says he doesn’t feel like a girl, and has therefore determined he’s a boy. To me, this doesn’t quite make sense, or perhaps I don’t understand it because I can’t imagine how that feels. I wonder what he thinks it means to be a girl. He doesn’t seem able to articulate it. I’m not able to, either. And what does it mean to be a boy? How could he possibly know what that feels like? And why this binary? I don’t feel like a girl; therefore, I am a boy. To me, this is not a logical argument coming out of a generation that has done such an amazing job of teaching us that gender and sexuality exist on a spectrum. But humans are full of contradiction, all of us. And my kid, who always picked out the shiny clothes, the flowy stuff, the hats and shirts that said things like “Girls Rule!”, this kid teaches me every day.

Maybe, like me, he noticed that things he accomplished might get dressed in pink, might have an “-ess” stuck on the end. Maybe he noticed that the world is still not a safe place for women and resented it as much as I do. Maybe I made womanhood look undesirable.

What I do understand is this.

Just as long hair and makeup don’t define women any more than does a vagina, supposed feminine word endings and pink shirts don’t do much to say who we are, either. And even if a person belongs to a community that sees men and women as equal but playing different roles, there is still no reason to use language that makes women less than they are—fully human.

When our kids change their names, they are deciding who they are, or trying to figure out who they are. When our kids change their names, it hurts. We chose the name they were given; it was a gift from us to them, usually carefully considered, agonized over, possibly even argued about.

We have traditions and rituals to bestow on our children the name we chose —christenings, baptisms, brit milot, naming ceremonies of all sorts. We invite friends and family, we might even cater a party. Children get named after important relatives, living or dead, depending on tradition and culture. Their names mean something to us.

After we name them, we spend the next ten years watching the tiny person grow into the name we chose. And somehow, they always seem to do just that — grow into the name. When I think about the other names that were on the table for me, according to my parents, it makes me laugh to think of myself as a Jennifer or an Angelica. These names simply do not, could not, fit me.

Maybe we spend a lot of time correcting people’s pronunciation of our kids’ names; maybe we tell people what it means in this language or that, or tell stories about the person for whom the kids were named. The child’s name is part of the family’s unique history and culture.

When kids change their names, they are rejecting all of those things. They are not saying they don’t want to be part of the family; they are saying that those traditions and history and culture are not as important as being true to themselves. They value all that came before them, maybe, but they did not choose the name they’ve been living with. And now they have grown and feel that it doesn’t fit them — the name has become a too-small hat, exerting all kinds of pressure on the brain.

When kids change their names, they are rejecting their parents or their upbringing or “family values” the same way they are doing so when they leave the religious/racial/ethnic fold in which we expected or hoped them to stay. That’s how it feels. But they aren’t doing that, not all of them, anyway; they are establishing their identity for themselves within the family but separate from the identity we defined for them.

Perhaps we did this for ourselves by buying entirely new brands of groceries when we first moved out of our parents’ home, eating sugary cereal or moving to another city. Maybe we accomplished it by taking what we consider to be a more critical and nuanced view of religion and politics. Our children feel a freedom to explore their identities in ways we never dreamed of, and maybe we have to let them do that even if it feels personal, feels like rejection, feels insulting and painful.

When some kids change their names, they consult their parents, discussing the name’s meaning, the person they were named for, including parents in the process and showing respect for all that went into the name given at birth. But some kids don’t consult family at all. It doesn’t occur to them until it’s too late. And that may hurt parents even more.

Some of us are convinced that this name change is temporary, that the kid is just exploring and will come out on the other side of this adolescent experience all the wiser. Some just hope that’s true. Some of us are wrong, and some are right. As long as we are allowed our own feelings about the change, we should be able to make room for our child to experiment. This is what I tell myself as I try, day after day, to call my child by a name I did not choose. I think about how I insisted on being called “Annie” for a small part of my youth, because I did not appreciate my first name as I do now. I remember that one of my brothers wanted to be called “Herman” because he loved The Munsters. I don’t think my parents felt a sting from these passing fancies. Because that’s what they were. We were still very much their children. It is the sense of impending separation and loss created by the change that is so hard to handle. It is the anxiety about what the child’s life will be, factoring in all the issues associated with the name change — gender identification, possibly sexuality, and stupidity, prejudice, and discrimination on the part of others.

I also tell myself to celebrate having raised a child who feels strong enough to explore their identity publicly, to be insistent about their name and what it means to them, to demand acceptance. These are wonderful qualities.

The truth is, none of this is about me. My sense of loss or resentment or sadness is just that — mine.

“We just booked a trip to France!”

“Here I am with my bestie, looking out over the San Francisco Bay.”

“Nothing better than drinks with girlfriends in Porto, Portugal!”

Facebook is killing me.

For years now I have looked at people’s photos, at their family outings, travel adventures, even just fun times at home. And I have envied all of it. Not because I believe that every minute of their lives must be happy and perfect, based on the pictures they post. I know that no one’s life is perfect, whatever that means, no matter what it looks like on the outside. You can’t ever know what goes on between two partnered people, and you can’t ever know what it is really like to be in someone else’s family.

