Jessa Crispin

Moderator’s Note: Part 1 was posted yesterday. You can read it here.

Rejecting the notion of “comparative suffering” is critical for those who are committed to the work of social justice, human rights, and antiracism. There is no Guinness world record for “human suffering” for which groups or individuals need to vie to outrank one another. The human capacity to empathize with one people’s suffering does not diminish our capacity to empathize with another group’s suffering, even when those respective groups are at war with one another.

On March 26, I began my talk on a women’s panel titled, “Global Women Speak,” for Mount Saint Mary University with this reminder. Before I could speak about the humanitarian challenges facing Palestinian women in Gaza today, I felt compelled to make this argument due to my experience six days earlier at another women’s interfaith panel. In this previous panel, a co-panelist rudely cut me off four times within a span of one minute when I began to address Palestinian suffering, although she had already addressed Israel’s current challenges in response to a question that we were all asked. For several days following this jarring experience, I kept wondering, what felt so threatening to this co-panelist about the stories of Palestinian suffering that she felt compelled to shut it down?

Moderator’s Note: This is part 1 of a 2 part series. A version of this article first appeared in The Charlotte Post on March 25

In her paradigm-shifting book, Why I am No Longer a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto, Jessa Crispin reminds us that having token “female representation” does not solve the problem of systemic oppression or marginalization. I was recently reminded of this truth when a female co-panelist attempted to silence me twice, when I shared my perspective on women’s challenges in Gaza.

On March 20, I joined an all-female interfaith panel for an elite retirement community center in Charlotte, NC in honor of Women’s History Month. As three female panelists, we were invited to represent our respective faiths, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. After we each responded to the scripted questions posed to us, community members began to ask us questions. One man stood up and said, “I have visited Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. Will it be safe to travel to Israel again given the current situation?”