I've always been one of the girls who are boys, for as long as I can remember. I don't think so much like a girl, so I wasn't forced
to the standards that would be imposed on girls: I could have been in any class I asked for, for example. When I was 4 years old, for example, they tried to dress me in a dress against my will for a family event. Let's just cut it short and say that my parents regretted very much not allowing me to give up the dress.
In a way, in the environment I grew up in and in my family, they were waiting for me to come out as a lesbian, it was clear to everyone
long before I understood exactly what that meant. In this context, I am very lucky to be allowed to be who I am without
too many gender clashes.
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In the army I served in the territories as a Hummer driver and dealt with many situations in which I found myself needy and able
To embrace my masculine identity more. In the whirlwind of social identity, gender and "what does this say about me?", I realized that I identify less with "being a man", and on the other hand, actually? I never really felt like a woman.
Even now, writing the word "woman" is a little strange to me. She doesn't describe me.
Shira Korman/Courtesy of the interviewee
Kat for life after the army - I'm a male lesbian - Butch, let's say, and I'm trying to get myself into this box of
men's clothing, men's behavior, the way I have behaved all the time, but as an adult, I get met with too
many female body problems, I just don't look the way I want to look and I can't dress the way I want
to dress, I'm neither here nor here, I don't have the opportunity to be the man or woman I want to be.
The gym makes this clear to me very quickly - I've been training for two years, meticulously eating, committed to achieving
my desired look. In my head I have all the possibilities and means to reach any of my goals, in the mirror I see that men who train for a few months reach the results I want and after a very short clarification I realized
that I
am encountering the biggest female problem: body fat...
Let me just paint you a picture of what my day to day looks like. I will be asked to put on tefillin every time I pass
a podium, the last time a minyan was needed at a funeral the rabbi simply asked me to join, and I had
to make it clear to him that I am not a man (have we already said that it is strange for me to say "I am a woman"?), and I usually prefer to have a woman who is with me accompany me to a
public women's restroom because I am quite tired of being treated as an intruder. Once I even stepped out of a bathroom at a bank I was guiding at and an employee who wanted to enter fell backwards - yes, literally fell backwards on the floor when I left a women's restroom.
Shira Korman/Courtesy of the Subjects, Private album
Going back to body fat for a moment. Dysphoria, crisis, I don't know how to bridge between what I feel inside and what's happening with me outside. With good timing, I meet, at first glance, a woman who introduces me to the simple concept of radical acceptance: "Why or – or when you can do both?" – genderqueer.
Why, in fact, do I have to choose a gender and not adopt what suits me from all worlds? How does that serve me
to give bits of myself, all the time, and edit out what doesn't work out for others? It's always worked out for me, ever since
I've known myself.
For years I've been dealing with the right way to tell this story and how to pass it on. There was an accepting family,
including relatively high self-confidence. Fortunately, the traumas that allowed me to move forward and develop were ones
that did not consume my life into an acute identity crisis. Today, I see how much this is lacking in the gay community and beyond.
I underwent training in order to tell my story at Hoshen, I volunteered for 8 years in schools and other
frameworks in order to give strength through my power to truly be me, I reached the board of directors and reached the decision-making
table where I felt that I still had a lot to do and that my path was not over.
Today I teach debate in elementary school and teach children critical thinking and negotiation, these are for me
the most important tools for personal, social and economic independence, I run on the "equal list" for the Tel Aviv City Council because I aspire to connect people of all identities and types and I think that this is possible through debate (which is debate in Hebrew), and especially I want all of us to use our creativity and come up with other ideas, New and fresh that will enable freedom, equality and personal, social and economic independence for all of us, regardless of human beings.
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