Gender and the Politics of Anti-Semitism.

ANTISEMITISM; GENDER role; STEREOTYPES; JEWISH men; FEMININITY; HISTORY of antisemitism

This contribution focuses on the development of gendered anti-Semitic stereotypes based on material drawn from post-Enlightenment Germany, exploring their ambivalent messages and meanings. It shows that this development was intimately connected with the creation of bourgeois gender roles and images of sexuality that were adapted by middle-class Jewish men and women even as they were used to denigrate them. By ascribing "femininity" to Jewish men as a means of depriving them of their masculinity, on the one hand, and insisting on their specifically immoral sexual behavior, on the other, the highly gendered Judeophobic tropes persistently blurred the line between the norms of masculine and feminine behavioral codes—a phenomenon that appears in strikingly similar ways all over Europe. In the gendered hierarchy of Jewish communities, however, this attack on the most intimate form of identity was internalized by blaming women for giving credence to anti-Jewish propaganda. A gendered perspective on Judeophobia thus broadens our understanding both of the mindsets of anti-Semites and of internal Jewish gender debates and norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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