An actual quote from my (now) seven year old after yelling at someone for continuously mosgendering me: what are they going to do dad, hit me? I’m six.
It’s my grandpa’s birthday next week and he said “I don’t want to be 85” and my grandmother, his wife of 59 and a half years, said “well your only alternative is to die”, I can’t believe how affectionate they are
I was having lunch with them today and my grandpa started throwing napkins at my grandmother, and she balled it up and looked all set to throw it back but then she put it down and said “I will not throw it because I was brought up properly, you were dragged” she has spent ¾ of her life with this man
It’s so funny when my friends apologize for like not talking to me for a week or something because its like babe…….object permanence im sorry because i love you but time is different for me it does not matter if we haven’t spoken in a week or a month ill still love you lol but i literally be forgetting about people until they text me
This is why the silent treatment doesn’t work on me igvoirjorjor I’ve had friends and ex’s try to do this as like punishment or whatever but i literally forget…….i could go months without talking to someone lmaoooo play stupid games win stupid prizes!
This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.
The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.
For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.
German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.
The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.
I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.
So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).
I actually studied this in one of my classes last semester. It was beyond fascinating.
There was one woman who begged her husband for months to leave Germany. When he refused to listen to her, she refused to get into bed with him at night, instead kneeling down in front of him and begging him to listen to her, or if he wouldn’t listen to her, to at least tell her who he would listen to. He gave her the name of a close, trusted male friend. She went and found that friend, convinced him of the need to get the hell out of Europe, and then brought him home. Thankfully, her husband finally saw sense and moved their family to Palestine.
Another woman had a bit more control over her own situation (she was a lawyer). She had read Mein Kampf when it was first published and saw the writing on the wall. She asked her husband to leave Europe, but he didn’t want to leave his (very good) job and told her that he had faith in his countrymen not to allow an evil man to have his way. She sent their children to a boarding school in England, but stayed in Germany by her husband’s side. Once it was clear that if they stayed in Germany they were going to die, he fled to France but was quickly captured and killed. His wife, however, joined the French Resistance and was active for over a year before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.
(This is probably my favorite of these stories) The third story is about a young woman who saved her fiance and his father after Kristallnacht. She was at home when the soldiers came, but her fiance was working late in his shop. Worried for him, she snuck out (in the middle of all the chaos) to make sure he was alright. She found him cowering (quite understandably) in the back of his shop and then dragged him out, hoping to escape the violence. Unfortunately, they were stopped and he, along with hundreds of other men, was taken to a concentration camp. She was eventually told that she would have to go to the camp in person to free him, and so she did. Unfortunately, the only way she could get there was on a bus that was filled with SS men; she spent the entire trip smiling and flirting with them so that they would never suspect that she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she got to the camp, she convinced whoever was in charge to release her fiance. She then took him to another camp and managed to get her father-in-law to be released. Her father-in-law was a rabbi, so she grabbed a couple or witnesses and made him perform their marriage ceremony right then and there so that it would be easier for her to get her now-husband out of the country, which she did withing a few months. This woman was so bad ass that not only was her story passed around resistance circles, even the SS men told it to each other and honoured her courage.
The moral of these stories is that men tend to trust their governments to take care of them because they always have; women know that our governments will screw us over because they always have.
Another interesting tidbit is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Kristallnacht is a term that historians came up with after the fact, and was not what the event was actually called at the time. It’s likely that the event was actually called was (I’m sorry that I can’t remember the German word for it but it translates to) night of the feathers, because that, instead of broken glass, is the image that stuck in people’s minds because the soldiers also went into people’s homes and destroyed their bedding, throwing the feathers from pillows and blankets into the air. What does it say that in our history we have taken away the focus of the event from the more domestic, traditionally feminine, realms, and placed it in the business, traditionally masculine, realms?
Badass women and interesting commentary. Though I would argue that “Night of Broken Glass" includes both the personal and the private spheres. It was called Kristallnacht by the Nazis, which led to Jewish survivors referring to it as the November Pogrom until the term “Kristallnacht" was reclaimed, as such.
None of this runs directly counter to your fascinating commentary, though.