I spend a lot of time wishing people knew what it was like to be in my family. It is challenging, to put it mildly. I have two, maybe three nice pictures of the four of us. When we attempt to do typical American family things, it doesn’t usually work out. Someone will always be miserable and ruin it for everyone else. And who wants to take a picture of that? It isn’t possible to explain my family life properly, and any attempt to do so would probably sound whiny and ungrateful. Claudia and her first-world problems. But I am exhausted.

It used to be that my envy also came from a certain financial unease; we couldn’t do some of the things we saw our peers doing, because we simply didn’t have the money. Now the money is a bit less of an issue, though we still need to be careful (I am unemployed).  These days my envy comes from a much harder place. It cannot be fixed by earning more money, establishing financial security.

When I see families plan or go on trips with their young kids or even their adult kids, I know that will never be us. I think how great it would be, when my kids are young adults, to go abroad with them and sit in a bar or cafe somewhere we’ve never been, toasting the joy of discovery and togetherness. But it isn’t going to happen. When you have a child on the autism spectrum, your life can be seriously curtailed. I am sure this isn’t true for everyone, but it is true for us. My son’s diet is so limited, so inflexible, we really could never visit a foreign country. Certain places would be easier than others, of course. If there’s plain pasta, or white rice, or french fries. If not, he won’t eat.  When he is older, he will expand his repertoire somewhat, I’m sure. I can already see hints that his Bread and Jam for Frances lifestyle is wearing. But other things may never change.

My beautiful boy is fascinated by the great wide world and visits all of it regularly on Google Earth. He digs into people’s customs and holidays and traditions with great pleasure. He learns their languages and practices writing some very complicated characters. He watches opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games (almost all are available online) to see the athletes from around the world and to hear whatever tidbits the commentators share about the people and the countries they’re from. He shares newfound information with us and sometimes gets frustrated that we can’t bank all those facts the way he can. He is terrified to board a plane or a boat, and sometimes still gets quite carsick. It has to do with his vestibular system, the body’s sensory system that contributes to spatial orientation and a sense of balance. Sometimes when I try to imagine him on an airplane, I can only picture that disgusting puke scene from The Exorcist.

Speaking of barf, it’s not just his diet that is resistant to change. Taken out of his safe spaces, without the items he uses daily, he is thrown off and unable to enjoy himself. Last summer we foolishly planned a long road trip, never thinking about how difficult it would be for him to “play it by ear,” to not know where and when the next meal would be and what it would consist of.  On all journeys, staying in the hotel room to watch TV and order (Papa John’s) pizza or going to the hotel’s pool are his favorite things. He is a creature of habit or even ritual. He engages in the same activities day after day, and does them in the same way, at the same time. And he likes it that way; he has no desire to do things differently. Most people, including medical professionals, will tell us that he needs to learn to get out of his comfort zone, and I agree, but only to a certain extent. I push him to do things independently. The smallest things present big challenges. Last night he argued for ten minutes that he would not be able to adjust the water temperature for his shower to his liking. He was positive he wasn’t capable. But he made a loaf of bread all by himself last week. It was delicious.

I also want him to learn the social skills that will allow him to be happy in a neurotypical world. And we push that, too, even though it’s painful, even though “normal” children say terrible things to him or are judgmental or stay away because they think he’s weird.  Taking him out of the spaces where he feels good—good about himself and comfortable—does not seem anything but cruel. It has taken nearly twelve years of raising this child to understand this. And that cruelty extends to the rest of the family, because when my son is unhappy, so is everyone else. There’s no way around it. The older he gets, the more difficult it becomes to deal with these moments. He’s a sweet and sensitive kid, so he cries, but he also shouts profanities at us, threatens suicide, destroys his own belongings and often things that belong to us, damages the house in some way, slams doors, tries to hurt himself, and gives us the finger. He also threatens to become a Republican or a Christian, and he likens his parents to Hitler and Trump, because he knows how insulted we’ll be.

This is terribly unfair to my daughter, who would love to travel, and would have a wonderful time seeing new places, trying new foods, and flying. I feel guilt about denying her things because of her brother, but how do we plan a family trip that excludes one of our kids? The answer is that we don’t. In recent years, my spouse and I have managed two international trips without the kids–both because they were work trips for him. We can’t afford to pay all that for both of us, and we certainly couldn’t afford to bring the kids. And if I didn’t have a sister-in-law within reasonable proximity who was willing to take them, I wouldn’t be going anywhere. I imagine my daughter’s first trip out of the country will happen when she’s in college–I hope she will want to study abroad. And then maybe she’ll make a birthright trip to Israel.

I have wondered before about posting things on social media, and if it is reasonable to think that people should take care not to brag. Who am I to say what anyone should post? I hate negative posts, too–we all have one “friend” whose life seems to be a complete misery, whose every ill, mishap, and misfortune is right there for us to read. I know people who like to post photos of grotesque injuries–not a bruise or a scrape, but swollen, suppurating things that belong nowhere but a medical text. Stitches, bits ripped off. I have blocked such people from my wall.

