Not Anonymous

Yom Ha’Shoah is an Israeli holiday Diaspora Jews have adopted, for obvious reasons.

It is commemorated on the 27th of Nisan, to be adjacent to the Hebrew date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which occurred on April 19th to May 16th, 1943.

It was also made to be adjacent to the Israeli Independence Day, the anniversary of the creation of the State.

This is no coincidence.

I would love nothing more than for this day to be a day of reflection and memorial of the victims and survivors of the Shoah, wherein entire branches of my family tree were decimated. My grandfather had run away from Europe long before the war and he died decades before I ever met him. I will never know who the members of my family. Even if members of my grandfather’s family and community survived, their names have been lost.

But it isn’t a day of reflection and memory.

Tonight Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the Iran nuclear deal was proof the world had not learned its lessons from the Holocaust. This, whilst refugees from Sudan and Eritrea rot in a prison camp and are forcibly deported to Rwanda. This, whilst there is a displaced Palestinian population under siege in our back yard.

Tomorrow an air-raid siren will sound to remind us to stand still in a moment of silence for 6 million members of family.

An air-raid siren.

I know, I know, why can’t I just let this day be about the memory of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and the survivors who heroically made it out alive.

The above is how that memory is desecrated. If you’re going to commemorate an Israeli holiday, know its cost.

יזכור.

Tumblr crosspost: http://stillnotanonymous.tumblr.com/post/116486214091/yom-hashoah-is-an-israeli-holiday-diaspora-jews

As etrangere said in someone else's post about this subject: "ironic icon is ironic" with regards to the icon adorning this post.

Making the rounds in the X-Men:First Class fandom is a fanart with the captions:
Charles as a British Airborne Medic
Erik as a German SS Officer [...]

Uh, yeah.

You can view the fanart and the artist's explanation as to their motivation in drawing it here.
ETA: Unsurprisingly, the artist has locked their post. Screenshot, because this shit should not be covered up.

ETA: Reading this person's replies to some of the critical comments on their work makes it clear that they have no idea that what they did was problematic. So, if you're going to read the comments, be prepared for more fail.

In the post the artist goes on to say that when they posted the fanart on tumblr they were butchered in the comments, and that if anyone hates the idea of Erik in an SS Officer uniform we should assume that he's undercover.
(Emphasis mine)

Well, thanks for clearing that up! That makes the entire thing absolutely okay and not questionable at all!

Ahem.

Look, the whole thing is in bad taste, for a variety of reasons. For me, the idea of putting a Jewish man in a Nazi uniform and telling anyone who may be offended by it to pretend he's a not actually a Nazi, is grossly insensitive.

There is a history, it's dark and fucked up, it has an aftermath that is hardly spoken outside of Europe and outside of specific communities that may or may not have remained in Europe after the second world war.

What the artist does in their post is an attempt to cover their own ass. They knew, very well, that they were posting a contentious piece of work, which, once posted is open to criticism and the aforementioned contention.

I don't want to pretend that Erik is in an SS Officer's uniform for "good reason". There is, in fact, no "good" reason. No matter how you construe the scenario, Erik in a Nazi uniform is a fucked up notion. No matter what "AU" you imagine that creates a sequence of events which leads to the logical conclusion of Erik wearing a Nazi uniform, it is still a reflection of a history and a reality that happened.

The fetishising of Nazism is a kink which can (ETA: with a great many disclaims and qualifications, if you ask me) be filed under "your kink is not my kink and that's okay". There is still a social and historical context which is open for discussion when fanworks start dabbling in this history which still affects me as a gay Jewish person to a degree that is at times hard to describe.

Not to mention that this dabbling shows how much disregard they have for the subject, the history and the people who are still affected by the fact that the second world war's ramifications are still felt throughout the world.

It being the holiday season in my locale, it is a time of family and obligation.

Yesterday I was helping my mother arrange the place names for the seats, the name cards were a mess, so I quickly put all the couples and their children into smaller piles.

I was the only solo card.

Now, after an entire semester of studying the sociological aspect of singlehood and writing a 6000 word essay about the position of the single aunt in the extended-nuclear family for said course, you probably don't understand the feeling of sheer poignancy that came from seeing my name, alone, among the clumps of little families that make up my huge tribe.

