links redux and some handy bullet points
Over a week after this has all started, people are still posting and posting and posting, and since my original links post doesn't include any of the new stuff, here I go again with a bunch more links. Some of these posts I strongly agree with, some I strongly disagree with. But I think they're all worth a read.
I'm trying to stay within some sort of time order here, which hopefully I got right. Some links are popping up on metafandom the day they get posted, and some have shown up three days later, so the time-frame of when to put all of these is kind of confusing.
merry posts her reasoning for her original comments. To make it clear again, I don't think what merry did was antisemitic, and I don't think she *is* antisemitic. But I do think that what she said sparked something that has gone way beyond this, and that people who keep trying to make it only about this are missing the forest for the trees.
It's been said... a lot... that my reaction to this was over the top hostile. And yes... it was. I wish I'd been less angry when I posted that comment; I wish I hadn't lost my temper. I went off the rails, because I know both Yuletide mods personally; they're very good friends of mine. And when someone makes an unfounded accusation of prejudice against my friends, it gets me very, very angry.
I don't apologize for that. I'm not going to. I regret the sarcastic tone I used, I regret not keeping my cool, but I don't regret calling her on that accusation.
xanphibian talks about the general fandom reaction.
To make a prediction, based on the feelings of anger and betrayal and fear some of us have, I think this is just going to get worse until it gets through people's heads that this is about overall culture and bigotry and not, specifically, about a comment they may have made on FW or in someone's journal or whatever. This isn't about YOU, specifically, folks. But the more you protest and fight back and refuse to acknowledge that yeah, there's a problem, we're going to get angrier and angrier and push back. Oh noes, maybe you're not going to like our tone.
linaerys posts from the perspective of having converted to Judaism.
I loved it. I still do. I miss it.
But I gave it up. Some people said you don't have to give up Christmas if you're Jewish, and I still sometimes celebrate it a bit with my family, but I'm clear that it's not mine anymore, and in my household, we don't do any of these things. My hypothetical children will not be told the fairy tale about Santa Claus, even though I grew up loving it, and we will not sing carols except at their grandparents' house.
I gave it up because Christmas is one of many things used to keep Jews separate, and that separateness is mine also. I gave it up because giving it up reminds me that I'm no longer "nothing," I'm Jewish. That doesn't mean I don't miss aspects of it, but this is the choice I made.
vaznetti posts about her reaction to some of the things she's seen.
And I want to say that I'm surprised, and that I really don't think one thing led to the next, except that really, I wasn't, and really I do. And if you feel insulted by that, and think I'm calling you an anti-semite, maybe you should defriend me. Seriously. If you can't look at a post like this one, and see why the comments quoted are insulting and offensive... if you can't say "that was wrong," full stop, if you have to say, "that was wrong, but..." then you should defriend me.
kassrachel posts about how she feels about these discussions and being Jewish in fandom. Honestly, I disagree a lot with most of what she says in the post, and I disagree even more with some of the comments. But that's just me, and just as I'm voicing one set of experiences and thoughts, she is doing the same for another set.
Marginalization of Jews does exist, and I'm not claiming that those who feel disenfranchised are wrong about their own experience. But I'm not sure how focusing on that feeling of marginalization helps change the reality we live in, and I believe that insinuations of latent anti-Semitism are rarely productive, not to mention usually painful. There's a kind of corollary to Godwin's Law at work here; the moment someone implies anti-Semitism, the whole tenor of discourse changes, and not for the better. (Granted, use of idiotic slurs also ruins the tenor of the discussion -- but that's just beyond the pale, and not worth honoring with a response.)
elishavah posts about the power and lack of power in invisibility. Strongly recommended. I wish I could quote the entire thing here, because it resonated so much with me.
Then there's the invisibility that's done to me. I say it that way even though it's not always a conscious action on the part of the do-er, because this isn't a legal matter, and it doesn't matter whether that person or group is plotting to make me and mine disappear -- it's happening.
