What Are Words For

The Debate of Whether Trans Kids’ Should Be Outed by Their Schools Starts with a Battle Over Language

Hank Kalet Sep 15 ∙ Preview

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Photo by Marc Nozell. File licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
The debate over trans kids in school is at least partly a debate over language. Even the best reported and written stories on the topic are falling into the trap of accepting seemingly neutral language that is anything but neutral.

Case in point is Thursday’s story in NJ Spotlight — a news site for which I have written and that is probably the best in the state.

The story focuses on a debate in Hanover, a town in Morris County, one of the more affluent counties in an affluent state. The debate revolves around the questions of parental notification of information that “could impact a student’s health or well-being, including sexual orientation and gender identity.” The board approved a policy earlier this year that requires such notifications, which led the state to sue and the courts to issue an injunction and order the policy to be rewritten. The board has approved a revised policy and is awaiting a ruling.

The Hanover case is part of a national debate over the rights LGBTQ+ students — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and allies. Advocates for the LGBTQ+ community — like me — argue that parental notification laws like the one in question amount to the forced outing of students, potentially endangering them, and ultimately forcing them back into the closet. Parents’ groups argue that as parents they are entitled to all information about their children — and they have assumed the mantle of “parents’ rights,” which has been an effective way of framing the debate for public consumption.

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Holding the Strings in Our Hands

Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr. Make Use of Antisemitic Tropes in their Conspiracies

Hank Kalet Sep 13 ∙ Preview

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This poster, from German-occupied Serbia circa 1941, “depicts a smirking Jewish puppeteer operating marionettes resembling Stalin and Churchill.” It was part of the Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition in Belgrade from Oct. 22, 1941, to Jan. 19, 1942, which “focused on the alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination with the intent to increase hatred against outsider groups that opposed Nazi Germany.” Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Katz Family
Elon Musk does not like the Anti-Defamation League. That, in and of itself, is no big deal. I’m not crazy about the ADL, either, for a number of reasons, chief among them its accusation that criticizing Israel is the same as criticizing Jews.

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But there is something ugly about Musk’s distaste for the organization. It appears deeper than a fair and reasoned consideration of the ADL’s posture on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement or Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. For Musk, it appears both personal and something more, a melding of personal anger over the ADL’s criticism of his social media platform X with the historical scapegoating of Jews and the argument that Jews control things from behind the scenes.

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I should define what I mean by antisemitism, so it is clear what it is and is no. Antisemitism is more than hatred of Jews. It is the attribution of specific qualities and powers to the Jewish people, a conspiratorial take on who we are and what we believe. Historically, it has included the “blood libel”¹ — the rumor that Jews were kidnapping Christian children, killing them, and using their blood in matzoh — and “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”² — an long-debunked antisemitic tract that started circulating in Russia in the late 19th Century and continues to be circulated among White Supremacist groups.

Criticism of Israel or Jewish organizations³, in and of itself, is not antisemitic. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been growing more and more authoritarian, and his government’s treatment of its Palestinian citizens and those living in areas under occupation is not dissimilar from the South African apartheid regime.⁴

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