Phoebe Maltz Bovy

@phoebebovy

Opinion ed., The CJN, contributor columnist, The Globe and Mail. Half of Feminine Chaos.

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Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· 20d

This is a place where the Jewish-white blurriness jumps out. Bracketing if you think it's a *good* joke or not, to me this comes across as a self-deprecating Jewish joke. To other audience it is about whiteness.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· 21d

thecjn.ca/opinion/the-...

I gave my own Jewishness very little thought when it came to a side project for general audiences. I gave still-less thought to my unremarkable and non-expert thoughts about the Middle East. It would never in a million years have occurred to me, in July 2023, to view my hopes for a two-state solution as at all related to a book about straight women and decades-old Britcoms.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· 22d

Finally, as I got at in yesterday's column (thecjn.ca/opinion/the-...), what is happening re: Jewish authors is operating in an existing identity-emphasizing literary landscape but in VERY different terms.

what we’re looking at is a siloing, wherein there is a place for Jewish books, but it’s at a Jewish Books table. That’s already a problem if the hope is that the Jewish book has some non-Jewish readers as well, although this points to a wider issue in 2010s-and-onwards book publishing, with everything needing to be categorizable along empowering-or-tragic identity lines. Granted, the siloing of Jewish books has happened for very different reasons than that of other identities. The Jewish Books table is there not to remedy past discrimination, but the ongoing sort.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· 22d

If I may quote my 2016 self, to start the answer here: forward.com/life/356366/...

Where, then, does Portnoy stand now? Will Roth still, in Trump’s America, be the go-to image, in the collective imagination, of the White Male Writer? Or will he have come full circle and get the ‘identity’ treatment once more, a “Jewish writer” again whether he likes it or not?

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· 23d

Context. (The things the Bluesky purists - all 3 of you - are missing out on!)

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· 23d

thecjn.ca/opinion/the-...

I do not wish to poo-poo the efforts themselves, which are worthy, at least in motivation. But what we’re looking at is a siloing, wherein there is a place for Jewish books, but it’s at a Jewish Books table. That’s already a problem if the hope is that the Jewish book has some non-Jewish readers as well, although this points to a wider issue in 2010s-and-onwards book publishing, with everything needing to be categorizable along empowering-or-tragic identity lines. Granted, the siloing of Jewish books has happened for very different reasons than that of other identities. The Jewish Books table is there not to remedy past discrimination, but the ongoing sort.

But a Jewish-authored book that is not about Jewish themes, that does not belong on a Jewish Books table, is whatever the literary equivalent is of politically homeless.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jul 7

www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/o... Obsessed with how it's "aesthetics." Is anyone even pretending otherwise at this point. You can take the preppiest prepster with the trustiest trust fund but if they don't read as fussy or (((that other thing))) they get to be salt-of-the-earth.

Platner offered many on the left something they’re desperate for: working-class aesthetics married to uncompromising lefty politics.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jul 4

I think this is definitely very helpful to Palestinians.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 30

I love that this was also getting side-eye in 2016.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 30

I MEAN

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 29

Still wondering which specific support of "genocide" this is referring to, whether in the excerpt or elsewhere. I guess we're just doing this now.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 29

Wow you're all just SO much smarter than I am

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 29

Have people heard of jokes

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 28

Nebbishettes, for @thecjn.bsky.social

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 25

I wrote a feminist book that offers a feminist vision of heterosexuality. Also an old-times mutual I hadn't even realized was on here, I guess we're not friendly-terms anymore!

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 23

For a half-century, it was possible to call out antisemitism simply by calling the antisemite a weirdo and a loser for holding those views. That strategy no longer works! thecjn.ca/opinion/why-...

There is an antisemitism-fighting strategy that presumes antisemitism to be an aberration. A fringe viewpoint you could dissuade someone of merely by pointing out how fringe it is. Be normal, you could say, and the young or confused person flirting with antisemitism might mend their ways. This was really the strategy from the postwar era onward. The Nazis had lost. This was fresh enough in everyone’s mind that Nazi-ness was self-evidently linked with being a loser.

And this worked, for a time. I think of the 2004 Peep Show episode where an awkward young man named Mark finally makes a friend at work, and—much to Mark’s embarrassment—the friend reveals himself to be a Nazi. An actual honest-to-goodness Second World War-reenacting Nazi who wants to bring white supremacist rule to England. There, the joke is that Mark is such an uptight weirdo that of course a Nazi would have (mistakenly) seen, in him, a kindred spirit.

We are no longer in that world. The Democrats’ 2024 attempt to cast Trump and Vance as “weird” didn’t work. Demonstrably, the GOP ticket won the popular vote. Along similar lines, you can call antisemitism weird, but if it’s widely embraced—if it is not, objectively, weird these days to be an antisemite—this is not an effective strategy for fighting it. A 19-year-old who announces he doesn’t want to work for Jews has closed some doors but opened however many others.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy@phoebebovy· Jun 22

Is it always the same specially-made-to-tell-me-I'm-wrong account or a series of different ones? A pretty consistent voice imo so probably the same. The real question is, is it someone who knows me either under their real name or even irl?