Years ago, an orthodox rabbi explained some rules of modesty to me in a way that at the time I considered ridiculous. He said a good reason not to hold hands with or (God forbid) kiss your partner in public is that you don’t know how very lonely that might make someone else feel, a passing stranger who is longing for a similar relationship. Now I see that differently. I don’t believe we can expect that people won’t hold hands out of sensitivity to the possible lonely-hearts around them; but it might not hurt, before we post our excitement on Facebook, to consider ways to share it that will hurt just a little less those who don’t have anything to counter it. Because some of us are running out of BandAids.

So little has changed, yet I feel devastated.  In my personal life and in the concerns outside my small house, the scales have dropped from my eyes.

And they keep dropping.

A friend of mine recently tried to buck me up, telling me that I would find my tribe. But my hope for this grows dimmer each day. Each time I commit to an ism, I find, eventually, that a huge percentage of its members hold a belief I consider reprehensible.

As the new president prepared to take office in the US, and things got uglier and uglier, I began to read. A lot of the pieces I read were editorials and essays by African American women explaining various things such as why they wouldn’t participate in the Women’s March, or why they distrusted mainstream feminism, or why they were frustrated by their participation in online feminist discussion groups. Initially, my reaction to these was just as they predicted, a kind of hey-but-I’m-nice-why-do-you-feel-that-way progressive liberal position. But as I read the knee-jerk ugly responses of white women, I began to see.

And then the Christmas season began, and it was worse for me than usual, probably because of the hateful climate. And I wanted to scream, “please, please leave me alone! I don’t celebrate that holiday, I don’t care about that holiday, and I’m tired of having that holiday shoved down my throat, up my nose, and forced into all my senses!” As a Jew, I know better. I would never, ever do that. Suddenly, I got it. I heard where the African American writers I’d read were coming from when they asked that we just listen instead of responding automatically. And I decided right then that I would become a listener, even if I would never get the chance to have the shoe on my foot, so to speak.

My work seeks to give voice to and raise up those whose opportunities have been limited. (For details on this, check out the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/islerink/). I believe wholeheartedly in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. I am an intersectional feminist. I am a bisexual married mother of two, and one of my kids is gender fluid. I am the sister, aunt, and cousin of people of color. Everyone in my home with the exception of me and the dogs is on the autism spectrum. My husband and I have discussed “whiteness” at length. We don’t really consider ourselves so. We’re not foolish; we know what we look like, and we are fully aware of our privilege. But we also know where our privilege ends. And we  know the difference between our world and that of someone who is a gentile.

I wake up every day to news of bomb threats and swastikas. I wake up to news of attacks on gay people, murders of trans women, police brutality of African Americans. Each story is a personal affront; each one cuts me down and makes the day feel just a little more like dragging my feet in loose shoes through mud. I go to synagogue, mostly for the peace of it, and there is always a police officer there for our safety. When I drop kids off for Hebrew school, there is always a police officer there for their safety. I wonder how most people would feel if they had to have the cops at church just to worship freely.

In Norfolk, Virginia

Up until now, I have been able to ignore BLM’s position on Palestine. I never really understood why the movement’s leaders felt they needed to take a position on that issue at all, given the urgency of the issues right here at home, but I could pretty easily wrap my head around why they took a side with the people they see an underdog. Besides, BLM is not my movement; it is one I respect and would like to assist, but it is not one I imagine I have a say in. The other day, though, everything changed for me.

If you’ve read my blog before, you know that my feelings about Israel are mixed. To me, Zionism is simply the belief that Israel has the right to exist. Therefore, I suppose I am a Zionist. I don’t believe anyone anywhere has the right to exist at the expense of anyone else, and I would like everyone to live in peace. It turns out, friends, that there is little room in the current feminist movement for the likes of me. The very belief that Israel should be allowed to be gets me labeled oppressor. If the bomb threats and swastikas weren’t enough to open my eyes to the level of antisemitism that’s been simmering away in America, the comment threads on articles regarding this issue took care of it. I was near tears yesterday, reading the poisonous, openly Jew-hating posts from my sisters-in-arms. It was so awful, truly.

And so I have only one ism left me, and it’s the one I’ll stick with. I’m going to call it Claudiaism, because I know what I believe to be right, and I know what I believe to be worth working for. Do not join me.

It’s that time of year, when I admire both tasteful and completely insane Christmas decorations, sniff people’s Christmas trees, hope for cookies, plan Chanukah gifts for my kids, nieces and nephews, and think about moving to Israel. This year, as we plan for Donald Trump’s America (maybe–this whole Russia-interfered-with-our-electoral-process thing is getting interesting), I am feeling the sting just a tad more. Not even that. I misspoke. I am feeling impatient. I am feeling Grinchy. I am in no mood. Why? Because I keep seeing stuff like this: http://davidduke.com/jewish-war-christmas-christmas-traditions-banned-jewish-symbols-erected/

Also, because of these:

And so, I am re-posting this piece from one year ago, in the hope that maybe more people will read it. Or maybe someone will re-read it, and see it in a new way. Or someone will read it and choose to leave me be. Because as I mentioned earlier, I am feeling Grinchy.

Happy Holidays!

Jews Are Ruining Christmas, Again