The "holiday" party that has a Christmas tree and no menorah. Christmas Day as a federal holiday. Passing around Easter candy. Invitations to pizza during Passover. Commenting or telling jokes in front of me about Jews and power/money/Hollywood/pick your stereotype. Being told obliquely or outright that my concerns aren't real concerns. Whenever I'm standing there thinking, "You don't even bother wondering whether I'm the same as you, do you? That's just not something that occurs to you, and I don't know if it's better or worse that I don't know whether you'd care to find out." Any of it. All of it. I am assumed to be somebody I'm not in these situations, or it's made very clear that what I think or believe isn't of any importance.
And that feeds right into the invisibility by joint agreement, which is a dreadful combination of the two above, and it's the one that truly scares me, because it's about fear. Judaism -- even (or especially) on LJ, it seems -- is a religion and race and topic that's been shoved to the bottom of the dark cellar with the broken stairs and consciously forgotten, and so many of us don't pull it into the light and make people look in at least part because we're afraid to find out who's going to be lining up to kick it back down there.
technosage posts about her reaction to fandom's reaction. Also strongly recommended.
Anti-Semitism in fandom. You know, we've been here before. The amazing and immediate outcry of squee-harshing, or "don't call my friends a racist"? This isn't new. At all. It's not even surprising. For the last few years, every time a POC said something about racism in fandom or racism on television, this is what happened. It's only recently that things like witchqueen's righteous dust-up with daily_deviant didn't get met, immediately, with shock and outrage and don't harsh my squee but with shock and outrage and dudes, that's just not cool.
The fight against discrimination in all of its forms is a process of education. No one likes having accusations leveled at them and the immediate reaction is always "OH NO I'M NOT". Thing is, most people who aren't Jewish wouldn't recognize anti-Semitism if it bit them in the ass. We've learned to recognize racism and agree it's not okay.
Now it's time for fandom to learn: anti-Semitism is not okay.
kali posts about the comments left in the original fandom wank post - both by Jews and non-Jews. I personally don't agree with some of her post - I think it's overharsh to some of the comments on FW and to mayatawi - but I do agree that while I'm sorry that some members of FW feel unfairly accused, they should remember that their comments were read by thousands of people, who then took those comments and twisted them even more - exactly what the members of FW do themselves. If you repeatedly take people's comments out of context in order to mock them, you shouldn't be surprised and unable to take it when it's done to you. The comments led to something very ugly, and while I'm sure a lot of people didn't mean for it to happen, it still *did*.
If someone takes your words in a different way than you intended them, there's a chance that you might have expressed yourself poorly, or that you are exhibiting cultural blindspots, active bigotry, internalized bigotry, and/or cultural privilege, and that you may not be aware of it.
Turning around and accusing people who read your words differently than you intend as being "oversensitive" is simply not, in my mind, a defensible moral or intellectual position. If you judge how people react to what you say and presume to tell them how to feel and what an appropriate emotional response is to a given situation? At least acknowledge that you're attempting to utterly invalidate their emotional response.
em-h posts from the perspective of a "semi-professional Christian", who is in training for the priesthood.
As a semi-professional Christian, I feel like I need to say something to some of my co-religionists out there. What I need to say is, Eat it, dudes.
cimorene posts about both the Yuletide sign-ups and the reactions the original post spawned. I agree with her on both points. I think the original post was silly, but I also think that it led to something very, very nasty.
The last thing that any discussion of prejudice or offense needs is for minorities to be told to watch their tone. (It's the most frequent and most offensive demand I've seen in all these debates as they keep coming up again and again, and a persistent attachment to it is pretty much a permanent loss of my respect.) Unfortunately, they hear that so often that they're all well aware of its necessity if they wish to be listened to, and if they ever neglect to be polite it's no doubt in momentary frustration and with the full knowledge that they're going to be ignored by the people who need to listen to them as a result of their temporary satisfaction.
ataniell posts from the perspective of a practicing Jew. While I find the post to be interesting, I mostly think it's the comments that are worth a read.
