As We Interpret Ourselves Differently,

Whether Or Not We Continue To Enforce A Universal Conception Of Human Rights At Moments Of Outrage And Incomprehension, Precisely When We Think That Others Have Taken Themselves Out Of The Human Community As We Know It, Is A Test Of Our Very Humanity.

Bound To Seek Recognition Of Its Own Existence In Categories, Terms, And Names That Are Not Of Its Own Making, The Subject Seeks The Sign Of Its Own Existence Outside Itself, In A Discourse That Is At Once Dominant And Indifferent. Social Categories Signify Subordination And Existence At Once. In Other Words, Within Subjection The Price Of Existence Is Subordination.

No Matter What Someone Else Has Done, It Still Matters How We Treat People. It Matters To Our Humanity That We Treat Offenders According To Standards That We Recognize As Just. Justice Is Not Revenge - It's Deciding For A Solution That Is Oriented Towards Peace, Peace Being The Harder But More Human Way Of Reacting To Injury. That Is The Very Basis Of The Idea Of Rights.

My Sense Is That We May Not Need The Language Of Innateness Or Genetics To Understand That We Are All Ethically Bound To Recognize Another Person's Declared Or Enacted Sense Of Sex And/or Gender. We Do Not Have To Agree Upon The "origins" Of That Sense Of Self To Agree That It Is Ethically Obligatory To Support And Recognize Sexed And Gendered Modes Of Being That Are Crucial To A Person's Well-being.

I Do Situate Myself In This Problem Of Being A Jew Who Doesn't Want To Be Represented By The State Of Israel, A State That Claims To Represent All Jewish People And Make Me Into A Potential Citizen.