An Other Sex 2007 Abstracts

The experience of aging for elderly gay men: the movement between the internal and external worlds Amiran Waldmann, Clinical social worker, Mental Health Center, Rishon-Lezion Understanding the meaning of aging as it is perceived and experienced by elderly homosexuals in Israel is the theme of this qualitative research. Literature points at the fact that the population of the elderly homosexuals suffers from exclusion and stigmas by elderly heterosexuals and at times also by the young men in the homosexual community. Findings from previous researches, mostly quantitative, indicated that elderly homosexuals cope with unique difficulties in their old age and among them are: difficulty in being part of the young homosexual community, lack of familial support, fear of illness and the need for public services and a high sensation of hostility from their environment. These researches focused mainly on the population of elderly homosexual whose sexual inclination is open while the experience of aging among elderly homosexuals who did not expose their sexual inclinations or of those living "out of the closet" but are not active within the homosexual-lesbian community – has hardly been researched. The present research aims to shed a light, even if a preliminary one, on the experience and the perception of aging among elderly homosexuals who did not expose their sexual inclination. As far as it is known, this research is first of its kind which is held among elderly homosexuals in Israel. The aim of the present research is to learn, through the elderly themselves and based on phenomenological methodology including semi-structured in depth interviews, about their world, perceptions , experiences and the manner in which elderly homosexuals grasp and perceive their aging within the Israeli society. The population in this research included ten elderly homosexual between the ages of 72 and 80; some of them (two) exposed their sexual inclination, others (six) were exposed and others (two) neither exposed their sexual inclination nor were exposed. The population of the research was chosen through the data base of "The Association for the Protection of the Rights of the Individual" acting on behalf of homosexuals, lesbians, the bi-sexual and the transgender as well as based on the "Snowball Sampling". The findings of the research pointed out four major themes that preoccupy the elderly homosexuals: the conflict between acceptance of the old age and its denial; difficulties in getting older and the coping modes with them; the familial and social relationships of the elderly homosexuals and homosexuality and the attitude towards it all along the years. The conclusions of the research were: (1) There is more similarity than difference between the aging process of the homosexual elderly and that of the heterosexual elderly (2) the elderly find it difficult to accept their old age but they do not reject the changes bound by the actual aging process (3) there are difficulties in the familial and social relationships of the elderly and their source is usually linked with their sexual inclination and seldom with their aging (4) the concept "coming out of the closet" as it appears in professional literature does not correlate with the actual process of coming out of the closet of the interviewees (5) the two positions of the experience which characterize the elderly with regard to their sexual inclination, also characterize them regarding the manner in which they perceive and grasp themselves in the way they carry on with their life (6) the interviewees are unable to perceive and grasp their homosexuality in the future, as opposed to the aging process per se which they were able to perceive. The projections of the research regarding sequel researches as well as practice pointed at the importance for the patients regarding the comprehension of their intrinsic life as well as past experiences which the elderly went through and which shaped the manner in which they perceived and grasped themselves and their aging process. The importance in building a support system, alternative to the family, integrating enhancement of the support from the elderly homosexual community as well as the receipt of support from the young homosexual community, coping with the internalized prejudices, fears and homophobia within it and raising the awareness among the young ones in the community to the aging processes which are unique for the homosexuals. In addition, the importance in building care services was brought up; services which on the one hand would be unique for this population and on the other hand would not be disconnected and different from the ones for the elderly heterosexual community.

Invisible teachers: gay and lesbian teachers in Israeli high-schools Hagit Ashur-Efron, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, School of Education, Department of Sociology of Education This lecture is based on a research being held in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (MA Studies), in the department of Sociology of Education, under the guidance of Prof. Tamar Rapoport. This research focuses on gay and lesbian teachers in the public post-primary education system in Israel. The research examines the meaning of being a gay or a lesbian teacher in a public high school, a meaning which reveals the connection between sexuality, gender and education in the school's scope. School is a main institution of socialization for the desired norms in society. Teachers are supposed to represent the hegemonic perception of society and transfer it to the next generation. This research, which focuses on teachers perceived as "different" in regards to sexuality, might reveal the ways through which schools reproduce normative sexuality and gender, and also might point on change processes. This group, of gay and lesbian teachers, was subject to few researches, following the fight for the gay and lesbian community's visibility, and researches dealing with politics of identities. This is a first-of-its-kind research in Israel on this subject, as far as I know, and it might reveal things not only on this group, but also on the way heterosexual sexuality is reproduced in schools as the transparent, normative and obvious sexuality. I named the research "Invisible Teachers" for the reason that in contrary to other minority identities – cultural, national or religious – gay and lesbian teachers do not appear different on the outside, and are sometimes "passed" as heterosexuals. The ability to "pass" results from the normative assumption in school and in the social system that everyone is heterosexual. This fact confronts these teachers with the main question – should they "come out of the closet" at school and reveal the fact that they are gay or lesbian? Who should they tell? Can people know about it without them saying anything? Will it be accepted and how? School, as a place where they see but cannot be seen, is therefore a scope of power – enabling them to see without being seen, to play and maneuver between identities, but coincidentally, the school is the scope where they are strangers and different. In my research I focus in post-primary schools, since this is when the school officially begins discussing sexuality using the Sexual Education lessons. The pedagogic occupation of the adolescents' sexuality sharpens the sexuality issue and sharpens the dilemmas of the teachers in this research. The way in which the normative sexuality in schools is created is tightly linked to the creation process of normative gender behaviors in school (e.g., how boys should behave comparing to girls, etc.). The research is based on interviews with about twenty (20) male and female teachers, and on observations in a support group for gay and lesbian teachers. During my lecture, I will introduce three main themes: The difficulty of sexual identity in the teacher's work; the closet as a main issue in the experience of teachers, reinforcing the dichotomy of the perception of sexuality; the encounter of those teachers with gay and lesbian students, which challenges the standard "working relations" between teachers and students.