I have no doubt that I'm not the only single person who has a family made up of couples and families and has felt this way. But I have been theorising about it, this position of mine in my family, the role I play of Dutiful Daughter, Doting Aunt (despite raising my voice a few times and having my cousin, a mother, come to make sure I haven't murdered her children) and Single Gay Relative.

I may be the only one who perceives myself this way. Who knows, maybe others do see me this way. Glass closet and all.

What has come to mind in my navel gazing about this, because I have been thinking about it the whole week, were the issues of "passing" and "flaunting" my sexuality in the context of my family.

My nuclear family are a paragon of harmony, support and TLC. Really, I couldn't have asked for a better family, really. My bitterness considering my coming out process and the crappy way I and [Southern!Girl] were treated when were together notwithstanding.

Being single and queer is easier than being queer in a relationship - man or woman. The invisibility I experience when I'm with a guy is painful because of the erasure of my identity and the culture I identify with. The all out double standard of being with a girl requires constant negotiation of what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour in so many contexts.

It is sheer kismet that Spark In Darkness wrote about this very issue on his blog, where he writes about living your life through a filter:

Every question has to be passed through it, evasions and lies considered, examined and discarded or adapted. And damn if that isn't tiring, even now when I largely shut the filter down and try to answer without it – it still fires up and activates the closet instincts. Before when I nearly always used the filter it was even more draining – because everything someone said to me or I said back had to be run through the filter to ensure that the BIG DARK SECRET was hidden.

[...]that's before we get to simple things like the awful crime of kissing/touching and the dreadful decisions of whether it's ok to sit next to him or not – can we go out to dinner together or do we need to bring more people so it's not a date? Am I stood too close? Whose watching, who can see is anyone upset/angry/sitting on a cactus expression?

So, yeah, here's little ol' me “flaunting” my sexuality because not “flaunting” is a lot of work. I just don't have the energy not to flaunt.

I emphasised the last bit, because that pretty much hits the nail of the head. Sometimes, most of the time, we're asked to "tone it down", or stop making everything "about being QuILTBAG".

There are worse things that happen to gay people than being told by heteronormative society that we're disruptive and should shut up and suck it up, because you know, being beat up and murdered because you weren't quiet enough is worse than being escorted off a plane for kissing your partner.

But the incident with Leisha Hailey and the Southwest flight, brings to a head how careful we have to be in order to walk around unscathed.

I mean, if you read the statement from Southwest Airline following the incident, you can't help but cringe:

Initial reports indicate that we received several passenger complaints characterizing the behavior as excessive. Our crew, responsible for the comfort of all Customers on board, approached the passengers based solely on behavior and not gender. The conversation escalated to a level that was better resolved on the ground, as opposed to in flight. We regret any circumstance where a passenger does not have a positive experience on Southwest and we are ready to work directly with the passengers involved to offer our heartfelt apologies for falling short of their expectations.

All emphasis is mine. It would be mind boggling if it wasn't such a typical framing of "gay behaviour" in public.

First of all, the passenger complaints? Really? You know how many times I've complained about a child running up and down the isles of a plane? Are you going to remove that child and its parents?! Boy that would be grand!
Never happen of course, after all, a child running up and down the isles is "natural". As is, you know, kissing and holding hands between a man and woman.

Two women, well, that's "excessive". Because it disrupts the "family oriented" flight, of heterosexual and nuclear clumps of couples and their children.

And of course one must not make the customers uncomfortable, I mean, it's not like gay people pay for services, or use the same methods of transport as straight people. *snort* of course not, we have our own airlines, our own cities, our own laws and regulations, you know... in those "clubs". We'd never imagine doing that in public.

Existing, that is.

Of course, despite Southwest's hypocrisy, they are a well known airline that discriminates against its customers.

Dorothy Snarker who wrote about this earlier this week mentioned that Southwest is the airline that kicked Kevin Smith (Director of "Dogma" and "Chasing Amy") off a flight for being fat and Billy Joe Armstrong (Green Day front man) for dressing in baggy pants.

