Ain't I A Woman? | Joy Ladin | TEDxBeaconStreet
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- čas přidán 26. 06. 2024
- "What makes a woman?" That was the title of Elinor Burkett's NY Times editorial questioning whether male-to-female transsexuals like me should be considered women -- and it's the question I explore in this intimate talk.
Joy Ladin's return to Yeshiva University as a woman after receiving tenure as a man made her the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution and made page-3 news in the New York Post. Her memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was a finalist for a 2012 National Jewish Book Award, and winner of a Forward Fives award. She has given over 120 talks about transgender identity, and holds the Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx
As a trans woman without a higher education I can say that she explained things that I've felt but was never able to put into words. Inspiring.
I am so happy that you are able to live your truth, Joy. BTW, for those from our Orthodox Jewish world have so much to throw at you, I suggest they learn the texts of Talmud, Midrash and our Torah M'Sinai in which there are TEN DIFFERENT terms regarding gender; this is NOT a dichotomous issue in Jewish texts and learning, even though many individuals may default to that position.
She's a beacon of hope. Her recent interview at the On Being public radio show moved me deeply.
a beautiful and inspiring talk. thank you Joy!
Joy Ladin’s autobiography is also amazing! For anyone interested it’s called “Through the Door of Life:A Jewish Journey Between Genders.”
No, you are not a woman. You are a human being who deserves respect, but it is the highest liberty to say you sense you are a woman without crying like a woman, bleeding like a woman, growing like a woman, or labouring like a woman. No... of course, you are not a woman. You are a trans woman.
Beautiful, eloquent and moving.
I am so glad to have listened to and met Joy Ladin in person. She is so incredibly inspirational and I am grateful to have someone like her to look up to, despite my identification as a man and hers as a woman.
Anyone thinking they're cute in the comments by being transphobic..just know that trans people are braver than you every single day with every goddamn breath they take, than you will ever be spewing hate from your keyboards.
The comments on here seem to either fall into the category of people who prefer to be human beings, or those revel in their own joys as male and female childhood bullies as adults. Thank you for speaking.
Wow, I felt really empowered as a woman and as a trans woman listening to her, and what the point of her whole talk was about. When she explained to me what Sojourner meant when she asked ain't I a woman that she was inviting her audience to expand their minds and their definition of woman to include her and all black women, and women of other races, sexual orientations because lets not forget that when the feminist movement started they said to lesbians that they weren't real women and that they were not welcome at their feminist meetings. Now everyone assumes if you are feminist their is a good
chance you might also be a lesbian, so it's interesting to see just how much things can change and definition and ideas can be expanded and broadened, and now we are talking about ain't trans women, women? To me I say yes, and it's also important to recognize that for some trans women they will have lived pretty much their entire lives from like the age of 5 on as female, so not all trans women start at 45, 55, or 65 and the more and more information and visibility that trans people get the more and more trans youth there will be. I started at 24 and I can tell you that for me I have faced way more misogyny that I
have transphobia and open bigotry towards me for being trans. But truly a great ted talk and conversation for all women to have with each other I think, and it doesn't have to be about trans women just that it does mean more to be a woman that just having a vagina, XX chromosome, which isn't true of all women, a uterus, and the ability to get pregnant. Last thought is I find it really said when I'm debating women who don't think trans women are women and they all say the same thing I"m a woman because I was born with a vagina and I was born with a uterus. I'm just thinking OMG you've just reduced what it means to be a woman down to basically your reproductive organs. I just kind of feel like that's how GOP lawmakers in the US think of women. Sorry, I do believe in a woman's right
to choose up to a certain point and I think it's madness that now in Mississippi there is only 1 abortion clinic and as sure as it's going to rain at some point there will be "back alley" abortions taking place in states like Mississippi which is a state that doesn't teach comprehensive sex ed, and will only teach abstinence only, which that cocktail is such a cocktail of stupid and willful ignorance, as well as a blatant attempt of the religious right to impose their views of morality on to everyone else, though all we hear is how the evangelicals are under attack. But it's also a cocktail that is going to lead to a lot of unnecessary suffering and hardship on so many women and men, as well as their children
because MS don't believe in no hand outs now. I'm like so wait GOP lawmakers you guys want the women to have the babies regardless of whether or not they can financially do it or not, and oh yeah it's also super easy to give up your baby for adoption too because you can't financial take care of it because you live in a state that doesn't believe in social programs to help single mothers, to help any poor families whether they are married or not shouldn't matter, and so on. It's like we are going to make you have this kid, but then we are going to nothing to help you should you need help in raising this new life, that GOP lawmakers say they care so much about. Sorry, for the really long rant, great video :-)
Kristin B very well said Kristin! ❤
well said sister
@David Vanpatten When I go out in to the world the people I meet don't know I'm trans. I'm lucky that I'm not visibly trans in voice, or appearance. So when I go out into the world I'm treated like any other woman. Which includes dealing with sexism, and misogyny.