Gay parenthood narratives, fantasies & denials David Michaeli In recent years many gays and lesbians are having babies. Many more are occupied with this issue and place the desire for a child as a central topic in their lives. The trivial biological constraints imply complex solutions for realizing gay and lesbian parenting. Gays and lesbians on the path to parenthood, with whatever solution they pursue, are required to mold or to update their beliefs and perceptions regarding their identity of the self, their relationships with others and their lifestyle. Questions such as “What is the place my child will hold in my life?” What is the role of fatherhood versus role of motherhood?” come up often. A gay man or a lesbian woman living with a partner has to face the question whether parenthood will become an integral part of the couple or disjoint from it. This dilemma determines the future role the partner, and in a wider scope it this brings up a choice between proud gay & lesbian identity and a straight family approach. They also need to confront new homophobic issues, previously unknown to them, touching on sensitive issues (“we don’t have a problem with gay partnership, but why make a child miserable with having to live in two homes?”) However, introspection and free choice cannot be exclusive factors for shaping the narrative, due to the tight interaction with society and it’s establishments. While Israeli citizens may defend their partnership through contracts, wills, insurance policies, thus gaining the courts protection, this is hardly the case regarding parenting. Courts are obliged to examine the child’s best interest, with varying level of weight given to the parent’s wishes. Organizations that help matching gays to single women or lesbian couples for parenting purposes, mainly “Horut Acheret” (alternative parenting) are effective agents for promoting perceptions in society in general, and among gays and lesbians in particular. Therefore, it is not surprising that the narratives of so many prospective parents are broken; full of contradictions and include defenses against the sense of compromise. For example: two women are sitting in a restaurant with their baby, and when asked: “whose baby this?” one answers: “ours” while the other answers: “mine”. This talk is an invitation to critical analysis of narratives of gays and lesbians who are either parents or would like to become one, and analysis of discourse of relevant institutions. We shall listen to the complex messages that are being sent to gays and lesbians, and the strategies adopted for dealing with those complexities. This talk will focus on the way that “Horut Acheret” presents itself, the avant-garde wrappings of a conservative content, and the influence of this organization’s ideology on the discourse. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful after all?": How does the personal experience of a transgender adolescent corresponds to queer theory? Adi Ronen, the Center for Financial and Money Market Studies Dr. Ilana Berger, the Israeli Center for Human Sexuality and Gender Identity This presentation is a dialogue between Adi, a trans man, and Ilana Berger, a therapist in the field of sexuality and gender identity. It will focus on the discourse between the personal and the theoretical aspects of sexuality and gender in adolescence. We will attempt to show through issues such as sexuality and body image that body representation and sexuality are means to analyze everyday life in the "gender theater" of Adi. It is the ongoing processes that involve love, hate, annihilation, isolation and constant creation of oneself in relation to the other. Questions of identity vis-a -vi performance, and the use of the body as the main agent for the intrapsychic, interpersonal and theirs boundaries will occupy the center stage of this presentation. The language and experiences regarding body, self perception, consciousness, sexual desire and the avoidance/use of sexual behavior will be used as examples for biological, psychological, cultural and social mechanisms of control and oppression on the individual adolescent. Gayle Rubin, wrote that "sexuality has it's own internal politics, injustice and forms of oppression". We will attempt to uncover the role of social institutions and challenge the basic myths about sex gender and sexuality, as well as, suggest the existence of trangender and transsexual identities as part of the queer practices. The discussion will offer a new understanding of the interchange between identity and "doing gender" that will allow the individual to fully experience oneself and enable to resist falling into the trap of essentialism.