Obviously, Southwest feels very strongly about its well dressed, straight and thin customers. Everyone else just isn't up to par for this airline.

These are incidents that have happened to celebrities. Just ponder that one for a moment.

Reading about the above and planning out this post, well, it makes my own single status a thing of visibility and invisibility. I break the pattern of pairings in my family, but I am rendered silent because talking about wanting to date or going on dates is "flaunting" and "disruptive" and sometimes I just don't have the energy to deal with that.

It's giving into homophobia.

And the homophobia exhibited by Southwest, by accepting the underlying assumption that a kiss between two women is disturbing to customers, but being called disgusting by other people is just something we should suck up, is so entrenched in the culture, practically every culture on earth, that I sometimes despair at thinking I'll get to see or feel, fundamental change in my lifetime.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm far too critical to be a sceptic, but also too sceptical for relativism.

Where is the balance?

I just read a comment in a friend's journal, and I haven't decided whether I'm going to reply, because I hate having these kind of discussions online. It never leads to any good, because more often than not, we arrive to a discussion like this with our heels dug in and construe any disagreement as attack.

I'm very much in the belief that people should be able to live their lives in a way that makes them content and does not harm others.
That is wishful thinking. Beyond being critical, I am also cynical. And as a Westerner of the Middle Class, my very existence, from the clothes that I wear, the food that I eat, the water I drink and the computer I used, all of them come at the expense of someone else.

I don't believe in individualism, because very often, when one tries to live in the life-style of being responsible only to one self, you end up hurting others in the process, because despite the woo-woo vocabulary, we are connected in ways that go beyond the social interaction. We are connected though economic ties, ties of power and knowledge, interaction that can be said to be cellular.

It really, really grinds my gears when I see someone talk about vaccinations and autism (as though that hasn't been debunked umpteenth times) because that isn't being critical of medical procedures, it is selfishness.
Vaccines rely on the notion that almost everyone (there are those who can't be vaccinated and there are those who are naturally immune) is vaccinated.

Once upon a time, only girls and women were vaccinated for Rubella, because it is asymptomatic in boys and men, but lo, because vaccinations are dead or weak versions of the disease, the body can still succumb to a certain disease if there is a full blown attack from the actual virus or bacteria, which men passed to women and they got sick. The percentage of Rubella dropped drastically once males began to get these vaccinations.

In Israel there was a full blown measles epidemic in various ultra-Orthodox religious neighbourhoods because they don't vaccinate their children. That's not stigma or prejudice, that's down right irresponsibility.
Those communities chose to seclude themselves from various parts of civic life, that's fine, but they don't actually live in a bubble and as such they can create a health hazard.

The critical thinking part of dealing with the fact that preventative medicine doesn't compute for many who live in alternative/intentional communities, not all and certainly not most (I hope) because the medical institution is lazy when it comes to treating people with an agenda that doesn't coincide with the mainstream notion of health - just try explaining Health At Every Size to a GP or the fact that yes, I do in fact need to be screened for STI's despite being a woman who has sex with women.

So, that's the kind of critical thinking needed when it comes to medicine, making it more accessible and reliable for different people, thus making vaccines not an enemy - because I'm looking forward to the day I can get my AIDS vaccine and not have to worry about Mumps when I'm the company of a group of vaccine rejecters.

Still, as a critical thinker, a secular atheist Jew and knowing people first hand who have suffered more under medicine than any other institution on earth I want science to do better job at helping a variety of people and not box us in into criteria that is supposed to be one size fits all. It doesn't.
What I need, isn't what my similarly aged friend needs, our experiences - physical, mental, emotional - affects us just as mush as genetics, congenital baggage and environmental changes.

My point. People are not bubbles. We interact. We breathe the same air, drink the same water, pee out the same ammonia and shit out the waste our body can thankfully live without.
The whole world had to be vaccinated in order to eradicate Small Pox.
The bigger question is, why have they stopped vaccinating us, when all it takes is digging up a grave or letting loose a vial for the world to get sick again?

Today is AIDS Awareness Day.
And looking through my other AIDS Awareness posts, I figured that talking about it a little differently was warranted.

