westfailia:

rhyselinn:

westfailia:

the nazis succeeded so well in erasing trans history that the iconic image of book burnings is specifically the burning of the institut für sexualwissenschaft library and it goes generally uncaptioned to this day

I can see why this might happen, and it’s not because this needs to be forgotten.

If a person sees a picture of a book burning and it’s captioned “Nazi book burning in 1933,” that person may come away thinking “Nazis burned books, burning books is bad, therefore Nazis are bad.” That’s a rational interpretation that benefits that person and society.

However, if a person sees a picture of a book burning and it’s captioned “Nazi book burning from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a progressive institute that studied gender and sexuality,” this has a polarizing effect.

People who are already pro-LGBT rights may come away thinking “Nazis burned books on LGBT stuff, burning books is bad, discriminating against LGBT people is bad, therefore Nazis are extra bad.”

BUT people who are homophobic/transphobic may come away thinking “Nazis burned books on LGBT folks, I don’t like LGBT folks, therefore Nazis aren’t that bad, and also therefore burning books isn’t that bad if they’re books about LGBT people.” That’s probably the opposite of what the original sharer of the image wanted to have happen, but without the intermediate logic cemented in the reader’s mind, this unfortunate conclusion may be drawn.

The takeaway here is not that nobody needs to hide this fact or try to censor it from the people. Rather, it’s important to consider phrasing when disseminating information, because it will ultimately affect how a message is received.

not to be impolite but i think that’s a completely load of horse shit. when the americans came across the camps they left the people wearing fucking pink triangles in there and they served out their sentences in the post war period in the prisons of the newly established east and west germanies. the allied instituted governments kept nazi amendments that turned homosexuality into a felony.

our history is more important than some optics nonsense. stop excusing hatred of the LGBT community and the erasure of our history because you think “burning books in bad” is more important.

1 year ago / 15140 
via: westfailia
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