The Offended Jew's Rant About Erasing Magneto's Jewishness

[cimorene]

Okay, look, I see this all over fandom. ERIK IS NOT GERMANIC. He's a JEW from Germany.

"Germanic" doesn't mean "German-speaking" or "from Germany"; it means a specific ethno-linguistic group.

Most of the Jews who lived in Germany until WWII, including native speakers of Yiddish, a Germanic language formed by a fusion of German with Hebrew, were Ashkenazi Jews, a completely different ethnic group which originated in the Middle East.

For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have identified genetic variations that have high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population. This is true for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) as well as for matrilineal markers (mitotypes).

[...]

A 2006 study found Ashkenazi Jews to be a clear, relatively homogenous genetic subgroup. Strikingly, regardless of the place of origin, Ashkenazi Jews can be grouped in the same genetic cohort — that is, regardless of whether an Ashkenazi Jew's ancestors came from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Lithuania, or any other place with a historical Jewish population, they belong to the same ethnic group.

...Which is to say, not to the ethnic group of the country they come from.

Most of this is probably coming from Michael Fassbender, who is half-German and half-Irish, freckled, ginger, and extremely Teutonic-looking. But of course, they were probably looking to cast someone with the general body-type of Sir Ian McKellen who could speak German. And for many reasons, there aren't a lot of Jews left in Germany.

People don't seem to realize how offensive (and ridiculous) this erasure of Erik's Jewishness, especially in favor of "Germanness", is. The ethnic differences between German Jews and the Germanic peoples were the very foundation of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the foundation of Erik's background and character arc. Confusing 'Jewish Holocaust victim' with 'germanic' is like... well... it's like confusing 'Jewish Holocaust victim' as synonymous with 'ethnically German'! [ETA There were of course many non-Jews killed in the Holocaust, including ethnic Germans, as I hope everyone knows. Of course, the fact that this post needed to be made at all suggests not.] It, the Holocaust, is the standard example of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and horrific inhumanity to which all other conflicts (no matter how insignificant) are compared.

So basically, FUCKING STOP IT.

A few more specific pieces of advice inspired by particular stories and kinkmeme requests:

• Erik doesn't have a foreskin! Jews circumcise their babies.


• Erik wouldn't be a priest! And he also wouldn't be a Catholic who tempts a priest. And that isn't "just a harmless kink" that somehow therefore, because it's kinky, has no bearing on his identity. Remember the Inquisition and the Holocaust? Remember the thousands of years of history in which Jews have been persecuted from place to place, repeatedly driven from their homeland, and forced to follow their own worship practices in secret under threat of death while paying homage to the gods of their conquerors like the Romans (who drove them out of Jerusalem and made them pay a Jewish tax) and the Catholic Church (who tortured them)? Yeah. that. Remember when this very same thing happened last year in bandom and there was a huge stink about it then?

Comments

[feuervogel]

I read that sentence exactly the same way. There were millions of non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, including many ethnic Germans (socialists, communists, labor organizers, homosexuals, people with mental and/or physical disabilities (in the eugenics program)).

There were "only" 15,000 ethnic German homosexuals murdered in the Holocaust. That doesn't mean they didn't exist and weren't murdered just the same.

[perhael]

I think the point she's making is that Erik, while German, is far more influenced by his Jewish background, because it shaped his background and had a profound impact on his character development. Therefore, when people disregard his Jewish background in favor of focusing solely on his being German, that's a baffling decision and even a callous one, considering Erik's backstory.

She doesn't say anywhere that Germans weren't victims of the Holocaust. That's not her argument at all. The sentence is question was perhaps a little ambiguous, but I think the context makes it clear that that wasn't its intended meaning.

I understand your frustration on the subject, I just think you're venting in the wrong place, and to someone who has done nothing to warrant it.

[feuervogel]

(The ETA helps.)