White undershirt: the butch body and the other Efrat Rotem , Department of Literature, Tel Aviv University As a butch woman, my life is rapt with my attempts to contain my imagined masculine body within my physical body. In my paper, I would like to explore the way in which I relate to my other out of my lesbian, “masculine”, butch body. Who is that other? Is it the fem, is it a man to whom I am related, a brother or a father? My attempt to delve into this question will be based on Luce Irigary’s ethical offer, drawing on Judith Butler’s critique of Western culture's relation to be human, and backed by Joan Nestle’s belief in the autobiographical story. Irigary (2001) criticizes the subject's journey in search for identity in Western culture, arguing that the resultant identity is not fluid or changeable, but static. Irigary resents the “body-soul” dichotomy and its corresponding equivalent in ideology and gender. In her essay, she constructs an ethical alternative of a return to the body made possible thanks to a subjective journey with a concrete other, which has a body. This ethics is based on difference rather than identity; it emerges out of dialogue with a living other. Irigary contends that the ultimate other belongs to the other gender, the one that is not my own. I will try to develop this line of argumentation, currently confined to dialogue between heterosexual men and women, employing it to establish a dialogue with my “ultimate other” as a butch lesbian. This dialogue will be inspired by the writings of Judith Butler (2004). According to Butler, if the body of the fem, the butch and the transgender will be recognized as entirely human, the body would no longer be conceived of as a static unchanging fact. Like Irigary, whose ethics is entrenched in the body, Butler also recognizes the revolutionary power that lies in the body of sexual others, as opposed to the dominant social conception, which turns its back on the possibility of gender fluidity. My personal story will be backed by the writings of author Joan Nestle (1998), who views lesbian autobiography as history, and believes that history inheres in the pain and pleasure of the body. I will rely on the unique story of my butch body in order to dialogue with an other. As mentioned, this other could, among other alternatives, be a man, a feminine lesbian, or a fem. I will presence the story of my human body, the body of a butch, against the backdrop of different other types, such as a fem partner or the men in my family, including my two brothers, whose bodies are a variation of my own body.

"It will all blow over by your wedding day": Mizrachiyut from a lesbian perspective Yael Mishali, the Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University In this lecture I will examine what could be the meanings of ethnic origin in the shaping of sexuality and sexual identity in Israel. I will consider the accessibility of "Mizrachiyot" (Arab-Jewish Women) to possibilities of sexuality, and the ways in which belonging to an ethnic minority designs the feminine gender role and sexuality. I will explore the relations between the cultural representation of "Mizrachiyot" and their sexuality, and their ability to choose a lesbian identity. On the one hand, I will stress the effects of the image of "Mizrachiyot" on the choice to come out of the closet. On the other hand, I will ask if the possibility not to come out of the closet is an actual option for "Mizrachiyot" who are expected to get married at a young age. I will try to show that, mostly, "Mizrachiyot" will be forced to come out of the closet in order to justify being "single". I will present a paradox: sexuality is a Taboo in the family of "Mizrachiyot", but the family's expectation to start a family in a relatively young age causes the family to bring up the subject. In this sense, I will give an account for the place of language in the discourse on sexuality inside the family of "Mizrachiyot". Except for the basic difficulty of the parents to master the hegemonic language (Hebrew), even the alternative discourses, like the feminist or queer discourses, which serve to define the identity, function as additional foreign languages for the family. I will claim that, as a result of their marginal status in the Israeli society, "Mizrachim" are building a family according to a conservative model that serves as mechanism of defense that is immune to additional oppression. Accordingly, I will claim that coming out of the closet in the family of "Mizrachiyot" is seen as coming up against the family and what it stands for. I will think about the double oppression that lesbians who are also "Mizrachiyot" deal with: The heterosexist oppression of the family and the ethnocentric oppression of the queer community. I will try to examine if there is a place stored for "Mizrachiyot" in the masculine and white queer identity. I will offer that the ethnic perversion can enable practices that challenge the normative model. For example, I will claim that "Mizrachiyot" that do Pass (passing) as "Ashkenaziyot" (Israeli European-American Women) challenge the white hierarchy when they adopt successfully the Semblance of "the woman" or the "the intellectual" voice. My assertion will be that the way in which "Mizrachiyot" pass as "Ashkenaziyot", either by external characteristics or style of speech, is parallel to the way in which butches pass as men or femmes pass as women. In each case, the normative role is performed by someone who is inherently not “compatible” for the job. To this end I will examine how texts that focus on "Mizrachiyot" deals with sexuality; for example texts of: Henriette Dahan-Kalev, Ella Shohat and Pnina Motzafi-Haller. I will also try to deduce, as much as possible, from texts that deal with sexuality of black or Mexican women; for example texts of: Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua. The lecture will combine personal narrative in order to avoid the ethnic or sexual essentialism, by placing the text as one possible experience. Notes for the metaphysics of the Israeli ID card Nora Grinberg, transsexual and transgender rights activist Identities running beyond and against the "genitals determine gender" dictum have no existence in the heteronormative discourse. As far as the "normals" are concerned, they float about in cognitive limbo. The encounter of the heterocentric believer with real human beings whose very existence belies their essentialist dogma, the irruption of these beings into the social space, their demand of a share of it, throw the "normals" into the insecure border areas of their constructed reality, imposing an unbearable psychological burden on them. In this lecture I show how the subversion of legitimate knowledge causes "normal" people, totally invested in the heteronormative paradigm of gender, to retreat into the safety of the law as a guarantee of the stability of their world. I analyze three cases I was involved with as a transsexual and transgender rights activist. All three cases revolve around the ID card. In all cases, three officials were requested by pre-op transsexual people to perform a certain action. In all three cases the transsexual and transgender identity of the requesters was manifest. All three live openly and permanently in their preferred identity. All three "pass" perfectly. Two of them stand before sex reassignment surgery at the Shiba hospital. The actions required play on a symbolic level; they do not involve a substantive change in the requesters' social status (such as, for example, if they were to ask to be married to a person registered with their same official sex). The action required concerns the issuance of documents using the grammatical gender appropriate for the requester's identity1. In all cases, the request is denied citing the sex marker in the ID as the reason for a putative legal prohibition or impediment. The argument is raised that when talking informally, it is permissible to refer to trans people as they wish, but when it comes to a written, official statement, one has to stick to the "facts"; one cannot, as one of the officials puts it, "write something that is not true". That it can be easily shown that there is no such prohibition only emphasizes the dissonance evinced by the officials' stances. One feels as if these people renounced their own agency and turned an imploring gaze to an external power who is expected to ensure the continued stability of the world. The ID card becomes here the repository of a higher truth, a truth that cannot be confounded or controverted by the actual fact of the person standing before the official. The official "knows" what the truth should be and where it is to be found: in the ID card. The official "knows" that there is no such thing as a man with female genitalia or a woman with a male sex. This knowledge is both a prohibition and a promise, like in Kafka's Before The Law: some day the individual may meet the conditions for acceptance into the Law. Accepted knowledge, sanctioned in social practices that vouch for the continuity and safety of the world, is a set of disciplinary rules deeply ingrained in the individual's psyche. The ID card turns into what Derrida calls "the law before whom we are mystified and justified". It becomes the embodiment of the Law, a transcendental imperative, both a Truth and an ethical essence The unbearable dissonance caused by the encounter with the pre-op transsexual and transgender person has thrown the heteronormative picture of reality into disarray. The "normal" individual's ensuing cognitive chaos can only be averted by resorting to

