Interesting Links for 13-11-2022

[andrewducker]

1. A material normally only found in meteorites has now been made artificially, and may solve our issues with some rare earth metals

(tags:materials meteor space technology viaSwampers )

2. German transphobe also a Holocaust denier

(tags:Holocaust transgender Germany viaSwampers LGBT )

3. Iran Votes to Execute Protesters (there are 15,000 in prison right now)

(tags:Iran protest death_penalty OhForFucksSake )

4. English people encounter pizza for the first time

(tags:pizza history )

5. Discovery of bronze statue rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history

(tags:history archeology Italy )

6. Why do so few women excel at maths? Sexism, of course

(tags:sexism women mathematics )

7. Major ad firm Omnicom recommends clients pause Twitter ad spend (clients include Apple and McDonalds, and 5,000 more)

(tags:Twitter advertising Doom )

8. How "Wordle editor" became a real job at The New York Times

(tags:games language )

Comments

[wildeabandon]

No. Murdering six million Jews is not less extensive than murdering six million Jews and a handful of trans gentiles in any significant way.

[andrewducker]

I have to say I'm appalled, we've very glad that the law agreed with me.

[andrewducker]

I've been going round and round on this for the past hour, and getting more and more furious about it.

How on earth is it not denying part of the Holocaust to say that it a group wasn't deliberately targetted for extermination, because that group was smaller?

Are you really saying "Hey, there weren't many of group X, so it's fine to say that they weren't targetted?" In what world is that anything even close to not morally reprehensible?

Chunks of my family died during the Holocaust. I'm Jewish, and large chunks of my mother's side are just gone. I toured chunks of Poland and the Czech Republic looking for records with my father and uncle. I am *totally* on board with the idea that Jews were the central part of it.

But saying that it's okay to discount the attempted genocide of any group is wrong. It's just morally hideous.

[wildeabandon]

Ah. I think I better understand the crux of our disagreement now, but I'm not sure that it's going to help.

The thing is that I don't think that there was a systematic attempt to exterminate trans people. I think that individual trans people were targeted for being visibly queer, rather than for their transness qua transness. And that was bad, and claiming that it didn't happen is bad, but it isn't the same as trying to discount an attempted genocide, and that distinction matters.

[liv]

That's not actually the case. The infamous book burning specifically destroyed the papers and records of the institute that was providing medical and pyschological support for women who wanted to medically transition. Yes, some Nazi theorists incorrectly regarded trans women as "gay men", but we don't have to accept Nazi definitions. There was an active campaign to murder trans people and destroy their culture and their institutions. To deny that is Holocaust denial, plain and simple. It wasn't incidental, it was the heart of the Nazi project almost on a level with, and deeply intertwined with, hating Jews.

If you're not aware this it is because Holocaust education is extremely terrible and because the Allied countries, which were also homophobic and transphobic for most of the second half of the 20th century, actively suppressed this history. Read this, it is scholarly and well-referenced, and extremely horrific but I'm not apologizing for that:
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4188-the-eradication-of-talmudic-abstractions-anti-semitism-transmisogyny-and-the-national-socialist-project

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

[wildeabandon]

Thank you. I stand corrected.

andrewducker - I'm sorry. I was arguing based on an incorrect understanding, and I allowed my discomfort at being (as I thought) unjustifiably included in a victimised group to distract me from the need to make sure I know what I'm talking about before spouting off. I'll try to do better.

[andrewducker]

Thank you. I'm sorry I got prematurely angry - I thought I'd identified the source of our disagreement, when I hadn't, and took it badly. Thank you to Liv for coming to the rescue, and to you for remaining polite!

[danieldwilliam]

but we don't have to accept Nazi definitions

Very much this.