It's a matter of fact that everyday is AIDS awareness day, because every day we need to talk and practice safe sex, practice safe use of needles and remember those who lost their lives and continue to lose their lives due to stigma and negligence.

Because it is due to stigma and negligence that HIV/AIDS was not treated like the health crisis it was and is and is instead still treated like a physical punishment brought upon the immorality of certain people's existence.

I was born in the age of HIV/AIDS. By the time I was child in the 90's various movies and PSA's were produced and shown across the world regarding AIDS.

Two incidences of popular culture remain ingrained in me regarding HIV/AIDS and I'm pretty sure they're not the ones that most people thing about when they recall how they were introduced to AIDS via popular culture.

The first time I heard about HIV/AIDS was when I was about seven or eight I think, yes at the time that Philadelphia was around. It was during that time that Degrassi High was syndicated in the afternoons on the Israel Broadcast Channel (one of the two Israeli channels available at the time as we did not have cable services yet) and Degrassi (both Junior and High) dealt with issues that to this day would spark controversy - I don't know about the Next Gen, but I have clear memories of that show (I'm kind of proud of my mother for allowing me to watch it unsupervised).

One of the sagas in Degrassi was to do with a boy who had unprotected sex with a girl and at the start of the season he got a phone call informing him that she has HIV and he should get tested. I don't remember how I felt when I watched it, but I remember how that boy looked - petrified. That episode (should Wiki be believed) was first aired in Canada in 1990 - I saw it two or three years later.

The second time was quite a few years later. HIV/AIDS in the context that I lived in, was something that happened to "other people", to "those people". I had no idea who these "people" were. When I was 11 or 12, I had my first sex-ed class, in which periods and nocturnal emissions were explained. I really couldn't fathom why that was important at this point in my life - I already knew all that, the perks of having two older sisters, a no-nonsense mother and pharmacist for a dad.

At the time, I was very much into the show (please don't mock, this was pre-Buffy!) Touched by an Angel, so this was about 1996 - Philadelphia had come and gone (which I never saw at the time, the first time I saw it had to be when I was about 14 or 15) and Gia hadn't been made yet (which is one of the first movies I saw that had explicit lesbian sexuality in it - yeah, I know! - which I also saw on an AIDS special broadcast on a movie channel of some kind).

Touched by an Angel also had an AIDS special and I remember it very clearly. It was about a father who disapproved of his son, because the son did not follow the path the father had wanted for him.
I remember crying when the son died and thinking about it now, it's fairly clear that the son was supposed to be gay, but of course, this is never stated explicitly.

But the metaphor that runs through the plot moved me, despite it's heavy handedness. You see, the father was a violin maker and he's been tasked to make a violin o the day his son was born, but woe, the wood had a flaw in the grain and so the violin was never completed. At the time, I didn't get it, but obviously the unfinished violin that is flawed is the son and the flaw is AIDS and by proxy, his gayness, because AIDS is what happens when you're gay.

By the time I was 13, I knew that "those people" who had AIDS were gay men.

Despite the fact that more than 20 years have gone by and statistics show that HIV/AIDS is most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa and that those who have HIV/AIDS are people of every age, sex and gender (68% of all people with AIDS live in that region). South Africa has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other country.

In Israel there is an increase in HIV infections among gay men:

Cases of HIV increasing among gay men
Israel's health care system plans to address the trend by introducing streamlined HIV examinations next year.
By Dan Even

The number of gay men in Israel with HIV is on the rise, according to data released this week ahead of World AIDS Day, which is observed today. Israel's health care system plans to address the trend by introducing streamlined HIV examinations next year.

In 2009, 382 new cases of HIV infection among gay men were reported in Israel. In 2008, 390 new cases among gay men were reported. Both figures are higher than the average annual figure for HIV incidence among homosexual males in Israel between 2005-2009, which stood at 360.
[...]
Between 1981 and the end of 2009, a total of 6,147 new cases of HIV were recorded in Israel. Of this total, 1,104 died of AIDS and 173 left the country.

Up through the end of 2009, 4,870 persons were known to be living with the HIV virus in Israel. Estimates hold that there are 7,000 such persons today.