Hebrew is, to a far greater extent than English, a gendered language, with feminine and masculine 1 .verbs and adjectives an external prohibition, to enshrined Law. The Law is the ID card, of course: the testimony, guarantee and confirmation of the official doctrine. For this to happen, the ID must undergo a metaleptic process whereby it becomes the referent of an immanent Truth. The disciplinary character of gender performance, the power of gender knowledge as a regulatory set of practices, is part of the daily experience of transsexual and transgender people, an experience that is completely invisible for the "normals". When trans people attempt to cross the border line, to enter the Law, the unperceived barriers of heteronormative ideology close in. The Law is then shown to be the dividing line between inside and outside, between legitimate existence and exclusion. No wonder, then, that for transgender and transsexual people, the ID card –the sex marker in it- becomes the target of aspirations. As hapless inhabitants of a prohibited existential space, trans people are fully aware of the ID card's gatekeeping power, of its ability to grant entrance into the lawful existential precinct. But is the ID really the gatekeeper? Or is it just one of many locks, one that can be easily replaced? The question must remain open, just as gendered knowledge is constantly negotiated, and the production of power never ceases.

From shame to transgender: A narrative of gendered development Effi Ziv, the Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University My study deals with transgender identities and queer gender identifications as expressions of the individuation of identity under an oppressive discursive regime that forces subjects into a binary gender classification. Expressions such as these are primarily examined through shame as a cultural site of transgender subjectivity. It is shame that interpolates the individual within a gender regime, while at the same time serving as a basis for resisting binary models of gender. I suggest disentangling the social and clinical agreement regarding the existence both of a dichotomy between dysphorian or pathological gender and “normal” gender, as well as the conception of gender development as linear and universal, as many psychoanalytic texts tend to assume. Central to the gender discourse, I maintain, stands the experience of shame. Thus, I argue, the moment identity is gendered, it is also loaded with the experience of shame, and is forged through an on going dialogue with it. To be sure, shame is first and foremost the mark of the hegemony. It is the shepherd that guides the gendered subject into the gendered herd. In other words, I argue that the gender system is based on shame as a central interpolative device. Nevertheless, shame is not only a subjugating mechanism; indeed, it provides the subject with the opportunity for dialectical relations characterized by a tension between subjugation and action, between the withholding of recognition and recognition, between the possibility of constructing a subjectivity and the threat that it will be dismantled. This leads to my final argument, namely, that transgender identifications can be read as expressions of resistance to the subjugating activities of shame. The transgender subject declares his/her opposition to the dominant gender discourse at very moment that he overcomes the subjugating effect of shame. If the clinical and social literature pathologizes transgenderism, casting off the shame enables a process of individuation and agency.