It's just, the way it was phrased made it look like "Holocaust victim/survivor" and "German" are two mutually exclusive categories, which people here know isn't true (I hope and assume), but a lot of people don't, so the original statement inadvertently erases these other victims (even people killed for being Jews who considered themselves German, because they had, like, one Jewish grandparent or something).

Do we know from canon (not a Marvel Reader) whether Erik and his family were religious Jews or what in his background he uses to identify himself (other than "mutant")? That doesn't excuse unthinking fans' facepalm-worthy fic ideas, of course; my main knowledge of the X-verse is from the first McKellen-Stewart X-Men movie and First Class, plus picking up things via osmosis from friends who *are* fans.

[waxjism]

Erik's religion seems entirely beside the point here, since it was the ethnic identity that was targeted.

(Also, Erik's most beautiful memory in First Class was clearly a religious moment with his family.)

[feuervogel]

There's (societally) a lot of conflation of religious and ethnic identity. Sometimes, like with Judaism, it's hard to separate, partly because we use the same word to mean both the ethnic/identity group and the faith group (Jewish). I didn't know there was such a thing as an atheist Jew until I met one a dozen years ago (because, like much of society at large, I conflated them into both religion and cultural identity). [Is ethnic the right term to use? What makes an ethnic group, anyway? Shared culture? Shared roots? Societally, we seem to use ethnic and racial (and sometimes cultural) interchangeably, which gets confusing.]

Anyway, I think the point/question I was trying to make in the earlier comment was that he may not have even had a Jewish [religious] identity or just a tenuous cultural connection. But I forgot that scene about his most beautiful memory (being distracted by how much Erik & Charles should really have been doing it).

[mirabella]

I sort of feel like I have to say this out loud.

You realize that you just came onto a Jewish lesbian's journal to accuse her of denying the existence of gay Holocaust victims, right? I mean, you understand that that's what you did, right? And you got the part where you really, really felt that a Jewish woman needed you to educate her on the Holocaust?

Yeah, I figured you probably did. Carry on.

[feuervogel]

OK, so, backing up one's assertion with evidence is Not OK by the rules of discussion. Good to know.

[happydork]

I'm a Jewish lesbian, and while I learned about my family's history at a young age, I didn't learn about the other groups of victims until much later on. feuervogel and I had different approaches to pointing out the unfortunate phrasing, but nowhere did either of us accuse cimorene of denying anything.

And you got the part where you really, really felt that a Jewish woman needed you to educate her on the Holocaust?

I'm worried by this sentence. There were other groups who were victims of the Holocaust. My being Jewish doesn't make me an expert on Nazi eugenics. I was twenty-four when I first learned that ethnic Serbs had been mass-murdered in the Holocaust. Today, reading feueryogel's link, is the first time I've learned that Jehovah's Witnesses were among the specifically persecuted groups. So, yes, this particular Jewish woman did need feuervogel to educate her, and will continue to need education.

[cimorene]

Well... I think the personal connection to the Holocaust probably did increase my awareness of it? I don't mean to imply that this would be true of all Jews or that it reflects negatively on you that it's not true of you. But I think it was the personal connection, as tinged as it was with horror, which prompted me to curiosity. It's also why I haven't watched about half of XMFC, because after a certain age - I think it was Jane Yolen's Briar Rose in high school - I decided I didn't want to consume fiction that deals with the Holocaust anymore. But definitely I was moved to ask my parents to tell me everything they knew about it, and to read about it in encyclopedias I think, when I first learned about it. Knowing that two of my great-grandparents came over from Poland less than 10 years before the concentration camps started, each with no more than their immediate families, made a big impression on a little kid with like 8 surviving blood relatives on one side of the family (the side that was half Polish jew) contrasted to hundreds of people on the other side.

Of course, personal feelings could just as easily make you want to know less about it, I can well imagine. But I think it's natural to assume that it would be cause for some basic knowledge. I mean, we actually have it in our family Haggadah.