Memoir Dealing With Gender Issues

 Journalist Susan Faludi's father had a realization about his gender identity.  Although she was born biologically male, they were psychologically female.  S/he had sex reassignment surgery and wanted to become known as Stephanie. This was an important aspect of Susan Faludi's own life story.  I purchased this memoir from the used section of an independent bookstore.

                                               

As a photographer, Stephanie Faludi made a career out of altering images.  I'd like to comment that image alteration has become much more prevalent with the recent usage of artificial intelligence. 

 I would also like to observe that Stephanie Faludi's photographic career was about deception.  Another deceptive practice that Stephanie enjoyed was switching price tags on items at stores, and called this "getting away with things".  In contrast, my own father was a tremendous rule follower.  He never tried to get away with things.  He thought that was wrong, and taught me to be a follower of rules.  If people don't follow basic rules, society descends into chaos.

During Susan's childhood, Stephanie had been violent toward Susan's mother who had reported Stephanie's aggression to the police.  The police eventually told Stephanie to leave the family home.  This was after twenty years of marriage.

Susan Faludi was related to the Grunberger family.  Leopold Grunberger owned a large lumber company in Hungary.  He served in World War I in the Austro- Hungarian Army which was an ally of Germany.  He was also a Hungarian Jew who was opposed to Zionism.

In this context, we need to understand the Hungarian Jewish community during this period.  Hungary was making a special effort to preserve Hungarian.  Jews were encouraged to speak Hungarian, assimilate and become citizens.  Jews were called "Hungarians of the Mosaic persuasion".   Yet the "blood libel" about Christian blood being an ingredient in Passover matzot was part of Hungarian culture until the late 19th century.  I guess non-Jewish Hungarians never saw matzot.  There is no red tinge on them.

 I learned from Faludi that the nephew of Zionist leader Theodore Hertzel was briefly the Mayor of Budapest.  

 Attila Petschauer was a Jewish Hungarian who competed on behalf of Hungary in the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam and won the silver medal in the individual saber competition.  Hungarians lionized him as the "Magyar Musketeer".  In the 1932 Olympics he also participated, but did not win an individual medal.  In 1943, Petschauer was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp in Davidovka, Ukraine where he died. 

I discovered this blog review unfinished about a month later and decided to finish it, but my focus has been on the Jewish connection rather than the gender identity of  Faludi's father. I originally became interested in Faludi's memoir because Faludi's father transitioned to female.  Yet my attention scattered due to difficulties in my personal life. Mea culpa!  Still, now I can say that my readers now have another completed review.