Monthly Archives: July 2015

How Casual Bigotry Causes Violence

Author’s note: The following is a response I wrote to a person with whom I was having a discussion about bigotry against gay people. The conversation was in response to some comments I made about today’s stabbing at the Jerusalem pride parade. I do have a more complete post coming soon, but in the meantime I thought this was worth sharing. 
See, that’s the thing. I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who would actually run after gay people holding hands throwing rocks at them, or if you’re just the kind of person who would laugh at a gay person being called a faggot, but here’s what you need to understand. I’m going to assume you’re just the kind of person who wouldn’t challenge bigotry against gay people if he heard it. There are a lot of you, and I don’t think you’re evil. Just a product of your environment.
 
Here’s how casual bigotry works. you’re standing around with a group of friends and one of them starts talking about this faggot who was staring at him as he walked down the street. Your friend says how disgusting faggots are and how if he saw the guy again he’d beat the crap out of him. You might laugh, or you might just stand there as everyone else laughs, but you wouldn’t speak up and challenge him even though you would never dream of beating someone up for being gay.
 
Anyway, a week or so later, this friend of yours is ogled by another gay guy, and that day he was having a bad day anyway, so he decides to let off some steam by bashing the gay guy’s face into the pavement a few times. He comes back to your group of friends, and tells you all what he just did. Some people clap him on the back and congratulate him on a job well done. Some people just laugh. Some, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’d be in this group, don’t laugh, and don’t congratulate him, but you wouldn’t necessarily tell him off either. You certainly wouldn’t tell him that you’re never going to talk to him again, and you definitely wouldn’t tell him he should work on liking gay people more. You may tell him it’s a stupid thing to do because it could get him arrested, but you wouldn’t make it about the person he beat, you’d make it about him.
 
And even if you did protest, you wouldn’t report him to the police. Even if he did it again a month later. Even if he did it again after that two months later. Because the guy he beat was gay, and on some level had it coming. Maybe he “shoved his gayness” in your friend’s face. Maybe he was being too loud about it. Maybe he shouldn’t have looked at your friend. Whatever the reason, you’d find a way to justify not reporting him to the police, no matter how many gay people he beat.
 
Eventually, you’d probably distance yourself from him if he continued to beat gay people, but that would probably be more out of a distaste for violence than out of concern for gay people.
 
And it’s not just you. There are a lot of people like this. They don’t hate gay people, per se, but they wouldn’t really stand up to people who do, either.
 
What that means, is that people who do truly hate gay people, and who truly abuse and discriminate against gay people have a safe haven amongst people like you. They know that while they may eventually lose the friendship of those around them, they’ll never have to worry about being stopped. So even though you may not hate gay people per se, or even give it that much thought, if you’re not confronting the bigotry they experience every time you see it, you’re contributing to the problem. You’re not causing it directly, but you’re letting it happen. You’re fostering an environment in which gay people feel unsafe, and people who hate gay people feel safe. You should never want to be a part of something like that.
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Sex Segregation Gone Mad

Update – 7/10/2015: Presumably after seeing the attention this story got, the person whom I had this conversation with called and left a message saying that the call was a prank. I’m leaving it up with this disclaimer because I find the fact that many parts of this story, particularly the extreme sexism and racism, are plausible very telling. 

Author’s note: I wouldn’t ordinarily post something like this on my blog. I try to keep this blog away from anything that could potentially be used to bash any group without offering any constructive criticism. The reason I’m posting this is not to imply that this is at all the norm. As noted below, this was the first time in the history of our driving school that such a thing happened. That said, the fact that such a thing could happen indicates that we’ve reached a point in our obsession with tznius (modesty) and sex segregation that can create the feelings expressed by the customer. 