“Speech creates a kind of commitment”: Transgender in Hebrew Orit Bershtling , Gender Studies Program, Bar Ilan University This research examines a small and unique group, the transgender community, that until now has not recived much attention from the Israeli academic field. This is a qualitative research, that follows 17 interviews with several community members. It focuses on one aspect, experienced by the interviewees as a significant and influential variable on the process of establishing their identity. That being the Hebrew language, which underlines with force the gender of its speakers, and therefore collides with the world of people who wish to change their sex or exhibit ambiguity toward the two genders as we know them (Moriel, 1998;227). The issues discussed here deal with the different contexts which increase the conflict between the Hebrew language and "the transgender identity". Additionally, I will examine speech practices utilised to moderate that conflict and constitute ways of self expression, display a desirable identity and struggle for legitimate representation in Israeli society. Transgender people do not meet the conditions of the binary division of Hebrew language and must daily confront with the ideology embaded in it and with the ”reality” designed by it (Bing & Bergvall, 1996;2). The inability to use language that does not refer to gender, often leaves the members of the community with no appropriate means to express their identity, describe their world or engage in a dialogue compatible with their self-perception. Periodicals or Internet forums of the community are flooded with discussions and arguments about the limitation of language and the preferred names, word-coining and terms of adress that help loosen the chains of language (Kulick,1999;610- 611). Transgender people demonstrate linguistic creativity that demands attention and research. They prove that language can be changed and interrupted (Derrida, 1977;189; Eckert & Mcconnell-Ginet, 2003;55), help us to expose the role of language and discourse in shaping a "reality" that is founded on universal rules apparently suitable for all (Kessler & Mckenna, 2000;4). This research tries to present the language of these exceptional speakers. It deals with the characters and projections of concrete situations that cause conflict in relation to language. It describes the experience of “being outdise of language,” the thoughts and feelings that rise when using a language that does not embody self perception, as well as the speech practices chosen by the interviewees to compensate for these experiences. The process of the formation of sub-language and its negotiations with dominant Hebrew language are analyzed. By sub-language I refer to manipulations on syntax or grammatical rules, playing with gender marks, using word-coining, names or metaphors that together lend meaning to the experience of the speakers. The sub- language of transgender people establishes alternative and positive representations instead of the hegemonic representations of ordinary language and constitutes a struggling strategy for their identity (Kulick, 1999;610- 611). Bodies that rebel against gender boundaries Rauda Morcos, Aswat – Palestinian Gay Women Ghada, Intersex support group Samira, Aswat – Palestinian Gay Women Eli Eliahu, Achoti movement Dorit Abramovitch, School of art, society and culture, Sapir College

In a panel that will start with the Palestinian queer voices and then move on to the Jewish ones, as to assert a practice opposite to the normal one, the participants will talk about their rebel bodies, in various ways, forms and scopes; nothing will be united, without one language, without one voice. Transgenders without gender boundaries, without straight lines, with long unlasting scale of suffering and joy that derive from bodies that do not accepts the gender norms. Beauty and the beautiful girlfriend, and where is the beast? David Lynch, Jean Cocteau, and psychoanalysis Dr. Idit Alphandary, the Literature Department and NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program, Tel Aviv University The Inauspicious Bond of Desire and the Will-to-Power in David Lynch, Jean Cocteau, and Psychoanalysis Mulholland Drive (2001) is about making a movie in Hollywood, and thus it primarily depicts either dreaming or deception. I will argue that Hollywood makes movies that influence the viewer in the same way that the dream as wish-fulfillment affects the dreamer: these visual presentations or masquerades are very satisfying. At the same time, movies are deceptive; they show or call into being objects that do not exist in reality. In this sense movies differ from dreams, as although dreams distort reality, dreaming is an activity that returns to existence elements that were repressed by the conscious mind. According to Freud the conscious mind represses events that recall pleasure or desire inherent in daily living. David Lynch brings to the fore the desire repressed in the unconscious mind and creates Mulholland Drive, a movie in which— I would like to argue—repressed desire instigates happening and alters people and personalities each time it comes in touch with the surface of reality. Dreaming changes the lives that appear on the screen, but it alters moviemaking too. Mulholland Drive evokes—I would like to suggest—Jean Cocteau's, La Belle et la bête (1946). Cocteau described an amorous encounter between Belle and the beast. Lynch portrays sexual desire between two beautiful actresses (Naomi Watts and Laura Harring) who need not hide from humanity in order to be in love and act on lesbian desires. And yet the beast is always present—unlike the one which in Cocteau's film resides in seclusion—the gaze of Lynch's beast pervades back allies in Los Angeles or the unconscious mind. This ugly, perverted human form slowly becomes relevant to the vision of beauty and to the relationship of these female lovers. As I wind up the paper I show that in Cocteau's film reality is subject to the tyranny of convention, and thus love between Belle and the beast survives uniquely as the beast metamorphoses and becomes a beautiful prince. In Lynch's film lesbian love is perfectly legitimate and yet transcendental beauty is defaced because the vagaries of desire institute the transcendence of the beast. I conclude my paper by saying that although in Lynch's universe desire is the motor that propels activity and creativity, when Betty and Camilla relate desire with the will-to-power they do not destroy conventional thinking, but simply institute a world in which true love repeatedly elides them.