Christians are not "oppressed" in this society; they run it. If a country's state holidays, no matter how "secularised" they may be, follow the religious calendar of one religion, and members of other religions have to use their personal time off to celebrate their own holidays, and members of the dominant religion still feel okay about asking them to work on or around the dominant religion's holidays because they already celebrated theirs (never mind the fact that the only time I can get two full weeks off and spend only two days of personal time is Christmas, and after all the religious holidays in September-October that's all I have LEFT), the members of the dominant religion are getting a huge break. Yes, a lot of Jews resent the way Christmas dominates American and Western European culture. You would too if your holiday calendar did not in any way resemble the dominant religion's calendar.
As for me, since I've been seeing a lot of reactions out there misinterpreting things I've said, I'm going to put it into easy bullet points.
- As a Jew, I don't celebrate Christmas. I never will.
- Many Jews celebrate Christmas and that's just fine with me.
- I don't have an issue with Yuletide and Sesa exchanges existing. I don't expect them to change and I'm not *asking* them to change. I'm not asking for them to incorporate other religions or cultures, or change their wording, or go live on different days, or not exist at all. All that I am asking is that people admit to the *blatant fact that they are Christmas-based*. That's it. That's literally all I want and I honestly don't understand why so many people have a problem with the honest truth of that statement. It doesn't change who you are and how you choose to celebrate or not celebrate Christmas, or how you choose to participate or not participate in the exchanges. It doesn't mean the world will end.
- I don't agree with mamadeb's original post, but I think that it was mostly a personal whine in her personal journal, made after an exhausting month.
- I'm not remotely putting myself out there as the spokesperson for all Jews, and "expecting people to fall into lockstep" behind me. God, not even *close*. In fact, for as many Jews as I've seen commenting and agreeing with me, I've seen just as many commenting and disagreeing with me.
- While I think it's just fine that so many Jews in fandom don't share my perspective, think this is an issue that is important, or wish I'd just shut up, it's not going to change the way that I feel about all of this, and why it's important to me. Just as I'm not asking everybody else to define their Judaism and participation in fandom in the same terms as mine, I'd like for them to show the same consideration to me and everybody else who has spoke up, saying the same things.
- Basically, if you want to debate the things I've been saying, please *actually read them first*.
I'm trying to stay within some sort of time order here, which hopefully I got right. Some links are popping up on metafandom the day they get posted, and some have shown up three days later, so the time-frame of when to put all of these is kind of confusing.
merry posts her reasoning for her original comments. To make it clear again, I don't think what merry did was antisemitic, and I don't think she *is* antisemitic. But I do think that what she said sparked something that has gone way beyond this, and that people who keep trying to make it only about this are missing the forest for the trees.
It's been said... a lot... that my reaction to this was over the top hostile. And yes... it was. I wish I'd been less angry when I posted that comment; I wish I hadn't lost my temper. I went off the rails, because I know both Yuletide mods personally; they're very good friends of mine. And when someone makes an unfounded accusation of prejudice against my friends, it gets me very, very angry.
I don't apologize for that. I'm not going to. I regret the sarcastic tone I used, I regret not keeping my cool, but I don't regret calling her on that accusation.
xanphibian talks about the general fandom reaction.
To make a prediction, based on the feelings of anger and betrayal and fear some of us have, I think this is just going to get worse until it gets through people's heads that this is about overall culture and bigotry and not, specifically, about a comment they may have made on FW or in someone's journal or whatever. This isn't about YOU, specifically, folks. But the more you protest and fight back and refuse to acknowledge that yeah, there's a problem, we're going to get angrier and angrier and push back. Oh noes, maybe you're not going to like our tone.
linaerys posts from the perspective of having converted to Judaism.
I loved it. I still do. I miss it.
But I gave it up. Some people said you don't have to give up Christmas if you're Jewish, and I still sometimes celebrate it a bit with my family, but I'm clear that it's not mine anymore, and in my household, we don't do any of these things. My hypothetical children will not be told the fairy tale about Santa Claus, even though I grew up loving it, and we will not sing carols except at their grandparents' house.
