#it's a very...nuanced ig manifestation of how privilege plays out in practice across its intersecting axes | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

whetstonefires · 6 months ago

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yeah like. i encountered just enough people writing normal jewish posts in the rather common 'faintly polemical' style that suddenly did a weird jumptwist thing and pivoted into passionate genocide defense without any change in tone, that i did start tensing up when i started reading actual normal posts in that line. bracing against the possibility of getting hit with 'they brought this on themselves' or 'there are no innocent civilians in gaza because x' or some other damn thing, and the insistence that the only type of person who disagrees is a murderous antisemite.

because encountering that stuff by surprise when you aren't braced for it is like a psychic two-by-four to the gut, right?

i don't think you can avoid becoming sensitized to language by association like that. it's going to happen; the issue is then what you choose to do with the emotions that arise.

try to resist the impulse to justify them as rational; they're not wholly irrational since they're based on actual data, but it's decontextualized anecdata so they aren't founded in logic either; they don't represent an underlying truth.

there is a very real phenomenon going on where there are people using longstanding pro-jewish language to embed dogwhistles and just actual whistles for the necessity and righteousness of exterminating the palestinian people. that is a real thing!

(almost indistinguishable in structure and effect from people using pro-palestinian language to embed antisemitic dogwhistles, and in fact actual whistles.)

you cannot, in fact, be certain in isolation whether the reasonable assertion 'jewish people should feel safe' actually reflects an underlying worldview you concur with, in roughly the same way that 'lesbians should feel safe' is a statement that may or may not be coming from someone introducing their case for why trans women must be got rid of.

you don't know. that information is not present.

but you need to keep on top of the fact that this uncertainty is just a thing that exists. you are not responsible for resolving it. it cannot be permanently resolved. you cannot even attempt to resolve it every time it arises without falling into the trap of making it omnipresent in every discussion involving jewish people.

above all you must not make every jewish person carry at all times the burden of resolving that question for you!

if not out of decency and the fact that that's simply unfair to expect, then perhaps because that's exactly what the israeli right wing wants you to do. the more global antisemitism builds up to make being part of a jewish minority unsafe and unpleasant, the more power the reactionary domestic political agenda gains over the diaspora.

that's bad. that is probably the most harm Random Online Joe can do wrt The Israel/Palestine Conflict. so like. try to not.

Jewish queer people deserve to be safe in queer spaces.

#refraining from making that kind of demand #becomes practically more and more difficult for a statistically useful % of people to achieve the more conversations #are asynchronic and addressed to vast invisible online multitudes #in a 'communication is consumption is morality is identity' world #but yeah i feel like there's a whole pattern where #most minorities have to deal with some version of Not Knowing If You're One Of The Bad Ones And Coping With That #around members of the majority #constantly forever #and tend to be judged harshly for getting into the habit of assuming the worst and becoming abrasive with it #unless they have a really compelling narrative about why and even then You Should Be Nicer #which is not *untrue* strictly but like #often the same people who are offended by this kind of behavior from a minority they aren't in #feel absolutely justified in applying this same cognitive approach of sorting and prejudgement *to* minorities they aren't in #without grasping that it's the same thing #and that they have way less excuse for that shit because their personal safety is much less likely to be on the line #it's a very...nuanced ig manifestation of how privilege plays out in practice across its intersecting axes #because you can very much do this to other people and feel absolutely justified and then have it done to you #and feel the martyr #and realistically like 80% of these are at least vaguely justified in *some* way #sometimes extremely so #but the degree to which they are 'justified' by a 'real problem' is not really sufficient data by which to judge #whether it's useful #let alone appropriate or socially acceptable #the answer honestly isn't 'never' but is *is* at the very least #less likely to be appropriate the more likely you are to get away with it #which i think is a compelling case for just trying to avoid the whole deal #as much as you can

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