To conclude. One of my peeves is that HIV/AIDS is stigmatized, the fact that whenever I donate blood that section regarding unsafe sex with a man who has had sex with a man after 1979 enrages me every time, though my blood pressure remains superb.
And it is stigmatized because the it broke out and took hold of a population that was already disenfranchised and marginalized. The fact that it was framed as a "Gay disease" continued to haunt and continues to create disinformation regarding the risks of HIV and how it is actually transmitted.

Remove the stigma. Find a vaccine. Stop the unnecessary body count and educate ourselves on what HIV/AIDS actually is, does and how we can reduce risk to ourselves and others.

I've actually not been following up on the News as much these days as I did. More to do with laziness than anything else, because I figure, most of the News is Olds any way.

Actual real News would be one hell of a surprise.

But sometimes Olds just have to be talked about and need to be discussed and I wonder if the UN is good for anything.

It's a long standing tradition for Israelis (and very likely Palestinians, but for different reasons) to consider the UN useless and quite possibly evil.
I've always been on the side of "Yeah, they're useless" and haven't thought much of them, really.
As we say או"ם שמום, roughly translated as UN Shmu-N.

Hence why I'm only commenting on their fuckery two days later!

I can't believe this even came up for debate. No, wait, of course I can. I'm not a naive little ingénue, I know human lives are the last thing on the minds of the UN Ambassadors - their looking out for the interest of their country, not their people!

Wait. What?

Yeah, wrap your head around that one.

In case anyone is still confused, on November 16th 2010, three days ago (it was a Tuesday) the United Nations General Assembly removed a reference to sexual orientation from a resolution on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions - yeah, Queers aren't protected from persecution and arbitrary murder.
Shocking.
Truly, utterly, devastatingly... not surprising all things considered.

The removed reference was originally contained in a non-exhaustive list in the resolution highlighting the many groups of people that are particularly targeted by killings - including persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, persons acting as human rights defenders (such as lawyers, journalists or demonstrators) as well as street children and members of indigenous communities. Mentioning sexual orientation as a basis on which people are targeted for killing highlights a situation in which particular vigilance is required in order for all people to be afforded equal protection.

The amendment removing the reference to sexual orientation was sponsored by Benin on behalf of the African Group in the UN General Assembly and was adopted with 79 votes in favor, 70 against, 17 abstentions and 26 absent.

“This vote is a dangerous and disturbing development,” said Cary Alan Johnson, Executive Director of IGLHRC. “It essentially removes the important recognition of the particular vulnerability faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people - a recognition that is crucial at a time when 76 countries around the world criminalize homosexuality, five consider it a capital crime, and countries like Uganda are considering adding the death penalty to their laws criminalizing homosexuality.”

God, I'm bitter. It really does feel like it's one step forward, two steps back. Or maybe it's just plodding along wearing concrete shoes and begging for water while we try and shove our basic humans rights up a hill.
Yeah, that metaphor ran away there, but it's a really "funny" thing is that this is carte blanche against queers, an already extremely disenfranchised group everywhere when it comes to being victimised by violence against our bodies even if we have many formal rights in place (like in my locale, which really isn't perfect, but so much better than other countries in the area and far flung from here).

sparkindarkness has a gruesome and probably not even close to comprehensive round up of News links that show that formal rights and the fact that we're coming out earlier (at least in Western Nations) just do not protect us from the real, that which makes us bleed and die, violence.

In case you're not going to press the link above, these are the countries that would like to see Queers murdered: ( long shit list )

South Africa is in there and this surprises me, immensely, not only for being the land from which my parents immigrated and the fact that I have citizenship there (Christ) but for the fact that, dude, they have same sex marriage. WTF.

The countries that consider us to be human enough to live: ( less long less shitty )

Those who abstained and/or didn't bother attending the vote: ( the short list )

Hells Yes, Argentina! You're better than the majority of the other Democracies out there today.

I find it very interesting that over the past few years (I think) many, if not most, of the countries pushing progressive legislation of this nature - Same Sex Marriage - is gaining momentum in Latin countries, which are also very Catholic.

I mean, earlier this year Portugal legalised same sex marriage, and a year or so ago Mexico City did so as well (with other states soon to follow from what I understand). Spain has had same sex marriage on the books since 2005.

