#obligatory I'm Not Jewish‚ I Just Want to be a Decent Person disclaimer

[awnowimsad]

So there is this post, claiming that a Japanese hotel is being review bombed, because they refused a man service for being an IDF soldier.

People ate this up of course. At the time of the writing, it has over 12,000 reblogs. Lots of people praising the hotel staff for ~taking a brave stand~ and such.

But, you know, I thought it was a little weird, that the only source the post includes is... Nothing! OP just claims it was from "an israeli group".

So, of course, I decided to do some checking.

Turns out the hotel manager had no fucking idea whether the tourist had ties to the Israeli army or not.

[...] since the hotel did not inquire about the guest's military background at the time of booking, it appeared the reservation was canceled solely based on the guest's Jewish or Israeli name. [...]

So the OP of the above post is already intentionally misrepresenting the situation by claiming the hotel was only refusing to serve Israeli soldiers. (and we don't even know if the guy was a soldier...) But twelve thousand people thought that this was legit.

Great to know twelve thousand people on this website feel that xenophobia and racial profiling are justifiable and even praiseworthy!

Ok cool cool cool cool. Yep. Just another normal day.

YnetNews is rated High Credibility by Media Bias/Fact Check.

[friend-crow]

I started this post about a month ago, but I've seen the subject come up twice in the last 24 hours so I figured it might be time to finish writing it.

A recent debate (which I may or may not have accidentally started) about just what people mean when they say "pagan" and why it might piss some people off to have their religion referred to as such has inspired me to write a bit on the subject.

Let's start with some etymology! Wooo!

pagan (n.)

c. 1400, perhaps mid-14c., "person of non-Christian or non-Jewish faith," from Late Latin paganus "pagan," in classical Latin "villager, rustic; civilian, non-combatant" noun use of adjective meaning "of the country, of a village," from pagus "country people; province, rural district," originally "district limited by markers," thus related to pangere "to fix, fasten," from PIE root *pag- "to fasten." As an adjective from early 15c.

The religious sense often was said in 19c. [e.g. Trench] to derive from conservative rural adherence to the old gods after the Christianization of Roman towns and cities; but the Latin word in this sense predates that period in Church history, and it is more likely derived from the use of paganus in Roman military jargon for "civilian, incompetent soldier," which Christians (Tertullian, c. 202; Augustine) picked up with the military imagery of the early Church (such as milites "soldier of Christ," etc.).

The English word was used later in a narrower sense of "one not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim." As "person of heathenish character or habits," by 1841. Applied to modern pantheists and nature-worshippers from 1908.

Pagan and heathen are primarily the same in meaning; but pagan is sometimes distinctively applied to those nations that, although worshiping false gods, are more cultivated, as the Greeks and Romans, and heathen to uncivilized idolaters, as the tribes of Africa. A Mohammedan is not counted a pagan much less a heathen. [Century Dictionary, 1897]

-source

TLDR: Pagan in the current sense of the word began with Christians referring to people who hadn't been converted to Christianity, and was more recently expanded to mean anyone who isn't Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

This is a specifically Christian worldview, which establishes a false dichotomy of essentially "Christian or nah". It reduces the rest of the world's religions and cultures down to "other".

While it's fine if you want to "reclaim" this word by self-identifying as pagan (or heathen), when you start applying it to others against their will it becomes kind of a shitty thing to do.

But if that's literally what the word means, why can't I use it that way?

If a slur literally refers to an oppressed group of people, does that mean it's fine to go around calling those people slurs? The answer is "no". Knowing what a word means and being a decent person aren't always the same thing.

It's also important to consider that many of us have grown up in a Christian society, whether we were raised as Christians or not, which means that we often view things through a Christian lens in many ways that we're not even aware of. This kind of dichotomy is an example of that. It's also an example of the sort colonizer mentality that often comes with living in a Christian society.

Obligatory disclaimer that I'm not saying that all Christians are bad or that it's an inherently bad religion -- just that there is a long history of Christians colonizing much of the world and using religious institutions to try to erase other cultures.

In general, it's almost* always a good idea to listen to others when it comes to matters of their own identity, instead of placing your own labels on them. Chances are they know better than you do.

*fascists are notoriously bad at properly labeling themselves, so you have to keep an eye out for the signs