The Suicide of Mia Janin and Jewish Femininity
I don’t normally write about suicide as that subject has touched my life more than once, but the suicide of Mia Janin – a jewish girl attending the ‘Jewish Free School’ in Kenton in the north of London – on 12th March 2021 is an interesting and timely subject on which to bring up an interpretative point related to understanding the jewish question.
Let’s begin with what exactly drove Mia Janin to commit suicide.
Joe Middleton writes in ‘The Independent’ that:
‘An inquest has ruled that a 14-year-old girl who was bullied by the boys at her school died by suicide.
Mia Janin, a Year 10 pupil at the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton, north-west London, was found dead at her family home in Harrow on 12 March 2021.
North London area coroner Tony Murphy, sitting at Barnet Coroner’s Court, concluded that Mia “took her life while still a child and while still in the process of maturing into adulthood”.
Mia was last seen alive at about 10pm on 11 March 2021 when she said goodnight to her parents in their family home, the inquest heard. She was found hanged by her parents at about 6.50am the next day.
‘Statements given by friends of Mia to the Metropolitan Police following her death were read out to the inquest, in which they said Mia was bullied by other pupils at the school.
The inquests also heard that their friendship group was nicknamed the “suicide squad” in the months leading up to her death.
They said that one of Mia‘s TikToks was shared to a Snapchat group chat run by male pupils at JFS, where they made fun of her. One child said the boys used the group chat to share nude photos of girls.
Rabbi Howard Cohen, former deputy headteacher at JFS, told the inquest that after Mia‘s death there was “some talk around the school” of what he described as “boys-only bravado groups” sharing images of girls, and he was made aware of a boys WhatsApp group where members were rating the “attractiveness” of female pupils.
But there was no reason to believe the groups related to Mia, Rabbi Cohen said.
The former deputy headteacher told the inquest he had held a meeting with members of one of the group chats who then agreed to disband it.
Mr Janin told the inquest that his daughter had asked if she could move school after coming home on March 11.
The inquest heard that his wife Marisa, who has since died, told Mia she could be homeschooled for the rest of the school year, and that they would look into moving her to a new school after. Mia then went to bed. Hours later, she was dead.’ (1)
So far so good and although it behoves us to note that the ‘Jewish Free School’ is one of the oldest educational institutions within British jewry. What actually happened is fairly obvious in that Mia Janin was very heavily bullied by her exclusively jewish fellow pupils especially the male ones.
However, what I want to draw attention to is Rabbi Howard Cohen’s response of massively downplaying any responsibility on the part of her fellow jews for her death and indeed he almost suggests that it had absolutely nothing to do with the ‘Jewish Free School’ at all.
This downplaying of responsibility is echoed by ‘Jewish News’ (2) but the non-jewish publications are predictably far less inclined to downplay this and just believe Rabbi Cohen’s story. In fact, they make clear that there was a consistent pattern of vindictive often passive violence on the part of the other jewish pupils towards Janin.
Sky News writes how:
‘The coroner said the Jewish Free School (JFS) she had attended brought in systematic changes after her death.
They acknowledged she had received hostile messages to a TikTok she had posted, but added she was never diagnosed with mental illness nor did she present signs she was thinking of suicide.’ (3)
And LBC echoes and expands upon this theme as follows:
‘Male pupils kicked footballs at her and her friends, who were branded "Suicide Squad" by bullies.
A Snapchat group chat called "Panacha", which contained more than 60 boys from JFS and potentially other schools, was known to other children.
The boys used it to post photos of girls at the school to superimpose their faces on porn stars' bodies to mock them, and would share nude photos of female classmates after pressuring them to share images.
Mia and her friends never saw the chat but knew they were targeted because it was brought up by boys at the school.’ (4)
This is hardly ‘boys-own bravado’, and Mia Janin was targeted despite Rabbi Cohen’s loud pronouncements to the contrary, but it does showcase rather well something we have to remember in discussing jews in that as much as we know jews are absolutely vicious towards non-jews. They are equally vicious towards their own kind, and it is the kind of vicious that is passive, gossipy, nasty and vengeance orientated.
This isn’t the straight up ‘I’ll smash your face in’ type of bullying common in non-jewish schools but rather the kind of bullying you’d often find in girl’s schools. This plays into an interpretative matrix first outlined by Otto Weininger in his 1903 book ‘Sex and Character’. Despite the book’s shortcomings – such as its outright denial of biological jewishness – Weininger’s central point (remember Weininger was himself jewish) was that jews are naturally far more feminine than masculine and adopt the ‘ways of women’ in dealing with problems rather than the ‘ways of men’ common among European men.
We can see this quite strongly in the case of Janin both in the conduct of the jewish boys of the ‘Jewish Free School’ towards her as well as their methods and the absolute denial of any responsibility whatsoever by Rabbi Cohen.
This then feeds into why jews have historically been poor soldiers and have generally shirked their responsibilities when conscripted as well as showing why jews are more apt to want to be ‘behind the lines’ where they aren’t liable to shot at but can viciously treat prisoners of war and civilians rather than fight those who can fight back.
In summary then we can see that the case of Mia Janin serves as a supportive case study of Otto Weininger’s thesis in ‘Sex and Character’ but also shows the nature of how jews usually behave and that this doesn’t just apply to their interactions with non-jews but also with each other.
References
(1) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mia-janin-bullying-school-suicide-b2485554.html; also see https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/26/mia-teenager-girl-janin-suicide-bullied-jewish-school-voice/
(2) https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/inquest-concludes-jfs-pupil-mia-janin-took-her-own-life-after-being-bullied/
(3) https://news.sky.com/story/girl-14-who-was-bullied-died-by-suicide-coronor-rules-13056685
(4) https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/mia-janin-jewish-free-school-suicide/ also https://news.sky.com/story/girl-14-who-was-bullied-died-by-suicide-coronor-rules-13056685