What do you make of this?

Of course with Catholics come Priests, who are always with the times, don't you know?
Apparently, Argentina passing this bill is the work of the Devil.
Seriously?. Why do people believe this shit?

I'm glad that not all men of the cloth are like this, it is heartening to see. Though, honestly it is fucking obscene that by being a decent human being and saying that the official stance of the RCC is, you know, backwards, this priest may be separated from the institution he loves.

Good riddance, but that's me.

On a more personal note, I'm not generally speaking a supporter of marriage as an institution, I don't think the government should have any say about what people's relationship choices are - nor do I consider the extra rights and privileges that come with marriage to be beneficiary when many people would rather not be monogamous or, heaven forfend, single!
However, queers are a vulnerable population because we are denied various rights and privileges that are awarded automatically to straight people, so I think anything that levels the playing field is a good thing.
I will never get married, but I know many who would and denying that want and need would just be privileging relationships arbitrarily that in my opinion are "better" than marriage. To get to a point where all relationships are equal... we need to work towards that.

Speaking of! Remember how a couple of weeks ago I wrote how the Jerusalem Police were axing the Pride March Route to the Knesset(JL/DW)?
Well, they OK'd it in the end! We'll be marching out in the open in a central street to the place where the supposed democracy is kept.
Yeah.
I'm happy about that, I wasn't relishing the idea of going with a few other dozen people, disrupting traffic and being arrested.

My BFF is always telling me that zie isn't worried about me getting arrested, but is worried whether I'll get out of these things alive.

I've also been listening to Country music, which may have accounted for my melancholy state yesterday... or the other way around? Feh, I should just put on my Sarah McLachlan CD's. Or just listen to some more Dixie Chicks!

Things always hit you harder when they are closer to home.
Always.

I had a race fail a few days ago, in which I basically preached to a woman of Japanese descent why the casting of Avatar: The Last Air Bender was racist.
I was called on it.
And I apologised and I was told it wasn't a problem.

Still, the shame continues to linger, because my privilege fogged the way I viewed this person and the way I discussed the issue with this person.

However, you live and learn right.

Well, no.

If history teaches us anything is that we would rather forget, or even not know and you basically need a very strong lobbying group in order for things to be remembered.

The past month or so has seen so much fail in fandom, the Race!Fail, the Trans!Fail, The Abelism, I'm quite sure there were more fail I'd forgotten and seriously, even though I commented only briefly I was outraged and saddened by all of these incidences. People can (and have) asked me why do I put so much energy into issues that don't have much to do with me (yeah, I know), I mean... why get so worked up on something that doesn't directly affect me.

Well, for one, despite the fact that I'm not in the disenfranchised group of non-white people, trans people and disabled people, these issues affect me mainly because the fact that those groups are disenfranchised I can safely go about my day not thinking about it.

But you know why I really take the time to give a damn and cracks my heart wide open? Beyond it being the right thing to do and being in an ethically sound position.

I want to be safe.

I want my body and mind to flourish, and the body I currently inhabit may have a lot of privileges associated with it, but its history is also bloody, by virtue of it being cis female, queer and Jewish.

My Jewish body is very weird thing. On the one hand it is Israeli Jewish, meaning it is the default body of superiority where I live, on the other, it comes from generations of bloodshed, exile, pogroms and genocide.

The history of this genocide, like most genocides oddly enough, is well documented. The violence was recorded, photographed, duplicated and triplicates by well meaning bureaucrats who kept the train tracks clear.

The genocide of my people even has a special name, The Holocaust¹, and like all historical events which linger in the collective memory of a people, a nation, a community, we tend to treat it with a deference of some kind. Even as I make Holocaust jokes, and sing "Springtime For Hitler" and make cracks about Germany blitzing its way though the Mundial and yeah, I'm waiting for Germany to serve up Spain's ass in the upcoming Semi-Final...

Still.

The Holocaust is an event that continues to shape my life and inform me of who I am, as a Jewish person in Israel and Palestine, as a queer person and as a feminist woman.

