Hebrew Speaking Trans Communities Exist: Here’s How We Communicate
There’s a misconception (often held in the west) that Semitic languages and their speakers don’t have an equivalent of ‘they’ in English for non-binary subjects, or that we don’t possess our own workarounds to gendered language. Hebrew is quite difficult as not only is the subject gendered even in generalized cases like ‘you’ but all nouns are gendered either male or female, along with all adjectives and verbs associated with the subject. To some this may seem like an insurmountable challenge, but to others it provides us a multitude of possibilities to fuck with the rigid binary form of the language. There’s no equivalent of ‘they’ that many equate to genderlessness in English, but many trans and non-binary speakers switch between the two gendered options as indiscriminately as possible, rendering the use of gendered terms meaningless. This way of queering language is manifested and received in quite different ways than the English ‘they’. It’s impossible to slip past people without realizing, rendering the radicalization of the language impossible to ignore, but also outs trans people immediately, so many keep this way of speaking relegated to closed social groups and communities to avoid harassment. For an example of how this looks, here’s a sentence in English that makes use of the pronoun ‘they’ with 3 options for gendering in Hebrew: ‘Veve is so cute and they’re coming to the party tonight!’ To translate this sentence into Hebrew you would need to select a gender for the adjective ‘cute’, the pronoun ‘they’ and the verb ‘coming’ based on the gender of the subject, which in this example, is yours truly (sorry, I couldn’t resist). I would then choose them entirely at random, and for personal preference be as varied as possible. Here’s what that would look like in Hebrew: ‘ויו כל כך חמודה והוא מגיעה למסיבה הלילה!’ In this example I used the feminine form of ‘cute’, ‘he’ as a pronoun and switched back again to the feminine verb to ‘come’. There are other forms of queering Hebrew that are used in more mainstream feminist circles to improve gender inclusivity and also place more emphasis on female subjects since like many gendered languages groups of people often default to plural male. If you know some basic Hebrew you may be familiar with gendered suffixes – ים - for plural male and – ות – for plural female in many cases. What is also important to note for those less familiar with the language is ‘ ם’ is exclusively an "ending letter”. Queering gendered suffixes in Hebrew then adds an additional axis through which to subvert rigid rules; like the discourse that supposed grammar experts in English take up against use of ‘singular’ they people similarly abhor the use of the ם before the end of a word. If someone wanted to address a group of friends they may say "חברים" the plural male for friends. What some people do instead is this: "חברותים" This includes both suffixes in one word, but puts the female plural first, specifically emphasizing non-men in the post. And for those who want to give hell to grammar and binary gender in one go: "חבריםות" These are minor examples, but the important part is that people know there are queer and trans communities literally EVERYWHERE all over the world, and like most trans people in most languages, when figuring out how to gender someone in Hebrew, the best thing to do is simply ask what they’d like and how to gender things in a way that makes us feel most comfortable. Like all major changes to language this one takes some getting used to, but it’s a real thing and I’m glad more people have been asking about it lately. <3
