Queerness, Palestine, Religion and the Politics of Performance

On September 24, I joined a pro-Palestine march in New York City that began at Bryant Park and moved toward the United Nations, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing the General Assembly. Thousands of people were in the streets that day, and more than one protest unfolded around the UN. The march I joined was part of a much larger wave of demonstrations demanding an end to the war in Gaza and opposing Netanyahu’s appearance in New York At some point during the march, I climbed onto an NYPD vehicle with a Palestinian flag and a crucifix in my hand. I began chanting, “Free Palestine.” That image escaped me almost immediately. Within hours, it was everywhere. Conservative accounts were reposting it. Pro-Israel commentators were reposting it. People who had never heard my name were suddenly debating my body, my gender, my sanity, my clothing, Palestine, Islam, Christianity, and the apparent collapse of Western civilization, all because I stood on top of a police car for a few moments holding two objects. And that, perhaps more than anything else, is why I believe in performance art.

I have no interest in pretending the reaction hasn’t been entertaining. I’ve laughed at quite a bit of it. I’ve answered some of the more ridiculous commentary with equally ridiculous humor. But underneath the spectacle, something much more interesting is happening. People are looking at an image they can’t neatly resolve. In a single action, I forced people to confront Trans and Queer identity, Palestine, law enforcement, religion, bodily autonomy, and resistance. There’s no comfortable way to look at the image. You’re going to have questions. You’re going to have feelings. You might be angry, inspired, confused, offended, or completely unable to look away. We organize human suffering into categories because categories are easier to debate. They let us pretend these systems don’t touch one another. My work refuses that separation. The world doesn’t happen one issue at a time. A trans person doesn’t stop being trans when confronting racism. A Palestinian doesn’t stop having a gender or sexuality because bombs are falling. Religion doesn’t suddenly become irrelevant when politicians invoke it to justify public policy. These systems overlap. Religion intersects with politics. Politics shapes policing. Policing shapes whose bodies are protected and whose are controlled. Queerness, race, gender, faith, war, state power and liberation don’t exist in separate rooms.

That’s where the discomfort begins. The most common response I’ve received has been some variation of: “Go to Gaza looking like that and see what they do to you.” People repeat this as though they’ve discovered some devastating contradiction. They haven’t. Yes, LGBTQ+ Palestinians face discrimination and danger. I don’t deny that, and I don’t need to romanticize Palestinian society to support Palestinian human rights. But the argument being made to me isn’t really about queer Palestinians. It’s this: Why would you defend people who might not defend you? My answer is simple. My solidarity with Palestinians isn't conditional on Palestinians accepting me personally. Their humanity doesn't depend on their opinion of me. I don’t need Palestinians to perform some grand gesture of tolerance before I care whether their children live. I don’t need them to prove that they’re progressive enough, queer-friendly enough, secular enough, or politically perfect enough to deserve humanity. That’s the problem with the whole argument. The moment you demand that an oppressed population demonstrate that they’ve “earned” your compassion, you’ve already placed yourself in the position of deciding whose humanity counts. The Palestinian struggle is connected to a much larger struggle over displacement, sovereignty, occupation, and the freedom of oppressed people to determine their own futures. Human rights are supposed to be rights precisely because they aren’t rewards for good behavior. I can oppose homophobia, transphobia, religious extremism, or anything else I believe harms people, and still believe Palestinians possess the right to self-determination. Those positions don’t cancel each other out. In fact, to me, they come from the same principle: Human beings should not be dehumanized.

When someone responds to Palestinian suffering by telling me, essentially, “But some of those people might hate you,” I think we’ve exposed something important. Their argument isn’t really about my safety. It’s about conditional humanity. And queer people should recognize that logic immediately. We’ve heard versions of it before. Why should society protect you if we disapprove of your life? Why should your family accept you if your existence violates their religion? Why should your relationships receive equal recognition? Why should your healthcare be protected? Why should your body be respected? Queer liberation required rejecting the idea that our humanity depended on somebody else’s moral approval. I’m not going to reproduce that same logic against Palestinians simply because I’m now in a position where somebody else is culturally vulnerable. That isn’t liberation to me. That’s just recycling oppression, and I'm better than that.

The crucifix seems to confuse people almost as much as seeing a trans woman defending Palestine. That’s intentional too. Christianity has been used throughout history both as a language of liberation and as a justification for domination, and my relationship with Christian imagery has never been about obediently reproducing institutional doctrine. I’m interested in what happens when those symbols leave institutional control and are forced back into conversation with power. Jesus lived under Roman occupation in first-century Palestine and was executed by Roman authority through crucifixion. When I carry a cross into a protest for Palestine, I’m calling attention to that parallel. Christians have spent centuries treating the crucifixion as the sacred center of their faith, yet many of those same people now defend or excuse what I see as the destruction and dehumanization of Palestinians. That contradiction is grotesque to me. Christians glorify the crucifixion because they believe Jesus died to save them from their sins, but that belief has also been weaponized to justify the suffering of people deemed outside their moral community. I believe Jesus died fighting for the liberation of his people against the brutal occupation of first-century Palestine. So when I hold that cross while demanding freedom for Palestinians, I’m asking a question that Christians may not want to sit with: If you believe the crucifixion is sacred, what happens when you recognize the occupied people of today in the people Jesus lived among, and the machinery of state violence in the empire that killed him? Would Palestine look different to you if you were forced, even for a moment, to see Jesus on the other side of the occupation?