It does not, however, as a historical event, exist to be a backdrop to an AU Fanfic about American Soldiers and their love affair. What? The Battle of the Bulge was too tame?!

Yes, someone wrote a story, which has since been locked, but luckly there exists a Screencap (H/T to allchildren). I have not read it. I do not intend to.
I did read the Author's notes though; the warnings read thus:
Beating, abuse, non main character death, scientific experimentation, starvation, physical and emotional damage
Oh and the added disclaimer (after "nasty comments" began to appear) the gist of which is that this piece of work is NOT meant to be historically accurate. Accompanied to this Author's Note is a picture of the gates of Auschwitz, you all know the one, the one that was stolen and returned and reads Arbeit Macht Frei - "Work Makes One Free".
The... writer... of this AU fic stated that they added the picture, not for itself, but for the slogan, the meaning of the words upon the gate.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. I will probably say it for the rest of my life.

Context matters. Context, much like money, makes the world go around. That slogan cannot be removed from the gates it is attached to. Those words do not mean what you think they mean. The work they are talking about is not craft and the liberation they symbolise is not freedom.

A story, does not need to prettify history in order to make palatable for the readers. On the contrary, history should be shown in its grittiest form, it should be shown to be true and it should be portrayed with verisimilitude.

So, when you use a historical backdrop, in which you, dear author, feel the need to excuse yourself that by writing this you are no different from anyone who writes about rape, incest and domestic abuse, then you do not understand what fetishisation means.
You do not understand what treating subjects (people and events) with respect means.
You do not understand what this writing about history means.

You do not understand what context means and beyond that making you a disrespectful, blinkered and privileged fool, it also makes you, no matter your style, no matter how well written the characters are, a really really bad writer.

Personally. I blame Hollywood. And you know, bad education, entitlement and plain good ole' dehumnasation and antisemitism.

Also. No. Just. No.

This Nice Jewish Grrl needs to lie down now as she can't believe fandom sucks so hard right now.

ETA - 09/07/10: The story that is screen capped above is "1945" by slashxyouxup and is now unlocked. I'm not holding my breath though.

Footnotes
1) Even though we were not the only targeted people. The Roma people and other Gypsy groups were targeted and experimented in the same manner, homosexual men were castrated and murdered and many others. Still though, when you've got an entire country (Poland) set up to be an extermination station, while special Commando forces, Einsatzgruppen, are sweeping though Europe targeting Jewish Communities, you're going to feel that this is the Pogrom to end all Pogroms... in a way... it did...
Back.

At least 10 activists killed as Israel navy opens fire on Gaza aid flotilla.

As someone said to me, sometimes the non-violent solidarity groups act as cover for the violent solidarity group.

Oh, wait...

I'm genuinely shocked that it took such a violet turn. That there are so many wounded and killed and that the IDF just opened fire on ships they knew had European Legislators, Nobel Laureates, VIP's who are known activists and a bunch of civilians.

Al-Jazeera reports that the incident took place in international waters.

This is bad bad bad, horrible.

I can't even begin to talk about this. This is just so wrong.

Whoever gave theses orders was out of their mind!

This is not what I expected when I went to bed last night.

Ballplayers Sue Softball League.

Why you ask?

Because they were deemed "not gay enough" and were kicked off the team!

[LaRon] Charles and co-plaintiffs Steven Apilado and Jon Russ said that NAGAAA officials read definitions of “heterosexual” and “gay” and asked which word applied to them. When Charles answered both, an official allegedly told him, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.” When asked the same set of questions, Russ declined to answer.

The three plaintiffs in the case were voted to be “nongay” and were subsequently disqualified.

Two white players from D2 were also questioned about their sexual orientation but were not disqualified. NCLR alleges that race may have been a motivating factor in the decision to disqualify its clients (two are African-American, and one is of African-American and Filipino descent).

Emphasis mine.
When racism and biphobia collide it sure does look spectacular!

The language in the official documents is disturbingly binary. To not even bother to acknowledge the existence of bisexual players is discriminatory in the extreme and it's only exacerbated by the racism evident in the "disqualification" of those three players.

Because they're bi and PoC they're not representational enough, is that it?

For fuck sake I could throw something!