Aaron Bushnell, who died last month, ‘sacrificed everything’ for Palestinians, says mayor of Jericho
A few of the initial paragraphs for context follow - but the article is worth reading fully:
The Palestinian town of Jericho has named a street after Aaron Bushnell, the US air force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest against the war in Gaza.
The 25-year-old, who died on 25 February, “sacrificed everything” for Palestinians, said the mayor of Jericho, Abdul Karim Sidr, as the street sign was unveiled on Sunday.
“We didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. There were no social, economic or political ties between us. What we share is a love for freedom and a desire to stand against these attacks [on Gaza],” the mayor told a small crowd gathered on the new Aaron Bushnell Road.
Bushnell livestreamed his self-immolation on the social media platform Twitch, declaring he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and shouting “free Palestine” as he started the fire. Law enforcement officials put out the flames, but he died in hospital several hours later.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 31,000 people, the majority of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The war was triggered by the cross border attack on 7 October when Hamas killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 250 people.
Even as governments in Europe and the US have largely continued to back Israel’s campaign in Gaza as part of the country’s right to self-defence, Palestinians have taken heart from popular protests held from Michigan to Madrid.
Except the US Airforce uses it as a gender neutral title, which is extremely relevant when the subtext is you’re talking about whether you’re misgendering an almost certainly closeted trans person by calling them “airman”.
I should have said “as a title used by the airforce” but I figured that was implied.
I don’t think I care what the US Air Force calls people. The meaning of words is socially constructed, just like gender, and our society constructs “-man” as a gendered suffix. Male-as-default should be fought wherever it arises, even when the official government policy says otherwise.
Maybe especially when the government says otherwise, and Bushnell being trans (the evidence is certainly compelling) just makes this more important.
Then you don’t care about what’s being talked about. If Bushnell was a cis woman she would still be Airman Bushnell and it’s not misgendering.
The US Air Force doesn’t get to decide what is and isn’t gendered language.