I gave it up because Christmas is one of many things used to keep Jews separate, and that separateness is mine also. I gave it up because giving it up reminds me that I'm no longer "nothing," I'm Jewish. That doesn't mean I don't miss aspects of it, but this is the choice I made.
vaznetti posts about her reaction to some of the things she's seen.
And I want to say that I'm surprised, and that I really don't think one thing led to the next, except that really, I wasn't, and really I do. And if you feel insulted by that, and think I'm calling you an anti-semite, maybe you should defriend me. Seriously. If you can't look at a post like this one, and see why the comments quoted are insulting and offensive... if you can't say "that was wrong," full stop, if you have to say, "that was wrong, but..." then you should defriend me.
kassrachel posts about how she feels about these discussions and being Jewish in fandom. Honestly, I disagree a lot with most of what she says in the post, and I disagree even more with some of the comments. But that's just me, and just as I'm voicing one set of experiences and thoughts, she is doing the same for another set.
Marginalization of Jews does exist, and I'm not claiming that those who feel disenfranchised are wrong about their own experience. But I'm not sure how focusing on that feeling of marginalization helps change the reality we live in, and I believe that insinuations of latent anti-Semitism are rarely productive, not to mention usually painful. There's a kind of corollary to Godwin's Law at work here; the moment someone implies anti-Semitism, the whole tenor of discourse changes, and not for the better. (Granted, use of idiotic slurs also ruins the tenor of the discussion -- but that's just beyond the pale, and not worth honoring with a response.)
elishavah posts about the power and lack of power in invisibility. Strongly recommended. I wish I could quote the entire thing here, because it resonated so much with me.
Then there's the invisibility that's done to me. I say it that way even though it's not always a conscious action on the part of the do-er, because this isn't a legal matter, and it doesn't matter whether that person or group is plotting to make me and mine disappear -- it's happening.
The "holiday" party that has a Christmas tree and no menorah. Christmas Day as a federal holiday. Passing around Easter candy. Invitations to pizza during Passover. Commenting or telling jokes in front of me about Jews and power/money/Hollywood/pick your stereotype. Being told obliquely or outright that my concerns aren't real concerns. Whenever I'm standing there thinking, "You don't even bother wondering whether I'm the same as you, do you? That's just not something that occurs to you, and I don't know if it's better or worse that I don't know whether you'd care to find out." Any of it. All of it. I am assumed to be somebody I'm not in these situations, or it's made very clear that what I think or believe isn't of any importance.
And that feeds right into the invisibility by joint agreement, which is a dreadful combination of the two above, and it's the one that truly scares me, because it's about fear. Judaism -- even (or especially) on LJ, it seems -- is a religion and race and topic that's been shoved to the bottom of the dark cellar with the broken stairs and consciously forgotten, and so many of us don't pull it into the light and make people look in at least part because we're afraid to find out who's going to be lining up to kick it back down there.
technosage posts about her reaction to fandom's reaction. Also strongly recommended.
Anti-Semitism in fandom. You know, we've been here before. The amazing and immediate outcry of squee-harshing, or "don't call my friends a racist"? This isn't new. At all. It's not even surprising. For the last few years, every time a POC said something about racism in fandom or racism on television, this is what happened. It's only recently that things like witchqueen's righteous dust-up with daily_deviant didn't get met, immediately, with shock and outrage and don't harsh my squee but with shock and outrage and dudes, that's just not cool.
The fight against discrimination in all of its forms is a process of education. No one likes having accusations leveled at them and the immediate reaction is always "OH NO I'M NOT". Thing is, most people who aren't Jewish wouldn't recognize anti-Semitism if it bit them in the ass. We've learned to recognize racism and agree it's not okay.
Now it's time for fandom to learn: anti-Semitism is not okay.
kali posts about the comments left in the original fandom wank post - both by Jews and non-Jews. I personally don't agree with some of her post - I think it's overharsh to some of the comments on FW and to mayatawi - but I do agree that while I'm sorry that some members of FW feel unfairly accused, they should remember that their comments were read by thousands of people, who then took those comments and twisted them even more - exactly what the members of FW do themselves. If you repeatedly take people's comments out of context in order to mock them, you shouldn't be surprised and unable to take it when it's done to you. The comments led to something very ugly, and while I'm sure a lot of people didn't mean for it to happen, it still *did*.
