boom

Spin the wheel. This Greek mythological figure is trying to kill you

Spin the wheel again. This Greek mythological figure is trying to protect you

It. Literally. Doesn't. Matter.

Spoiler alert: trans people can be antisemitic!

Franz Kafka was a real person who died not too long ago, and just because a trans person relates to his writings doesn't mean they can claim he's trans. It's not the same as relating to a fictional character. You can't 'headcanon' an actual person. I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman. He was an actual person, not a fictional character you can project on. An treating Franz Kafka like a fictional character you can project any label onto and separate him from his actual life is dehumanization and *also* antisemitic.

It's no different than queer people co-opting Anne Frank's memory and erasing her story to just herald her as a "bi icon" when she never had the chance to live long enough to label herself. Queer gentiles need to stop dehumanizing Jewish people and turning them into blank slates they can project onto.

I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman.

At some point relatively recently, people seem to have come to the conclusion that you can't empathize with a character (or real fucking person, in this case, and I cannot stress how gross that is) unless you're just like them. "Oh, I, a nonbinary person can identify with this cishet man? He must actually be nonbinary!" "Oh, I, an autistic person, can identify with this Ambiguously Quirky™ person? She must actually be autistic!"

Being able to relate to a person--real or fictional--who isn't just like you is a good thing. It's good that you see yourself in the writings of a cisgender man! Maybe it will teach you that cis people aren't the enemy. It's good that an autistic character resonates with NT people! Maybe they'll gain new insight into their autistic friends and family!

It's called empathy, and it's so important to understand that you are going to see your experiences reflected in people who are unlike you. Those connections are important. Deciding that Kafka must be a trans woman because you're a trans woman is missing the entire fucking point. It means that you do, in fact, have some things in common with a cisgender man, and conversely, it means that cisgender men have things in common with you. To flatten them out so they're just like you is missing out on so much of what they have to say.

People are beautiful and rich and layered and the fact that we can connect with other people and share experiences despite how different we are? That's the whole fucking point. That's what makes life worth living.

Because we've seen that before. We see it very often because it's a fundamental premise of some incredibly antisemitic forms of Christianity, and when it turns out that we're real people with real opinions and real beliefs and real feelings who don't just exist to validate someone else's perception of who and how we could be, people don't just abandon their pretense at allyship, they get violent.

It's also a common failing in how the Holocaust is taught. People like to present this lens of "it was random violence that came out of nowhere and could've happened to anyone. It could've happened to you! Imagine if you'd been one of the victims! That would've been a tragedy wouldn't it?" And the thing is, that's bullshit. If you were just a random German citizen at the time? You would've been one of the perpetrators. And it was a tragedy in and of itself; it doesn't become a tragedy by imaging a scenario in which people who were perfectly safe would've actually been potentially in danger (never killed, of course, because Holocaust education is also commonly sanitized, which is a different rant).

Edited to take out a rant that was in drafts and got added to this by mistake, but. Well, the Tl;dr, since that's been reblogged

But in the Kafka conversation there is an element I think so many non-Jews just straight up refuse to understand. That is the fact that Jews have our own culture.

The societal gender ideals non-Jews in the West grow up with ... Aren't really in Jewish communities the same way. (Though cultural osmosis means we've picked up a lot along the way).

ALL our masculine role models, the ones we're told to admire, are shepherds. That's important bc shepherds lead the heard from behind, not in front. It speaks to a different leadership mindset. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Solomon, etc. we're soft spoken, humble, slow to action, intellectually inclined. Even when they have tempers or are warriors, those aspects are critiqued or minimized. (It's why when Jews depict King David, he's playing his harp or herding sheep. When non-Jews depict him, he's fighting Goliath.)

Compared to the very Roman/Western ideal of masculine power might-makes-right, Jewish masculinity is inherently softer.

That's not to say we DON'T value male strength. But it's just one factor and mostly understood that physical prowess has a time and place. It's not the ultimate standard for our masculinity.

Especially when you consider femininity in Jewish communities. Our matriarchs were all outspoken, all defied their husbands/men at key moments without punishment (some were even rewarded by God.) Some were prophets, judges and leaders (Miriam, Judith, Devorah, Hannah) in their own rights. Jewish women certainly do not fit the mold of a Roman/Western quiet, docile, submissive woman.

And don't forget, while there very much is misogyny in Jewish communities, our traditions often challenge it. Men are expected to praise their wives every Friday night in front of the family (Eshet Chail), men are halacically responsible for their wives' physical pleasure, Rabbis have denounced marital rape as a sin far longer than it's been illegal in MOST modern nations and women are excempt from time based religious obligations as they are considered closer to God (though that comes with it own problems).

In short, religious or not, Kafka would have grown up with that different understanding of gender norms and what it means to perform gender. He would have understood gender completely different to how a modern non-Jew in the West would.

To erase his Jewishness from the conversation - to ignore the cultural difference between how you see gender and how he likely would have - is a pretty severe historical distortion. And makes this weird history AU even more problematic.

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ok brief context first for any readers not aware: in the Odyssey, the unfaithful maids are a group of enslaved women in the house of Odysseus who are hanged for 'betraying' Odysseus by having sex with Penelope's suitors. In the Penelopiad they are instead Penelope's most faithful and trusted maids who she enlisted to spy on the suitors.

my issue w the Penelopiad on this subject is just that I think making it so the maids weren't actually 'unfaithful' carries the implication that if they had done all the things the Odyssey says they did then in some sense they would have had it coming.

yeah I haven't seen the Nolan film but i read the summary bcos i was interested to see if they kept in the Unfaithful Maids and not only are they out but the film also seems to have really played down the massacre of the suitors?

which is another thing where like, even in the original context, we are not supposed to 100% agree with that!! its followed by a sequence where the suitors' families are all like 'dude what the fuck'

part of the emotional impact, to me, of the Odyssey is that we spent the whole epic being encouraged to sympathise w Odysseus as this almost everyman-type main character who just wants to go home and then at the end of the poem he murders a bunch of people. yikes!!