I think it's in Upside Down by Galleano that he notes that during the crusades Europeans weaponized the fact that Muslims washed up so often (at least before praying 5x a day) as a sign that they were dirty. If they were clean they wouldn't have to wash so often. This idea of innate cleanliness /1 - ThreadSky

kendrawrites.com • 3 days ago

I think it's in Upside Down by Galleano that he notes that during the crusades Europeans weaponized the fact that Muslims washed up so often (at least before praying 5x a day) as a sign that they were dirty. If they were clean they wouldn't have to wash so often. This idea of innate cleanliness /1

Reposted from Saeed Jones

When I say he’s an incorrigible yapper, I mean that, in 2019, Pete Hegseth voluntarily admitted on-air that he hadn’t washed his hands in a decade.

Comments

j2cc.bsky.social•3 days ago

Well, that explains a lot

matthewfjohnson.bsky.social•2 days ago

Medieval Europeans did indeed wash and bathe often, and far from being disdainful of Muslim hygienic practices (like soap) they adopted them enthusiastically: https://www.crusaderkingdoms.com/hygiene.html

matthewfjohnson.bsky.social•2 days ago

Additional sources: https://going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-assure-you-medieval-people-bathed/

https://nicholasrossis.me/2020/10/05/bathing-in-the-middle-ages/

https://library.smotj.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Crusader-Hygiene.pdf

matthewfjohnson.bsky.social•2 days ago

I respect Galeano's work in his field a lot but he was not a medievalist.

espo4615.bsky.social•2 days ago

Is it true Syphilis ruined the bathing culture of old Europe?

matthewfjohnson.bsky.social•2 days ago

I can't say it's impossible but I've never seen any suggestion that was so.

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Is an extension of white supremacy.

I doubt Hegseth really doesn't believe in germs. He'd be disgusted if you sneezed in his face. What he's saying is essentially that he's innately clean, i.e. white.

That's really what the "wash your legs" discourse is about

tbapple.bsky.social•3 days ago

I also think it’s a test, similar to DeSantis’s “Thailand Test”.
If a women tells him he smells, ever, relationship is over.

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Meanwhile I grew up with my mom doing smell checks after I bathed and if I didn't smell sufficiently clean i had to bathe again and scrub harder

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

It's Black Americans (and really poc across the Global South), explaining to white people (mainly of Western European origin if not currently residing) that they do in fact stink.

It's a discourse in the US goes back to their arrival (back then it was Native Americans trying to tell them)

gabbklein.bsky.social•3 days ago

And not only are Black people not stinky, but they're way more penalized for even *seeming* stinky. If a Black person posted that they didn't wash their legs??? But you can say you never wash your hands (Pete) and look like you never wash your face (DJT) and, if you're white, it's no problem.

kendrawrites.com•2 days ago

Yep same with Kirsten Bell saying that she only bathe her kids when they smell. I can't imagine a Black parent saying that without expecting a visit from CPS

jaconthebrazos.bsky.social•2 days ago

I need someone to divide out the difference between the different classes of white people. Because I grew up with wash rags and find those plastic loofah to be gross! But I didn't know people were just scrubbing with just hands beyond a desperate situation lol.

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

(Obviously not all white people, not talking about people with disabilities that limits their ability to bathe regularly etc etc etc )

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Also I'm not here discussing your bathing habits.

What I'm talking about is *perceptions* of cleanliness and not whether you meet them. In college I wore the same outfit for a week straight and I knew it was gross but I had unchecked seasonal depression & the outfit made me feel safe

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Key bit: i knew it was gross. I'm not on here saying with my full chest it was sanitary actually

nj1944.bsky.social•2 days ago

It was what you needed to do at that time for your mental health. I applaud your strength in recognizing your need. Bravo!

seajay.bsky.social•3 days ago

He sounds like the ass pennies guy.

bextraordinary.bsky.social•3 days ago

Can relate. And no, it wasn't great! I didn't think it was great!

hunterfelt.bsky.social•3 days ago

When the replies are about to be muted...

bowlerhatscience.org•3 days ago

I didn't even know about the whole "white people don't wash their legs/feet" thing until I was an adult, and it still weirds me out. I think your take may be right. If you think you're intrinsically clean, why bother?

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Thissss and that's layered atop that Western Europeans kind of had a weird idea of how illness transmitted. I'm flattening time here - the romans had bath houses after all - but it is remarkable how many cultures first encountering them Columbus on were like...they stank

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

A lot of the broader US standards around cleanliness are actually African and Indigenous.

Also, I will say it's not universal across Western Europe. Icelandic pools are kind of famous for making you scrub down.

doctorsynth.bsky.social•3 days ago

As a child I did not understand why my black classmates always smelled like coconuts.