@the-waters-and-the-wild hi! I’m (OP) actually writing a book on these themes. If you’re interested in learning more or helping me out with access, please check out this page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/women-in-the-warsaw-jewish-underground-project#/
Help me pay for the translators, books, reproductions of archival materials, and editors I need. | Check out 'Women in the Warsaw Jewish Und
it seems like people agree that mirabel didn't get powers and that this was a good thing because she was in a key position to break her family out of the increasingly toxic downward spiral of stress caused by their exceptionalism and abuela's overbearing expectations of her family
but the thing is, i don't think that's exactly it.
mirabel didn't lack a gift. her gift was that she was abuela's true heir, and her power was control over the casita.
her door vanished when she touched it because her abuela could not relinquish her grip--over the house, over the magic, over her family, over her own fear-driven expectations--and unconsciously or not, her grandmother took it away. she couldn't cede control. she couldn't even acknowledge that this was an issue. she denied all of it, and in denying it she denied mirabel's door, her gift, her importance, and her place in the future of the family.
evidence one: no one else is accommodated by the house the way mirabel is. they ask now and then, it anticipates them a bit. but it doesn't dance around them the way it dances for mirabel and her abuella. from the very first scene, mirabel is literally in tune with casita the way everyone else is in tune with their own powers. it's a fundamental part of her moveset and her music.
evidence two: when casita is being torn apart, it's clearly being torn in two. it helps her in her struggle towards the candle even as it's dying, even as abuela screams for her to stop. abuela's unyielding grip is clearly driving the destruction, but even then the soul of the house is desperately aiding mirabel's will. it drives everyone away from her against their wishes to further hers. she's in control, even as her abuela's refusal to cooperate tears it all apart. at the last, the house drives everyone out of the blast zone but protects mirabel with broken pieces of door as its very final act of volition. the framing is incredibly clear: mirabel is the house's true mistress. mirabel is who the house chose to run this show. abuela can only deny this, not reverse it.
evidence three: when everyone's finally reconciled, abuela's most significant gesture--for her own healing, for the family's, and for mirabel's--is to formally pass stewardship of the household to mirabel. she gives over the doorknob. she invites mirabel to try again. she acknowledges she wasn't fair to reject mirabel before. and now mirabel's door is the front door, and mirabel's power is openly acknowledged as the central power. it restores casita and from casita the wellspring of magic the rest of the family draws from.
mirabel had a gift the entire time. in denying it to her, in refusing to relinquish command to the next generation, abuela kept the family stuck in a downward spiral around the very point of her husband's death, unable to heal, loss compounding itself. except: she asked her husband, her dead husband, for help. and abuelo sent her mirabel.
in acknowledging that mirabel's gift had been there all along, overlooked, not actually absent but continuously suppressed, abuela acknowledged that it was finally time to move on with her life and let her family carry on without her direct control. and that everyone was, actually, going to live happily ever after.
when i, someone with ADHD, start info-dumping excitedly about my favourite things, typically none of my mentally ill friends reply either because i just typed out a novella length explanation of why i love something they know nothing about, only they also have ADHD and are never going to take the time to read it because they
1) get distracted
2) don't care
3) it's the 7th time i've done this on the same subject in a week
When I'm selling books, I actually get a better sale record when I start getting excited, because I'm showing the joy it gave me and they want to experience that.
Some people express themselves differently. Some people just don't like people who are loud or have too much energy. Some people are too tired or socially drained. NT people can be just as openly excitable us those who are ND.
It's cool that you're being yourself. But no one is obligated to like you or your personality. It doesn't even have to be bias, sometimes, people just...don't like you. It doesn't have to be about society, or sexism or whatever. Some people just don't like that and that is fine.
So just be with people who do like you for who you are.
You are correct but that's not what I'm talking about. I've accepted that some people just won't like me.
In my very first tweet I mention that I can see people's reaction to me change as I open up.
So these are people I like and know enough to be myself around.
And then these people, who have treated me normally, start treating me more like a child. As if my excitability means that I actually am a helpless child.
As if being silly means that I'm actually unreliable and unable to get stuff done.
Stuff which they already seen me do previously.
.
And how is it not a societal issue?
Don't tell me you haven't seen the deluge of people infantalizing autistic and ADHD people for our special interests and hyperfixations.
I'm not talking about people not liking our personalities.
Rather, about being looked down at because of our passion and liking something.
.
Not because we're going on and on about it.. which I understand can be exhausting for someone.
But instead, directly for getting excited in a manner they believe to be 'childish'.
Security never saved it before. This is just the next level of difficulty and the gradual increase has only acted as training and made the Swedes unstoppable.
Well, it went via flaming arrow that one time, and tbh as a security pro there ain’t much you can do if someone shoots a flaming arrow over your head and into the goat.
Except, of course, nod in respect to your worthy and victorious opponent.
Yeah, I’m going to live-tumble my reading of this amazing wiki article. I’ll tag it “christmas goat” and “long post” if you want to block my nonsense. But you’ll miss gems like this:
But it doesn’t tell me WHO launched three successful attacks against the goats (btw there are two goats because the people who made the first goat got tired of people burning their goat, so they quit making it and another organization took up the task. The first organization started making their goat again after the second organization got into the Guinness Book of World Records for their goat’s size. So now the two groups continue to make separate goats.)
dededos
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