“I had a problem with my road test yesterday, one you scheduled for me.”
“Ok,” I replied. “What happened?”
“When I came there to the road test site, a woman got into the car.”
“Ok…”
“I didn’t want to be in the car with a woman, so I asked her if there were any men I could take the test with, and she said there weren’t any available.”
“Ok…”
“So I asked to speak to her supervisor, and she said that he wasn’t available.”
By this point my right eyebrow was already working its way up toward my hairline.

“I asked her if she had a towel,” he continued, as if the words coming out of his mouth made perfect sense, “I wanted to put it up between us as a mechitza (partition used to separate the sexes). She gave me a funny look.”
At this point I’d covered the receiver with my hand, and was failing miserably at controlling my giggles.
“She looked at me funny, and said that she wouldn’t be able to see me. That was the point, I told her. She gave me a dirty look and told me I couldn’t take the test.”
I fought back the laughter as I blurted, “Hold on a second, please,” and put the customer on hold.

I ran over to my boss’ desk, laughing uncontrollably, face beet red, tears already forming around my eyes. My boss saw me laughing and started laughing himself. He motioned with his hand, asking what had happened. We’ve gotten enough weird calls in the past that he knew something was up.

After about a minute I regained my composure enough to tell him what I’d just heard, punctuated by more giggles of course. “Can you please do me a favor and talk to this guy?” I asked him, “I don’t think I can control myself.”
“Sorry,” my boss replied through his own belly laughs, “you take care of this.”
He ran into the front office to tell the secretary what had happened, closing the door behind him.

I composed myself and lifted the receiver.

“It’s the three weeks, you know, you shouldn’t have the music on the phone.”
“Huh?” I replied, not quite sure what he was referring to.
“The music when I was just on hold. It’s the three weeks; you should change that.”
“That’s a good point,” I replied. I hadn’t considered that.
“B’kitzur (in short),” he continued, “I want a refund. She didn’t let me take the test.”
“Hold on, please, let me ask my boss.”

I put the receiver down again and went into the front office. My boss was telling the secretaries about the phone call. I interrupted him to finish the story, laughing as I told it. I told my boss that the customer wanted a refund, and he said absolutely not.
“Tell him they only have men in Monticello,” My boss said. They don’t, but why not make him drive.

“Hello?” I said, picking up the receiver, “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to give you a refund.”
“Why not?” he demanded, “It isn’t right that I should have to take a road test with an isha (woman) and a tumadikeh goy (unclean non-Jew) that I should have to sit in a car with a tumadikeh goy!”
Flustered at hearing such vehemence against someone whose only crime is not being Jewish I said, “You live in a goyishe country. Do you cross the street every time you see a goy (non-Jew) coming toward you?
“No, but in the street I can look down at the sidewalk, I don’t have to see them.”
“Well,” I said patiently, although I was reaching the end of my tether, “We live in a goyishe (non-Jewish) country, and if you want to get a license in this country, you’re gonna have to take a road test with a goy who might also be a woman.”
“You don’t understand,” he replied, “she was so anti-Semitic! She looked at me like I was crazy, just because I’m Jewish and I needed a man to give me the test!”
I’d been patient, but this was pushing it. I have very little tolerance for people crying ‘anti-Semitism’ when it plainly isn’t. “No,” I shouted, “it wasn’t anti-Semitism. She had literally never heard anyone ask for that before, and found the request strange! You are the only person who has ever, in the history of this driving school or any other, who has asked a road test examiner if they could have a man replace them! It’s not even yichud (a law prohibiting two people of the opposite sex who are not married or immediately related from being alone together) at all! It’s an open car, with clear windows, driving around in a busy city! Ask your rav (rabbi), there’s absolutely no problem with it! All the rest of our students are just as frum (religiously observant) as you are, and none of them have ever had a problem with this! It’s not anti-Semitism; it’s just you!”
“The problem is you, and your whole driving school,” he shouted, “you’re all choteh umachti es harabim (one who not only sins, but drives others to sin)!”

At which point I hung up on him.

You can’t make this stuff up, people.

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