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July 19, 2010 | 4:13 pm
How Many Members of the Tribe Are Family?
Posted by Naomi Goldberg
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Counting is an important concept for Jews. We count the Omer in the lead-up to Shavuot. In Numbers, the Israelites are commanded to conduct a census. As someone who does a lot of number crunching as her day job, I’m intrigued by the counting we can (and cannot) do of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities.
The most frequently asked question I get is, “How many gay (or lesbian, or bisexual, or transgender) people are there?” And, unfortunately, it isn’t an easy question to answer. Very few surveys ask about sexual orientation and even fewer ask about gender identity. Much of the counting we do comes to the US Census, which only lets us identify same-sex couples who live together. From those figures, there are about half a million same-sex couples in the US. Another survey tells us that about 4.1% of the adult population identifies at LGB – so that’s about 9 million people. And there are no good statistics about the number of transgender people in the US.
What about Jews? Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of Jews identify as LGBT. As my mom says of my own hometown and the stories the other Jewish moms tell about their LGBT kids, “There must have been something in the water!” Los Angeles has had as many as two LGBT temples and several LGBT Jewish organizations. What does the data say about The Tribe and how queer we really are?
Fortunately for someone like me who loves data, there’s a big survey that comes in handy in answering this question. The General Social Survey asks Americans lots of questions – including questions about sexual orientation and religion. In 2008, 12.6% of Jewish respondents identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. That is nearly 7.5 times as many Protestants and more than 8 times as many Catholics.
The General Social Survey can’t tell us why higher numbers of Jews identify as LGBT.
Is that Jews who identify as LGBT don’t feel as alienated from their faith as those raised in Catholic or Muslim homes, so LGBT Jews are more likely to continue to identify as Jewish instead of running from religion? Perhaps.
It is that LGBT identified non-Jews see the affirming aspects of Judaism and become Jews-by-Choice? Perhaps.
But, the “why” isn’t as important as the “how.”
How can we make the Jewish community as welcoming and affirming of LGBT Jews as possible? How can such Jews feel valued? How can we ensure that LGBT Jews feel counted?
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Counting the T
No formal study of transgender and transsexual people has yet been conducted, so estimates of the size of this community are qualitative (e.g., 1: 1,500 live births results in some variety of ambiguous genitalia [ISNA. ;]http://www.isna.org/articles/ambivalent_medicine]; 1: 2500 men has a sex change operation [Lynn Conway ;]http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html]; 3 million transgender people in the US [NCTE: ]http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=265].
The San Francisco Bay area has one of the largest concentrations of transgender people in the world. While no statistics exist for the transgender population, and transgender Jewish converts are twice as likely to remain uncounted, (since stigma is attached to self disclosure of conversion as well as sex and/or gender change), anecdotal evidence suggests that a disproportionately large number of transpersons choose either to convert (or renew their connection) to Judaism.
Likewise, estimates of the size of the Bay Area Jewish transgender community are anecdotal (e.g., 40 transgender people attended a Shabbat service commemorating the Transgender Day of Remembrance in 2009 at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in SF while 15 attended a similar service in the East Bay; 8 transpeople attended the first meeting of the East Bay Transgender Chevra in Nov 09). The number of gender variant people – people who do not undertake any hormonal or surgical procedures, but nevertheless live some or all of the time outside of the gender they were assigned at birth, is ten to fifty times higher than the number of people who undertake any steps to change sex.
This is a great comment, Noach. Thanks for adding this information. Researchers are working on quantitative ways to measure the transgender population, but these qualitative studies are useful. Unfortunately, we rely on statistics and numbers too often in our work.
And, your experiences in the Bay Area are also helpful in providing context for the importance of inclusive Judaism for LGB and T people.
When a transgender person decides on conversion, is there any halacha which says he/she must be converted as the person he/she was born, not in the new identity?
And if the conversion comes during the transition but before the final surgery, which identity drives the conversion?
Mr Lynch
Great question. Many factors to consider in responding.
Let me know if I may be of further assistance. This is not the final word on the subject, but an initial foray. It is an attempt to collect various halachic and non-halachic approaches into one response. The goal is compassionate and humane concern for individuals.
