disabled person: i need a job to survive in this capitalist hellscape. the job is literally killing me. I would have a much more fulfilling and healthy life if I wasn't forced to work
disabled person: but sadly i'm not allowed a healthy and fulfilling life, i am forced to die well below my life expectancy because of this.
abled person: WOW GOALS! I'M SO INSPIRED BY YOU FOR WORKING. IF YOU CAN DO IT ANYONE CAN DO IT. HEAR THAT YOU OTHER LAZY DISABLEDS THIS PERSON CAN DO IT SO YOU SHOULD TOO. BE #INSPIRED. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IF YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO IT. (:
I don’t get how some people can perfectly grasp the concept of why queer-coding villains is a real issue in media but then turn around and fail so spectacularly at applying that same logic to Jew-coding villains.
If I, as a bi nb person, point out a villain that was created using stereotyped tropes of lgbt+ people to convey “evilness” and how that portrayal negatively affects how traits associated with lgbt+ people (and by extension lgbt+ people ourselves) are seen, that criticism is generally met with agreement from progressive circles on this site, even by bloggers who are not lgbt+ themselves.
But if I, as a Jewish person, point out a villain that was created using stereotyped tropes of Jewish people to convey “evilness” and how that portrayal negatively affects how traits associated withJewish people (and by extension Jewish people ourselves) are seen then outside of other progressive Jewish bloggers, I come up against a solid brick wall.
It never ceases to amaze me how many activists who are good about racism, islamophobia, ableism, homophobia, queerphobia, etc etc etc somehow always drop the ball with antisemitism.
I strongly suspect it’s because people who are neither anti-semitic, nor Jews, have literally no awareness of how widespread anti-semitism is or what the tropes even are unless they’re actually specifically paying attention. That particular hatred had to go deeper underground in the mass media than hatred of LGBT+ people, which was up until very recently mainstream, or hatred of black people, which has been fairly open.
If you’re Jewish, you can hear the dog whistles and see the codes very, very clearly because they’re aimed at you. But, I say this in all seriousness: I was 40 before I figured out that curly hair was a Jewish thing. I am from New York. I am actually by blood a quarter Jewish though we never found out until after my mother’s adoptive parents were dead and she went looking for her birth parents. When I went to college, literally 90% of my social circle was Jewish. And yet I didn’t know that curly hair is considered to be a Jewish trait and Jew-codes a fictional character unless they’re specifically another ethnicity with curly hair, until seven years ago. (BTW… I have curly hair.)
So people goggle at it and go “Aren’t you reaching? What does that have to do with being Jewish?” because they actually don’t know what that has to do with being Jewish. The work you’re doing educating people is important, though. Even though there are people reblogging and going “WTF how is this antisemitic?” there are also lurkers who are learning something new. That’s how I learned this stuff. And honestly I’m still learning – I’d never have picked up that shit about Gothel in Tangled if someone hadn’t pointed it out just recently. Now that I see it I can’t unsee it, but I didn’t see it on my own, so I thank you all who are pointing this kind of shit out for that.
October 26 2016 - Donald Trump’s star on the iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame was destroyed early Wednesday morning by a man dressed as a city construction worker wielding a sledgehammer and pickaxe. The man, who told Deadline his name was Jamie Otis, said he was trying to extract the star to auction it off and raise funds for the women who have come forward to accuse Trump of sexually assaulting them over the decades. [video]
