The Tyranny of Socks

So, true story: I changed my facebook password because of the heartbeat thing, and now I have no idea what it is. But I wanted to post these pictures, so I did it on tumblr instead (I also changed that password, but I used a less important one which I've managed to remember.)

Pharoah, afflicted by the plague of frogs, or How I Am Everything Wrong with Passover.

(We had a very good set of seders this year, though: Spartacus is now old enough to be interested and pay attention and participate. So happy Passover, belatedly, for real.)

One of the reasons I've been disturbed by the response to the post mamadeb made about the timing of the yuletide sign-ups is that it was exactly the kind of passive-aggressive, whiny, why-isn't-this-all-about-me? post I might make myself, if not on that precise topic. The response, frankly, seemed disproportionate to the content.

The other is... OK, that was how many days ago? Not all that many. And since then, there's been a certain amount of comment on the subject, some of it using words like "entitlement" and others using phrases like "suck it up." And in the meantime, a certain amount of straightforward anti-semitic content, and now someone went ahead and called someone else a kike. Anonymously, of course.

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.

I honestly don't care what kind of history you have with any of the people involved. This is about your history with me.

I'm thinking of a comment chopchica made on untrue_accounts' extremely sensible post on the original, yuletide issue, about how nervous Jews often are about posting on this issue, especially perhaps in contexts in which we're otherwise happy and secure, like fandom. We don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to find out what's lurking under the water. We don't want some anonymous fucktard to come along and call us a kike.

I understand that fear -- I mean, hey, it is my own fear! -- and at least in my part, it's based in distrust: my distrust of you, a group of people I know well and like very much. And you know, I don't want to distrust you. I don't want to feel like I can't speak my mind, or say that something makes me feel uncomfortable or excluded. I don't want to worry about what will happen if I seem too Jewish. I'm not too Jewish. I'm Jewish.

I'm really, really tempted to add, as a final line, "Suck it up," but I guess it would be hypocritical.

Today is Yom haShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), and one of the things the AJC does to commemorate it is a reading of names -- I'm sure there's a technical term for this, but can't think what it is -- so I was out in the cold and wind to read for them this afternoon. It was just a fifteen minute slot, but I got the list with the children on it, so it was fifteen minutes of "Name, from Place, killed at Place in Year, age X," with the ages ranging from 1 to 17. Whole families, and a lot of them at places like Auschwitz and Treblinka -- and imagine keeping a child of one or two alive the whole way on the train, only to have him or her killed on arrival -- but also, all the deaths in 1941 when the German army was moving through the Soviet Union, killing as they went.

Halfway through it started to rain, but as the organizer pointed out, they were killed no matter the weather, so we read their names come rain or shine. Or, apparently, hail.

::takes a deep breath::

I've been talking about religion off and on with various people on livejournal over the past few days, and "listening" to other livejournal conversations on the subject. Then, earlier today had an encounter with a Well-Meaning Proselyte. Well-Meaning in the sense that I don't think she was trying to offend me, and I decided not to be offended by it.

One of the things that struck me as I read was the difficulty of certain Christians in understanding why others can find proselytism offensive; equally, it seems to me that just saying, "Why can't you see that it's offensive?" doesn't get us anywhere. So here an attempt to explain why I find Christian proselytes offensive in principle, rather than annoying. This may just be me, of course; other people, Jewish, atheist, pagan, whatever, may well read this and think, "Nope, that's just her. What a nut!"

( But here's how I see it )

So. Crazy? Incoherent? Offensive? I leave that to the rest of you.