The transgendered subject of fantasy: The Body Beautiful by Ngozi Onwurah Sivan Shtang, Hermeneutics Studies Program, Bar-Ilan University The Body Beautiful (1991), the half autobiographical movie of the nigerian born british director Ngozi Onwurah, deals with the separation experience of a feminine "diasphoric subject" (Naficy), through its body representations. The movie performs a rip being created between a white woman, breast cancer patient Medge Onwurah's mother) and her black daughter who works in modeling, concerning the doubled oppression are subalterned to the colonial oppression and the patriarchal oppression, which signal their location through the dominant- hegemonic fantasy of western white society: The young black woman as an exotic object of desire to the aesthetic glance. And the older white woman as lacking object of research to the clinical glance. The lecture will ask to show how through creating a fantasy of transgendered and cross-racial relationships the mother and daughter produce one hybrid (Bhabha) subject-disposition. At this disposition both woman challenge the oedipal- patriarchal and racial-colonial glance through rewriting relations of kinship, age, sex and especially - race, sexuality and gender relations to which they are subjugated. The movie starts and ends in a cinematic convention of a 'romantic-heterosexual- bed scene', but the roles of the lovers are filled by the mother and daughter. The meaning of the frame scene of the movie as a fantasy is created by a "original fantasy" (Laplanche, Pontalis) which appears at its center. The daughter takes the place of the father - the young black man who appears in the original fantasy as a lover who grants recognition to the old breast-less mother. By doing so she performs and enacts a transgender and cross-racial role, as expresses Susan Stryker. The establishment of the transgender subject of fantasy in The Body Beautiful forms an active interfering in constructing historical symbolic narratives - personal and collective. The diasphoric subject of race, sexuality and gender in The Body Beautiful disrupts the simultaneity and homogeneity of the imagined national community (Anderson). The colonial-oedipal demand, which seeks to settle the Gender dysphoria (the breast-less woman demanded back to a 'gendered homeland'), the sexist (The father-less daughter being demanded to find a replacement) and racial (The daughter is demanded to be separated from her mother) dysphoria, and to coordinate between the structure of the subjective psyche (superego, ego, id), the family structure (father, mother, child) and the national state (legislative, judicial, executive) - being disrupted by an opposing of acting a scenario of transgendered and cross-racial situational desire (Hale) between mother and daughter.