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

The way I cackled. 🤣

It's because a lot of Black hair care products and lotions had that scent.

doctorsynth.bsky.social•3 days ago

I learned a TON about black healthcare routines in college. My favorite professor taught African American literature and it was eye-opening. I now understand “good hair”

cockymf.bsky.social•3 days ago

LOL there's a white woman on tiktok that said she ended up on Black tiktok and learned that white people are stinky.

cockymf.bsky.social•3 days ago

Found her...

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8jVDheT/

kendrawrites.com•2 days ago

🤣

tessafisher.bsky.social•2 days ago

Wait, there are people who don't believe in washing their legs? Wtf?

thedenature.bsky.social•3 days ago

Europeans were also baffled by the frequent bathing of indigenous Americans.

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Yep. Meanwhile the indigenous Americans were like y'all know you smell bad right?

thedenature.bsky.social•3 days ago

Which Europeans turned into “the Americans are vain and obsessed with image and appearance!”

dottiedino.bsky.social•3 days ago

see also “washcloths? sorry, i’m rich” the idea that you use disposable goop to pour over yourself like a frickin’ Harkonen to be “baptized by coconut” etc like the act of washing means you are dirty in the first place and sloughing it off means you are inherent bad and poors are bad and on and on

cataribartok.bsky.social•3 days ago

Analogously there’s literature about how many doctors and surgeons passed disease AFTER it was known how useful washing your hands between patients was, even though they believed in the practice, simply because they didn’t see themselves as the kind of people who got dirty.

matthewfjohnson.bsky.social•2 days ago

Also because Semmelweis refused to publish his research and called everyone who disagreed with him an idiot.

https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/ignaz-semmelweis/

When Lister made the same claim and provided data, doctors adopted it almost immediately.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/ignaz-semmelweis-doctor-prescribed-hand-washing

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Yes. There's a similar discourse still with white coats and ties

citychicken.bsky.social•3 days ago

When I had braces in the early- to mid- '90s, the place where I went had two orthdontists. One guy was in his 30s and the other was probably in his 50s. The older guy never wore gloves. It seemed weird at the time and it seems just ridiculously careless in retrospect.

nellieo.bsky.social•2 days ago

They also dismissed midwives who believed cleanliness was important. They persuaded women to give birth in hospitals for better care and the maternal death rate soared because they thought it was macho to go from patient to patient covered in blood.

frogsandgrubs.bsky.social•3 days ago

I once rode in the car with an ER doc who refused to wear her seatbelt while driving her own car. The Audi was screaming at her to wear her seatbelt. Bonkers.

I told her to pull over and buckle her seatbelt or else I was getting out and waiting for my husband to get me. He was 1.5 hours away.

imjeremyfuckoff.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yep, here on page 48

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

I love that book but looks like you have the hard cover?

imjeremyfuckoff.bsky.social•3 days ago

No, it's a paperback, and judging by the sticker on it, one I got used

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Mine is Paperback from strand but idk if it was used or new

imjeremyfuckoff.bsky.social•3 days ago

Actually, the line on page 61 is even more on point. On the subject of "Thus It Is Proven That Indians Are Inferior" he says: "They bathe with suspicious frequency? Because they are like the heretics of the sect of Mohammed, who burn well in the fires of the Inquisition."

espo4615.bsky.social•2 days ago

I read this book so long ago, but it was formative for me in high school

lollardfish.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’d be curious to see the sources for that. There’s definitely a lot of Islamic writing that notes the filthiness of Christian cities, focused on pigs.

lollardfish.bsky.social•3 days ago

but I can't recall anti-Islamic polemic from the period that emphasized cleanliness as a sign of being unclean, but I haven't read that literature closely in a decade or so, and it was never my focal point.

kendrawrites.com•3 days ago

Chapter references, he didn't do footnotes. The book was also written in Spanish and translated to English

tweetingtechno.bsky.social•3 days ago

Oh wow. Hadn't heard of this book, and I just ordered it. Thanks!

gina.bzky.team•3 days ago

Europeans said the same of Jewish people when the bubonic plague arrived - they thought it was God’s punishment for allowing the ‘strangers who wash’ to stay. It was likely a recessive gene that is painful to live with, combined with daily rituals of cleanliness (of self & household).

gina.bzky.team•2 days ago

Incoherent supremacist gibberish.

kendrawrites.com•2 days ago

When they could just take a bath.

nathrach.bsky.social•2 days ago

There are still millions of us who don't wash our asses after we poo

Must be that western civilization they get so worked up over

danielwithington.bsky.social•2 days ago

I lived and worked with Muslims for years. They say infidels are filthy because they don’t wash after going to the bathroom. They say that infidels take toilet paper and wipe shit all over their ass and they are right.

nathrach.bsky.social•2 days ago

Seriously

If you touched poo with your hands would you not wash your hands?

O well if ur not Whisky Pete

But the rest of us?

Why you not washing your ass every time?

jerrypcdn.bsky.social•3 days ago

I gave you diamonds, you gave me disease - Jagger

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