Hello DW, it's been a while. This term has had way, way less drama than last, but on the other hand I still don't have stable accommodation in London. My cousin, who is extremely lovely, is very politely intimating that I've already been staying in her spare room quite a lot longer than originally agreed, so I am in the midst of arranging to be a lodger for part of the week with a stranger, in exchange for money rather than relying on goodwill.
Anyway, I want to tell you about this weekend. On Thursday it was mine and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jack's third actual wedding anniversary, but on Friday I had to go to Paris for college reasons. ( soppy and travel )
The thing I wanted to pull out from this experience was that the guide was pretty convinced that the fantasy image of a witch is based on antisemitic stereotypes. The last time I came across this theory was a weird controversy on Tumblr some years ago, where some people were very vocally insistent that you shouldn't write witches in your fantasy settings because that's antisemitic, and others were pointing to this an example of just how ridiculous Tumblr's social justice culture is. At the time I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea that fairytale witches are antisemitic, I mean, sure, they have big noses, but loads of cultures claim that their despised minority or othered group has big noses, that's too generic to be meaningful. But on the other hand, I was strangely comforted because Tumblr in the height of the SJW era was just about the only online community I've been part of where it's actually considered bad to be antisemitic. Anywhere that neglects moderation will be full of far right griefers who are still recycling the same stereotypes from Crusader-era Jew-hate filtered through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, when not spreading outright neo-Nazi propaganda. Anywhere with a progressive or lefty bent will assume that antisemitism isn't a real issue because Jews are white and middle-class and anyway Israel is evil. (Mastodon, which I like in principle, is particularly annoying for doing both of those at once.)
But the guide made a somewhat convincing case: Jews were forced by Christian anti-Jewish edicts to wear pointed hats. Jews usually had several precious old books in their homes written in foreign script when most of the population weren't literate even in French, and furthermore often kept cats to protect said grimoires from mice. Plus the big noses and the stealing children thing, and arguably allowing more freedom and economic power to women than most of the surrounding culture in some parts of Europe. So I suppose there could be a connection.
I also feel weird about the witches thing because of the Burning Times meme, and the debunking of same. Because historically Jews, and Christians with Jewish ancestry or who protected Jews, were in fact burned as an act of religious persecution, and there were mass burnings of Jewish books. So were other people, particularly Christians from minority sects, and some probably mentally ill people as Janega points out. And I definitely don't want to play oppression Olympics here; there absolutely are contexts where Jews have at least conditional legal protection and social acceptance in ways that Pagans do not. But TERFs claiming to be witches and decent people pointing out that mass burning of witches never actually happened, both leave me in a slightly awkward spot.
(PS I am not interested in arguing about whether antisemitism is really just legitimate criticism of Israel, or whether anti-Zionism is antisemitic. Both angles on that just promote misery and not useful conversation at all.)
Anyway, I want to tell you about this weekend. On Thursday it was mine and
jack's third actual wedding anniversary, but on Friday I had to go to Paris for college reasons. ( soppy and travel )The thing I wanted to pull out from this experience was that the guide was pretty convinced that the fantasy image of a witch is based on antisemitic stereotypes. The last time I came across this theory was a weird controversy on Tumblr some years ago, where some people were very vocally insistent that you shouldn't write witches in your fantasy settings because that's antisemitic, and others were pointing to this an example of just how ridiculous Tumblr's social justice culture is. At the time I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea that fairytale witches are antisemitic, I mean, sure, they have big noses, but loads of cultures claim that their despised minority or othered group has big noses, that's too generic to be meaningful. But on the other hand, I was strangely comforted because Tumblr in the height of the SJW era was just about the only online community I've been part of where it's actually considered bad to be antisemitic. Anywhere that neglects moderation will be full of far right griefers who are still recycling the same stereotypes from Crusader-era Jew-hate filtered through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, when not spreading outright neo-Nazi propaganda. Anywhere with a progressive or lefty bent will assume that antisemitism isn't a real issue because Jews are white and middle-class and anyway Israel is evil. (Mastodon, which I like in principle, is particularly annoying for doing both of those at once.)
But the guide made a somewhat convincing case: Jews were forced by Christian anti-Jewish edicts to wear pointed hats. Jews usually had several precious old books in their homes written in foreign script when most of the population weren't literate even in French, and furthermore often kept cats to protect said grimoires from mice. Plus the big noses and the stealing children thing, and arguably allowing more freedom and economic power to women than most of the surrounding culture in some parts of Europe. So I suppose there could be a connection.
I also feel weird about the witches thing because of the Burning Times meme, and the debunking of same. Because historically Jews, and Christians with Jewish ancestry or who protected Jews, were in fact burned as an act of religious persecution, and there were mass burnings of Jewish books. So were other people, particularly Christians from minority sects, and some probably mentally ill people as Janega points out. And I definitely don't want to play oppression Olympics here; there absolutely are contexts where Jews have at least conditional legal protection and social acceptance in ways that Pagans do not. But TERFs claiming to be witches and decent people pointing out that mass burning of witches never actually happened, both leave me in a slightly awkward spot.
(PS I am not interested in arguing about whether antisemitism is really just legitimate criticism of Israel, or whether anti-Zionism is antisemitic. Both angles on that just promote misery and not useful conversation at all.)
