An experiment in `writing culture' through biographical positioning, this article identifies the central symbol of Israeli military and masculine identity as `the chosen body' and traces through some of the practices that support and exemplify it. Within and against this masculinization and militarization of Israeli society, I explore my own and other women's experiences as citizen, daughter, mother and writer, to argue for resistance of and in the female body which finds a non-discursive expression in `somatic dissidence'.
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