Art has always had a strange relationship with discomfort. When something makes us uncomfortable, our first instinct is often to explain the discomfort away. That’s stupid. That’s crazy. That’s obscene. That’s offensive. That person is mentally ill. That person just wants attention. Maybe. But none of those statements actually engage the image. They’re escape routes. For all the outrage surrounding this video, I’ve been fascinated by how rarely people have meaningfully discussed what they’re seeing. The image gets dismissed before it gets interpreted. And that’s precisely why performance can accomplish something ordinary political discussion often can’t. A debate usually begins with positions already established. One person argues. Another person responds. Everybody waits for their turn. Eventually the issue itself dissolves into rhetoric. Performance art interrupts that process. It doesn’t have to give you an argument first. It gives you an experience. You encounter the body, the symbol, the contradiction, the absurdity, the beauty, the vulgarity, the danger, or the humor before you’ve had time to organize your political talking points. For one moment, you simply have to see it. A trans woman. A police car. A Palestinian flag. A crucifix. Free Palestine. What do you do with that? Apparently, if the internet is any indication, you lose your fucking mind. And I love that. Not because I need hatred. Not because I believe outrage automatically makes art meaningful. And certainly not because I think going viral is the same thing as artistic success. I love it because the intensity of the reaction tells me that the image has touched something people haven’t comfortably resolved.

There’s another accusation I’ve embraced with some humor: that I’m doing this because I love attention. Of course I want attention. I’m a performance artist. Attention is part of the medium. The more interesting question is what I’m asking you to pay attention to. I’ve been doing public performance for about 15 years now. I’ve used my body in streets, protests, Pride marches, and public spaces because bodies communicate in ways political slogans sometimes can’t. And as a transgender woman, my body already arrives politicized before I say a word. I didn’t create that reality. I inherited it. The far right has spent years turning transgender existence into a political emergency. Our healthcare, bathrooms, clothing, bodies, identities, and participation in public life have all been dragged into political argument. So yes, there’s something deeply funny to me about becoming the embodiment of every panic at once. Are you terrified of transgender people? Here I am. Are you terrified of queer sexuality? Still here. Are you terrified of Palestine? I brought the flag. You want Christianity? I brought the cross. You worship law and order? I’m standing on the police car. At some point, the image becomes almost mythological in its absurdity. I’ve joked that I am the Antichrist, that I’m the consequence of the far right, that the final rebellion has arrived. That language is theatrical. But underneath the theater is something serious. When a political movement builds an entire identity around identifying enemies, those enemies eventually begin to recognize themselves in one another. The queer person. The immigrant. The Muslim. The protester. The dissident. The person whose body doesn’t conform. The person whose religion doesn’t conform. The person whose politics don’t conform. Maybe rebellion begins when those people stop accepting the categories imposed on them and begin recognizing the systems connecting their struggles.

That’s what intersectionality means to me. Not an academic buzzword. Not a checklist of identities. A way of seeing how power moves. And I think queer and trans people need to be part of that conversation. Our voices are often used in discussions about Palestine without us actually being invited to speak. We’re told Palestinians hate us. We’re told Israel protects us. We’re told which side our sexuality supposedly requires us to support. We become rhetorical objects. I reject that. I can speak for myself. I don’t need anyone to tell me what my queerness obligates me to believe politically. And I don’t need another person’s prejudice to determine the boundaries of my compassion. That’s ultimately why I wanted to write this. Not because I think an essay will convert the people mocking me. It probably won’t. Not because I need journalism, social media, or public approval to validate my work. I don’t. I’m writing because when an image travels far enough, other people begin writing its meaning for you. I want my voice on the record. I want queer and trans people who encounter that image to know there was thought underneath it. There was intention. There was a history. There was a politics. There was a spiritual question. There was also humor, because sometimes all you can do while watching people catastrophize over a trans woman dancing on a cop car is laugh.

I don’t want to make the image easier. That would defeat the point. The ambiguity is part of the work. Art doesn’t always need to tell you what to think. Sometimes it needs to create a question you can’t stop thinking about. My social media lets me explain myself. My performance disrupts the explanation. This essay lives somewhere in between. And if you still hate the image after reading all of this? That’s fine. Keep talking about it. The work can survive your discomfort.