If someone takes your words in a different way than you intended them, there's a chance that you might have expressed yourself poorly, or that you are exhibiting cultural blindspots, active bigotry, internalized bigotry, and/or cultural privilege, and that you may not be aware of it.
Turning around and accusing people who read your words differently than you intend as being "oversensitive" is simply not, in my mind, a defensible moral or intellectual position. If you judge how people react to what you say and presume to tell them how to feel and what an appropriate emotional response is to a given situation? At least acknowledge that you're attempting to utterly invalidate their emotional response.
em-h posts from the perspective of a "semi-professional Christian", who is in training for the priesthood.
As a semi-professional Christian, I feel like I need to say something to some of my co-religionists out there. What I need to say is, Eat it, dudes.
cimorene posts about both the Yuletide sign-ups and the reactions the original post spawned. I agree with her on both points. I think the original post was silly, but I also think that it led to something very, very nasty.
The last thing that any discussion of prejudice or offense needs is for minorities to be told to watch their tone. (It's the most frequent and most offensive demand I've seen in all these debates as they keep coming up again and again, and a persistent attachment to it is pretty much a permanent loss of my respect.) Unfortunately, they hear that so often that they're all well aware of its necessity if they wish to be listened to, and if they ever neglect to be polite it's no doubt in momentary frustration and with the full knowledge that they're going to be ignored by the people who need to listen to them as a result of their temporary satisfaction.
ataniell posts from the perspective of a practicing Jew. While I find the post to be interesting, I mostly think it's the comments that are worth a read.
Christians are not "oppressed" in this society; they run it. If a country's state holidays, no matter how "secularised" they may be, follow the religious calendar of one religion, and members of other religions have to use their personal time off to celebrate their own holidays, and members of the dominant religion still feel okay about asking them to work on or around the dominant religion's holidays because they already celebrated theirs (never mind the fact that the only time I can get two full weeks off and spend only two days of personal time is Christmas, and after all the religious holidays in September-October that's all I have LEFT), the members of the dominant religion are getting a huge break. Yes, a lot of Jews resent the way Christmas dominates American and Western European culture. You would too if your holiday calendar did not in any way resemble the dominant religion's calendar.
As for me, since I've been seeing a lot of reactions out there misinterpreting things I've said, I'm going to put it into easy bullet points.
- As a Jew, I don't celebrate Christmas. I never will.
- Many Jews celebrate Christmas and that's just fine with me.
- I don't have an issue with Yuletide and Sesa exchanges existing. I don't expect them to change and I'm not *asking* them to change. I'm not asking for them to incorporate other religions or cultures, or change their wording, or go live on different days, or not exist at all. All that I am asking is that people admit to the *blatant fact that they are Christmas-based*. That's it. That's literally all I want and I honestly don't understand why so many people have a problem with the honest truth of that statement. It doesn't change who you are and how you choose to celebrate or not celebrate Christmas, or how you choose to participate or not participate in the exchanges. It doesn't mean the world will end.
- I don't agree with mamadeb's original post, but I think that it was mostly a personal whine in her personal journal, made after an exhausting month.
- I'm not remotely putting myself out there as the spokesperson for all Jews, and "expecting people to fall into lockstep" behind me. God, not even *close*. In fact, for as many Jews as I've seen commenting and agreeing with me, I've seen just as many commenting and disagreeing with me.
- While I think it's just fine that so many Jews in fandom don't share my perspective, think this is an issue that is important, or wish I'd just shut up, it's not going to change the way that I feel about all of this, and why it's important to me. Just as I'm not asking everybody else to define their Judaism and participation in fandom in the same terms as mine, I'd like for them to show the same consideration to me and everybody else who has spoke up, saying the same things.
- Basically, if you want to debate the things I've been saying, please *actually read them first*.