Careful attention is paid to the operative status of the transsexual, and to differentiating the terms “transsexual” (a person who changes sex and intends to have Sex Reassignment Surgery) from “transgender” (a person who may or may not change sex, but whose gender identity is different from the gender usually attributed to a body’s birth sex, i.e, a man who expresses a female gender identity, a woman who expresses a male gender identity, a woman who expresses an ambiguous or shifting gender identity that might be sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine, etc.)
Outside of the halachic Jewish world, given a sensitive, educated and aware rabbi or ritual leader, transgender persons may convert in the gender that feels most comfortable to them, in responsible and ethical negotiation with their community, including genders outside the male/female binary. The rabbi and the person converting should converse very carefully about the gender issues involved, and negotiate various sensitivities, options and positions, as each transgender person might come to a different conclusion about gender identity, and (in some cases) fluctuation of gender identity over the course of a lifetime might be written into the convert’s life plan. Especially, of course, the procedures of the conversion and of future lifecycle events (adult b’nei mitzvah, single life, marriage, partnership or other family constellation, and traditional burial considerations) should be discussed as part of the study period before conversion.
In that time, consideration is made for dealing with various gendered obstacles in the conversion process (i.e.,
-deciding a strategy for the mikvah,
-obtaining a witness of the same gender,
-determining whether and what form circumcision/hatafat dam brit should take,
-determining which familial designation or other alternative to choose (ben, bat, m’beit)
-considering the gender norms of the congregation/community and how/if/when to gently introduce the transgender person’s status to the community if and when such an introduction might be necessary or desired).
Outside the halachic world, many options for livable transsexual and transgender lives are possible. In the halachic world the options are slightly more limited.
Orthodox. Post-op transsexual. Majority opinion. Strict interpretation: A transsexual should convert in the birth sex because Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) does not change the sex of the body. Of course, the Torah prohibits cross-dressing, rendering oneself sterile, and mutilating one’s genitals; today such desires are viewed by the Orthodox world as a sign of mental illness, and corrective therapy would be advised. While I can envision a person undergoing conversion under this scenario, it seems quite challenging to think of living this person’s life as an Orthodox Jew, prohibited from transitioning, prohibited even as a last resort, to save a life. Luckily, there is a minority opinion that provides an alternative for life.
Orthodox. Post-op transsexual. Minority opinion.
Based on the minority opinion of R Waldenberg (Tzitz Eliezer), who claims that a post operative transsexual belongs to the sex into which s/he transitioned, the person should convert as the “new” sex. E.g., a post-op Female To Male (FTM) Transsexual should convert as a man; a post-op Male To Female (MTF) should convert as a woman.
Conservative/Masorti.
Mayer Rabinowitz (2003) agrees that SRS does change a person’s sex, and claims that halacha is based on the appearance (and not the functionality) of the external genitalia. He also claims that conversion and transition both change God’s creation: “Those who claim that we can not change God’s creation are closing their eyes to conversion, and to transplants as well as many other medical procedures which in fact do change God’s creation. If we were to claim that sex change is prohibited on these grounds, we would have to prohibit many medical procedures as well.”
So for Conservative/Masorti transsexuals, after SRS one may convert as the “new” sex. Before SRS, unfortunately, halacha is silent.
Sadly, neither Orthodox nor Conservative halacha concern themselves with the status of persons who have not had SRS, and who are unable or unwilling to undergo SRS for any number of reasons (including prohibitive cost, availability of qualified surgeons, surgical risk, surgical failure, loss of sexual functioning, post-operative complications, appearance and functionality of the post-surgical neo-phallus or vagnioplasty.)
Nor does halacha consider the status of persons who are male or female but whose gender identity is incongruent with their sex. A case could be made based to support bodies that have the appearance of dual-sex or ambiguous-sex, based on an extrapolation of legal texts concerning the dual-sex Androgynos and of the unknown-but-ultimately-knowable sex of the tumtum.
Noach
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
http://www.jewishtransitions.org
I typed a long response to Joseph Lynch’s question several days ago, and when I clicked the “submit comment” button, a message came back saying the server interpreted my comment as spam, and that the message would have to be moderated.
Can whoever moderates these comments (if anyone) check in your spam filter and see if that comment got caught in it? I unfortunately have no copy of the remarks I made, and would rather not re-do the work.
Thanks!
Thank you, Noach, for such a complete review of the situation. Although not in the group who is actually faced with this situation, this kind of asking the unusual and getting such an erudite response is one of the things I most love about being Jewish. Thanks again.