![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Once again the bullshit's here 'cause history moves in circles
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has a really good thread on the history of the Star of David and its two-thousand-year use as a Jewish symbol, not merely a symbol of the modern State of Israel.
The explanation is necessary because of the D.C. Dyke March, which yesterday I heard had followed the 2017 Chicago Dyke March in banning Jewish pride flags under the defense of anti-Zionism. Currently they seem to be stating that what they have really banned are "nationalist symbols," a category which appears to fold the Star of David at any more visible scale than a necklace automatically into "pro-Israel paraphernalia." Which is historically ignorant and logically inconsistent, especially since pride variants of the Palestinian flag are explicitly welcome on the grounds that its limited recognition as a nation-state means Palestine by definition cannot express nationalism, but neither of these factors matters if the point is to strain only the right kind of Jews into your march, not just the ones who might be, you know, dykes.
I find this situation upsetting and also sheerly exhausting. It is not a distraction; it's not smoke and mirrors if people are getting hurt; but it's the same almost inarticulate fury I feel at things that are wrong. They are fighting from false premises. People are tearing themselves apart over lines drawn around strawmen. I don't see the Christian cross being called out as a symbol of historical oppression unfit for representation in a radically inclusive queer space even though the track record of Christianity on queerness is just about as dreadful as its history of crusade and genocide across any number of nations, including the one we're all embedded in right now. "Nationalist" symbols only, which filters the overlap of iconography and identity to one ethnic group handily. Hence the necessity of Ruttenberg's thread. I wish it didn't feel like arguing with shifting goalposts, premised on quicksand.
I had a terrible night already. I couldn't fall asleep until it was light out; then I couldn't fall asleep because it was light out. When I finally did manage to achieve unconsciousness, I had nightmares about being caught up in some contemporary suppression of dissidents (I should be that important) and was woken within the hour by two phone calls, one of which was a wrong number from a man who didn't appear to understand how wrong numbers work. (Him: "Can I speak to Lauren?" Me: "There's no Lauren at this number." Him: "Okay, I'll call back.") I have too much work to do before the week is over and not enough time to think and I can't help but wonder if I were more plugged in to Boston Pride, would I be hearing the same kind of one-of-the-good-ones gatekeeping from the city I live in? I'm thinking of a line written last week by Keith Kahn-Harris, which shouldn't be a radical suggestion: "Anti-racism should not be a reward for being culturally interesting or politically sympathetic; it should require no justification." More and more I feel there are people for whom it will never be justified and while I worry less about them shooting up synagogues or burning down rabbis' homes, I worry very much that they will stand with folded hands and look sorry and do nothing, nothing at all.
The explanation is necessary because of the D.C. Dyke March, which yesterday I heard had followed the 2017 Chicago Dyke March in banning Jewish pride flags under the defense of anti-Zionism. Currently they seem to be stating that what they have really banned are "nationalist symbols," a category which appears to fold the Star of David at any more visible scale than a necklace automatically into "pro-Israel paraphernalia." Which is historically ignorant and logically inconsistent, especially since pride variants of the Palestinian flag are explicitly welcome on the grounds that its limited recognition as a nation-state means Palestine by definition cannot express nationalism, but neither of these factors matters if the point is to strain only the right kind of Jews into your march, not just the ones who might be, you know, dykes.
I find this situation upsetting and also sheerly exhausting. It is not a distraction; it's not smoke and mirrors if people are getting hurt; but it's the same almost inarticulate fury I feel at things that are wrong. They are fighting from false premises. People are tearing themselves apart over lines drawn around strawmen. I don't see the Christian cross being called out as a symbol of historical oppression unfit for representation in a radically inclusive queer space even though the track record of Christianity on queerness is just about as dreadful as its history of crusade and genocide across any number of nations, including the one we're all embedded in right now. "Nationalist" symbols only, which filters the overlap of iconography and identity to one ethnic group handily. Hence the necessity of Ruttenberg's thread. I wish it didn't feel like arguing with shifting goalposts, premised on quicksand.
I had a terrible night already. I couldn't fall asleep until it was light out; then I couldn't fall asleep because it was light out. When I finally did manage to achieve unconsciousness, I had nightmares about being caught up in some contemporary suppression of dissidents (I should be that important) and was woken within the hour by two phone calls, one of which was a wrong number from a man who didn't appear to understand how wrong numbers work. (Him: "Can I speak to Lauren?" Me: "There's no Lauren at this number." Him: "Okay, I'll call back.") I have too much work to do before the week is over and not enough time to think and I can't help but wonder if I were more plugged in to Boston Pride, would I be hearing the same kind of one-of-the-good-ones gatekeeping from the city I live in? I'm thinking of a line written last week by Keith Kahn-Harris, which shouldn't be a radical suggestion: "Anti-racism should not be a reward for being culturally interesting or politically sympathetic; it should require no justification." More and more I feel there are people for whom it will never be justified and while I worry less about them shooting up synagogues or burning down rabbis' homes, I worry very much that they will stand with folded hands and look sorry and do nothing, nothing at all.
no subject
Part of queerness, and of pride, has always been about the ways our multiple identities overlap - being gay and a teacher, being a lesbian and into Star Trek, being bisexual and a Cuban immigrant - being a whole person.
I don't find this absurd trend is made any better by saying "oh pretend you don't have any country or any ethnicity, it's not anti Semitic!" But also it is anti Semitic; it is clear people get more righteous about Israel than they do about China, or Venezuela, or anti-migrant violence in Italy. I feel like I'm watching a lot of sports team signaling, where a segment of the left is beating up on Jewish symbols to show stick it to Fundamentalist Christians, and forgetting about Jewish people, who are not imaginary unicorns? It's weird and sad.
no subject
I feel there are a whole lot of commonsense understandings which go out the window where Jews are involved, probably because of the thing where anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory and conspiracy theories are famously impermeable to facts—if anything, they feed on the opposite—but that just makes it more maddening to deal with; you point out that, no, actually, gravity exists, and they tell you that's just what the magnet-hoarding lizard people at the center of the hollow earth want you to think.
(But, yes, in an age of "Not My President," it is really obvious when you don't allow the same disavowal to non-Israeli Jews.)
Part of queerness, and of pride, has always been about the ways our multiple identities overlap - being gay and a teacher, being a lesbian and into Star Trek, being bisexual and a Cuban immigrant - being a whole person.
The D.C. Dyke March even claimed that it "exists to celebrate and center all Dykes"; the organizer stated further that "All people should have a space to celebrate themselves, but I feel like at this moment in D.C. there is definitely a demand for a more inclusive way to display pride and protest." Apparently that just meant without visible Jews.
I feel like I'm watching a lot of sports team signaling, where a segment of the left is beating up on Jewish symbols to show stick it to Fundamentalist Christians, and forgetting about Jewish people, who are not imaginary unicorns? It's weird and sad.
I think some of it is that performative punching-up that actually just punches the people who are already getting punched. I worry that some of it is not performative, and they know quite well that real people are being hurt, and they're just fine with it, because we may be real in the sense that we're not abstractions, but we're not real in the sense that we matter.
Thank you.