Your speech is so badly needed these days. You’re a brave soul, God bless. Sorry this is off-topic, but here goes- on the off-chance you happen to see this comment… I just saw your still pic in the NYT, & you caught my eye due to your using a chair. (You also make a lovely couple, needless to say!) Anyway, the article says ME/CFS. However, your hands in the pic made me wonder about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). I have Ehlers Danlos. My hands look like yours in the pic. EDS can share some commonalities w/ ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, & other things. I was diagnosed by a geneticist in Westchester. Wishing you all the best!
He wrote "burned alive"? It doesn't sound Jewish to me. I hope he was reported for making that sick threat. I so agree that 'none of us are bound'. It's true even though I know and would love the advantages of being male, I still want to be a woman. I don't really understand that, except I think I'll feel more free this way. Thanks Joy.
I have 3 rules. 1. No one has the right to tell you who you are. 2. No one gets to tell your story but you. 3. No, I am not "normal". I am a unique individual. No politics here. Its not about whether you accept me, its whether I accept myself.
Call me old fashioned but see a father who abandoned his three children and wife. Four lives ruined....
Nope. Read his wife's book (she is the woman!). I have read both books, one is true the other is the ramblings of a narcissist who knowing destroys his family and willingly destroys all of his mother's memories of the happy family she thought she had (and does this at a meeting with the hospice nurse who took care of his father! So sad and narcotic 😢) destroyed so many lives so selfishly).
If your inner self says that you're a woman. Who has the right to argue with a person's inner self or soul? Your soul belongs to no one else but you. You make perfect sense. The senseless need to control their fears. That is what's behind their cruel objections.
Try telling that to the sHIPdITS over on Yahoo. Most hateful crowd I've ever chatted with :(
Thank you so much to hold on.
Made me cry! Absolutely beautiful.
So much that could be commented on favorably. So I will focus on a point that Joy came back to a few times. I will not judge those women who judge people like Joy (and me) to not be women. Instead, I will let those people in the world who are transmasculine judge them. I will let the transmen of the world mansplain it to those women who hold this belief that attempts to deny me of my identity.
except some, maybe even many transmen are invested in being the kinds of people that aren't aspiring to transplaining.
+Crow Cianciola
I hear you. I wrote my original post mostly in an ironic manner. Certainly each one of us has the right to choose how out and active they want to be and how to manifest it. And it can change over time. I originally planned to go totally stealth (other than coming out to 80 clients!). But I found I couldn't stay silent.
The original point still holds: the existence of trans men pokes huge holes on the attacks on trans women from the ultra-left TERF's who claim that not only are we not really female, but we are the epitome of male arrogance in thinking we can make better women than women can. Indeed, if that is there explanation for trans women, then what is the TERF explanation for trans men? Female privilege arrogance?
Of course, I'm also grateful for the existence of trans men because they also poke huge holes in the attacks of the ultra-right Christians who not only claim that we are not really female, but that laws have to be passed to protect real women and girls in public bathrooms, totally hoping no one realizes that or challenges them on the tact that the laws they propose would require trans men, most of whom look very masculine indeed, from using those same women's only public bathrooms.
And the bottom line is this: when the trans women I know recognized their true gender at a prepubescent age, some as young as two years old, it had nothing to do with wanting to prove superiority. Nor were we even saying we wanted to be female. And we certainly weren't sophisticated enough to know about, let alone trying an atypical way to exercise male privilege (which in fact, we've willingly given up). Nor did it have anything to do with a desire to stalk and either spy on or attack girls. I can think of many reasons why that notion is absurd at that age. These ridiculous ideas usually spring from the utterly false belief that (to borrow a line from Katie Sprinkle, transgender activist and attorney in Texas) we all woke up bored some rainy Tuesday when we were in our 40's, 50's or 60's and decided it would be a fun thing to go to a hospital and have a "sex-change" operation.