Her-ethics: Love-mother-lesbian Tal Levin, the Philosophy Department, Tel-Aviv Unuveristy This paper is asking to examine the ways in which the psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva draws the out lines of the Lesbian Identity, and how those come across with one of the main characters of her writing – the Mother. In the moment of birth, Kristeva claims, the women-giving birth becomes her mother – more open to psychosis and more open to her own homosexuality. Starting in the pregnancy, threw the delivery and in the actual motherhood, the maternal body is divided, split and connected in a relation-of- love to an "Other". This "Other" is simultaneously a part of him and his negation. Like the one about motherhood, the discussion around sexuality includes for Kristeva, a wide range of discourses and types of speech. She goes threw the private speech, the simple and the direct, the autobiographical, the introspective - and also - the metaphorical, the poetic, the philosophical and the ethical. In this complicated frame- work, I would like to look at the interactions between the maternal body and language, birth and female-homosexuality, and between the later and culture on the one hand and psychosis on the other hand. Those relationships are wrapped-up in another relationship – which would serve as this paper's main focus – the Mother- Daughter relationship. A Central part in my interpretation is dedicated to Judith Butler's critique on Kristeva's "Body Politics". Among other arguments, Butler claims that the developmental and psychic structure that Kristeva presents, leaves the maternal body (the "semiotic") under the law-of-the-father's (the "symbolic") control. However, unlike the maternal body that have a place in the "symbolic" through the poetic language (and thus not an expression of psychosis), the female-homosexuality remains outside the boundaries of culture as a disorder. Considering Butler's argument, I would like to pose another possible interpretation to Kristeva's discussion. In this case the mother-daughter relationship is read as a Lesbian-love-relationship. This bond is a necessary ground for the daughter in order for her to become a mother herself. Motherhood than is re-interpreted as an ethical position (and not necessarily a biological or social duty), expressing more than anything the ability to love and acknowledge an "Other". In other words, in order for me to become a mother – I have to make a bond-of-marriage and a bond-of-love with my mother. The paper will include references to relevant parts from Kristeav's writings, Butler's writing and other interpretations. Also, I'll include some personal writing that was born from and during the reading.English name and affiliation Little closet on the prairie: Calamity Jane and the Wild West Dr. Sandra Meiri, the Open University of Israel David Butler's musical version of Calamity Jane is a comedy of errors that defies the range of female stereotypes of the Western (mother, saloon girl, prostitute, school teacher) by portraying a tomboy who offers both a different sort of gender (in Halberstam's terminology: "female masculinity") and a different sort of erotic pleasure. To the end of the film the heroine's feminization is constantly undermined by her attraction to what the Western has conventionally attributed to male heroes (outdoor space, freedom, fighting Indians, and so forth) and to Katie, formulating a lesbian subtext to which Eric Savoy ingeniously refers as "little closet on the prairie." According to Savoy, the film "does" the lesbian in order to undo her cultural stereotyping, her excessive marking (the exaggerations of butch-femme role-playing in the 1950s).

Israel needs therapy: Yadin’s character in the television series BeTipul (In Therapy) Itay Harlap, Department of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University, and The Division for Cinema and Television Arts, Sapir Academic College In August 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, as an air of failure was beginning to be felt in public discourse, Ari Shavit wrote a column whose title was “What’s Happened to Us?” He asked how we have reached such a state of weakness and his answer was clear: “a simple thing happened: we have been tainted with political correctness. The political correctness that has taken over Israeli discourse and Israeli consciousness in the last generation has been completely disconnected from the Israeli situation […]. Because the IDF has been equated with an occupying army – not an army which also defends feminists, homo-lesbians, and any other minority group which can only exist in a free society – it has been met with disagreement, discarded, and turned away from [….] Force has been identified with fascism. The old Israeli masculinity has been publicly denounced.” A few months earlier that same year very similar things were said by a fictional television character talking not about the entire country but about one person, his son. Near the end of the serial BeTipul [In Therapy], after Yadin (an Air Force pilot who was in therapy after having killed innocent Palestinians) dies in a curious plane accident, his father Menahem talks to his son’s analyst. He asks if the rumors that his son was gay are true. The psychologist does not give him a definite answer, but explains that during the therapy certain matters were revealed that required substantial courage to expose. At this stage, the father begins a monologue in which he claims that all of these things are perhaps good for regular people, but not for pilots, who must always be focused. Useless thoughts, like “do I love my wife? Am I gay?’ can lead to their making mistakes. It seems that Yadin, according to the father, has paid a very high price for these thoughts – not just any thoughts but thoughts about femininity (his father claims he wasn’t man enough) and sexuality; it seems that for a country in war and a man flying a plane such “peripheral” matters are not to be dealt with. They might crash. But the connections between Yadin, the dead pilot, and the state of Israel, in this serial are not limited to their ultimate and tragic fate. The serial weaves a whole array of similarities between Yadin’s identity and Israeli identity: his looks (he has blue eyes and a white streak across his hair, reminiscent of the Israeli flag), the requirement that he repress his feminine aspects (this should be read in connection with the historical studies by Boyarin and Gluzman on Zionism), as well as the force both use against Palestinians and the price ultimately paid for it. Moreover, the discourse surrounding the serial, the claim that it is “the best Israeli television series ever made” and the promo tagline (“Israel goes into therapy”) all make a substantial connection between the serial and Israeli identity, or at least avow to its attempt to present itself in this way. In my talk I will discuss the construction of Yadin’s character in the serial and its paratexts, particularly the correlations between Yadin and sexuality, nationality, occupation, repression and crashing.

