Use My Pronouns! Also, I Override The Wishes Of 75% Israeli Arabs By Calling Them ‘Palestinians’

by Louise Offerman, 2LBGTQIA+ activist

New York, June 22 – The time has come for more drastic action than before to help secure the safety and rights of non-cisheteronormative people. I have begun to demand that others refer to me as they/them and keep hounding them to do so until they acquiesce, because it is violence to refer to me as anything other than my chosen identity. In this I am inspired by other progressives who insist on calling the Arab citizens of the Jewish State “Palestinians” to help that group preserve the identity we westerns need them to assume, rather than the “Israeli Arab” or “Arab citizen of Israel” term that public opinion polls show that vast majority of them cite as their own identity term.

It is a simple matter of empathy and consideration. You have no right to impose your terminology and sensibilities on me and how I relate to the world. Our movement is even considering promoting legislation to mandate the use of preferred pronouns. That is how important this issue has become. If you refer to me as “him” – which I used to be – or “her” – which I also used to be – you are committing literal trans genocide. Also, we must only refer to those Arabs who hold Israeli passports, vote in Israeli elections, identify as Israeli citizens, want to remain Israeli citizens, and represent more than seven tenths of the country’s population, by a term that once only meant “Jews” but was repurposed, under Soviet influence, to refer to Arabs who rejected coexistence with Jews and now implies a desire to see Israel destroyed and replaced by another Arab state.

Do not tread on my identity! My identity, as reflected in my pronouns, speaks to who I am in the deepest sense, at least until I change my mind about it when it stops generating the attention I seek. Maybe the I will subsume my sense of self and value into the plight of Palestinian citizens of Israel, a moniker with which perhaps ten percent of Israeli Arabs agree reflects who they are.

Now more than ever, we must embrace the principle of decolonizing our spaces, which means not asserting our outsider understanding and preferences on the people of color who live elsewhere. That is why I insist we call all the Arabs in Israel and Palestine Palestinians, to reflect my desired vision of how things must work out there.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

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