No, no, a thousand times NO! Being transgender at its core has nothing to do with wanting to be or wanting to do. At its core, being transgender is recognizing at an early age that this is who I really AM, having that recognition persist throughout our lives, that recognition is consistent throughout our lives, and at some point when we believe it is safe to do so or we reach a space where we can doing nothing else, that we are quite insistent to the world that this is who we really are.
thank you for replying and hello. good to hear. Yeah, I can see that and feel similarly. I felt like i needed to make a representative plug for normalizing masculinities with listening skills and an emotional IQ.
@@crowcianciola2266 you literally cannot be transplained at
Our cultures and societies need a lot of work of acceptance. But great video.
If Trans folk could simply accept that they are trans folk this whole debate would wither on the vine.
Uhhhhhh that's not where the lack of acceptance lies.
@@EternalDensity That cuts both ways.
Professor Ladin also wrong a magnificent memoir, which is definitely worth reading.
Truth was born female, that's the difference.
Thought provoking and moving
brilliant
"Ain't I A Woman"
No you’re not.
I've never seen an audience with such emotional and mindlessly led faces before.
I feel sorry for his ex-wife and three children whom he abandoned. There is nothing brave or stunning about this man.
She abandoned no one.
@@whatifounddowntherabbithol5254 kids lost a father
@@janedoh1648 and they have a new mother
I could accept you and even love you as a human, a unike individual. But not as a Woman or a Man. I dont think these people was ever ment to be either. I believe they where meant to be builders of bridges between Men and Woman. In a time where we struggle to connect or communicate. Not a door so that all Men with "special" Interest could get into female sacred spaces. I believe they misunderstand and think because i was born a Man and i`m clearly not i must be a Woman. and vice versa. I think they fail to see that when you erase gender, we go back to a time before gender segregation where Men that always have had the biological upper hand. Again will dominate and there will be no safe place for women and children in society, to hide from the most predatory amongst Men. Or do they know?
No, you ain't a woman. It's not about how you feel it's what you are! And yes most people are too polite to argue with you, so we just put up with it and give you a wide berth. You are NOT a woman, you never will be. Don't tell me what a woman is. I know, I AM one and I find it very insulting to be appropriated in this way. Rose Verbena is right!
70ny5g1rl These men know damn well they are not women and they hope if they keep repeating this nonsense long enough it will come true.
The consensus of several areas of science suggests that you are incorrect. Joy is a woman.
I'm more of a woman than you lol
What makes you say it appropriates you? Or insults you? I'm genuinely interested to know why.
if you a women... gods help us all
Shut up bob
That’s a creepy man
You are a creepy woman
I Am A Woman , I'm a transwoman, I think like a female, I act like a female . Because I think I am a woman.
NO WOMAN. LOL.
If i take HGH and get a face lift, Ain't I 30? It just so happens we have a strange science called Biology.
If you were to remove the seven aspects of cellular decay, reverse oxidation and introduce a new telomeric structure to compensate for the lost length, it turns out, yes... Yes, you could be 30 again. Biology is more complicated than you give it credit for, and medicine is more advanced than you realize.
The above is not a hypothetical treatment. It was conducted on the eye of a lab mouse for the first time this year, and yes, that eye is now a different age. It literally is a young eye.
Nothing is impossible, you just take offense to things you don't like
Nice science experiment in a dress
Ignorant and silly comment. I suppose your answer is to murder all people who are born different to others. Wonder what inner mental problems you have that make you hate others so much.
Nice attempt to erase her humanity by reducing her, in your mind, to the sum of your prejudices.
I want to volonteer for a laboratory experiment if that had solved the problem once and for all for all those who where not lycky enough to be born in the correct body compared to the brainstructure.
@David Vanpatten you know.. On the day you get dragged off to be lobotomized for some perceived wrongdoing, you'll regret all the times you helped to normalize the act of dragging someone off to be lobotomized
Then you'll be lobotomized, and suddenly unable to care. Lucky you.