"Dreaming is another kind of remembering": Trauma and fantasy in Walk on Water Raz Yosef, Department of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University This paper examines the relationship between trauma and fantasy in the memory of Holocaust second-generation as it is expressed in the Israeli film Walk on Water. The film is a Holocaust second-generation fantasy that endeavors to restage and repair the traumas that shaped the Israeli heterosexual male subjectivity by displacing them to a fantasmatic scene in an effort to dissimulate and suppress the loss. The fantasmatic restaging of the traumas enables the film to ensure their containment and imagined recovery and thus protects itself from the horror that these traumas evoke. The fantasmatic repression of the trauma ultimately serves in the film to reconstruct the normative Israeli masculinity and to reaffirm and perpetuate hegemonic sexual and national norms. "Deviant words": Homosexuality and defamation Hedi Viterbo, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University Thirteen years ago, Israeli basketball player Shimon Amsalem filed a slander suit concerning a journalistic article about The Gay Games which was published with the title "Amsalem isn't alone". This title was an implied reference to calls fans of rival teams used to shout at the plaintiff: "gay Amsalem". The court accepted the lawsuit and awarded the plaintiff the sum of 150,000 NIS. Similar lawsuits that have been filed in Israel since then include: a lawsuit by a doctor whose wife had called him "gay" in his private clinic in front of his patients; a lawsuit by a man whose friends spread a rumor that he had engaged in sexual intercourse with three "Niggers" (as they put it) and had drunk a teaspoon of their semen; and a lawsuit by a customer of a coffee shop who heard a waiter calling his name ("Amit") and then the name of another costumer ("Ronen") in a way that in the plaintiff's opinion created the word "Mitromem" – a Hebrew homophobic slur. In all of these cases, as in other cases, courts ruled that words such as "gay" are insulting and defamatory. What does the multiplicity of such cases indicate? What are the socio-legal meanings of such homophobic labels? How do such labels differ from and how do they resemble other labels such as labeling a Jewish person "Arab". Furthermore, what can be concluded from such cases about the ways homosexuality is understood and conceptualized in the Israeli legal discourse? Does ruling that "gay" is defamatory reduce and restrain discourses about homosexuality, or does the multiplicity of legal proceedings stimulate such discourses? My analysis of legal texts reveals that these two phenomenons coexist and even maintain each other: courts seem to find homosexuality difficult to address and therefore use evasive rhetorics; nonetheless, they mark homosexuality as a truth which is imperative to seek, by emphasizing the verity/falsity of the label "gay". Following an examination of the conceptualization of homosexuality in the legal discourse, doubts raise as to the common narrative of alleged positive changes in law's attitude towards gay people. What kind of change has taken place in law, considering that homosexuality is still perceived as shameful, secret, and an inversion of normative masculinity? What does ruling that homosexuality is defamatory indicate about current dominant perceptions in law towards homosexuality?

Who cares if it's a choice? Evaluating determinism as a platform for same-sex couple rights Hadar Aviram, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University One of the most common, and least reflected upon, arguments in the same-sex marriage debate pertains to the question whether sexual orientation is predetermined for the individual genetically or psychologically, or a lifestyle choice. Proponents of same-sex marriage often argue for equality based on a platform of determinism. Following Janet Halley's 1994 article on immutability, and reflecting upon the many socio-legal developments in queer politics and gay rights, this paper adopts a broader approach to the question of determinism as a platform for rights. Drawing from historical examples, mostly in the fields of criminal justice and mental health, the paper argues that deterministic approaches to human traits have often brought about reforms of rehabilitation and mercy, but seldom respect and legal rights. The paper also analyzes recent legislative and judicial developments in the US to show how determinism has affected decisions about decriminalization of sexual activity, employment discrimination, and same-sex marriage. The paper also examines the impact of determinism on the legal status of lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. It suggests substituting the reliance on determinism for a dialectic political agenda, divorced from etiology and genetics.

John Maynard Keynes and the economy of the closet Yehonatan Alsheh, the history school, Tel Aviv University, and the Political Science Department, the Israeli Open University John Maynard Keynes', probably the most prominent economist of the first half of the twentieth century and the architect of the international monetary system between 1945 and 1971, elegant and discreet homosexuality, was never discussed much. And in many ways rightly so – there isn't much to tell or discuss regarding it. Hence I don't wish to amend this lacuna in existing academic research, by unfolding Keynes' sexual habits but to briefly show that Keynes lived a very classic and standard closeted homosexual life, that were common to the upper classes of British society before World War One. But once Keynes closeted homosexuality is presented, I wish to try and diagnose a connection or an essential analogy between the epistemology of the closet and some epistemological deep structures that can be found in Keynes economical theories. One of Keynes fundamental theoretical revolutions was based on his claim that while money was regarded by the classic economists as a totally simple and transparent intermediate, it is actually very cloudy. Much like the social mechanism "Identity" that stands in the center of the epistemological structure of the closet, money is a very problematic and distorting referential. Keynes tried to establish a way in which money's problematic features are controlled and mastered by the state's monetary establishments and international monetary establishments - a way that resembles in many ways the closet. By Analyzing Keynes' attempts through the concept of the closet, one will not only have a completely different perception of Keynes (by now defeated) economical revolution but also a new way of utilizing the "discovery of the closet" to spheres that are not directly connected to Sexuality.